1934.8.22

Collection type

Object

Description

Twisted hair cords with one large blue bead attached, worn as an ornament over the chest [RTS 21/6/2004].

Long description

Chest ornament made from one very long cord of twisted wiry dark to medium brown coloured hair (Pantone black 4C, black 7C and 467C), looped over 8 times with the loose ends then wrapped around the strands at the top and knotted together. A single translucent bead has been threaded onto one of these loops, so that it hangs down at the centre of the base. This bead has a narrow flat upper and lower surface and convex sides, with a medium sized thread hole. The sides of this hole appear to be parallel, and there are numerous small bubbles in the glass matrix that are aligned with the hole, suggesting that the bead was probably made by being drawn. The surface of the bead is slightly pitted. The glass has a faint bluish tinge until held up to the light, at which point it appears to be more yellow in colour. The object is complete and intact, and weighs 102.3 grams in total. Its length, as strung, is 525 mm. The diameter of the cord is 5 mm, of the bead is 16 mm, and its thread hole 5 mm, while the bead has a height of 12 mm [RTS 21/6/2004].

Geographical reference

South Sudan

Africa > Eastern Africa > South Sudan

Warab Kornuk

Cultural groups

Dinka

Person

Field collector Percy Horace Gordon Powell-Cotton

Field collector Hannah Powell-Cotton

PRM source Percy Horace Gordon Powell-Cotton

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1933

Date collected

25th May 1933

Acquisition information

Donated: 1934

Materials and processes

Material Hair, Material Glass, Process Twisted, Process Tied, Process Strung, Process Drawn

Dimensions

Length 525 mm, Weight 102.3 g

Object numbers

Accession number: 1934.8.22 Other numbers: 2639

Research and responses

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica Online, the White Nile is the section of the Nile between Malakal and Khartoum, Sudan [CW 23/3/2000]. However the way in which this term has been used seems to have changed since this object was collected, and the term is probably used here in a broader sense; Kornuk seems to be located in the administrative district of Warab. Powell-Cotton made ethnographic films during his 1932-3 shooting expedition to southern Sudan; footage included a Dinka hunter setting a trap, a staged fight between a Dinka and Jur and a female Dinka potter at work (see the description in Mrs Powell Cotton, "Village Handicrafts in the Sudan", Man 34 (112), pp 90-91).

This type of bead is quite distinctive in shape and colouration; for similar beads, see 1934.8.70-71 (Lotuko, both strung onto hide necklets) and 1946.8.105 (Shilluk), and the examples collected by D. Gunn at Omdurman (1903.16.81 and 1903.16.84)

Nebel defines nai as a verb, ‘twist’, or noun ‘twisted grass string (Nebel 1979, Dinka-English Dictionary, p. 60). Is naim a related term? [RTS 9/11/2004].

Search terms: Ornament, Clothing, Bead, Breast Ornament, Neck Ornament