1934.8.43

Collection type

Object

Description

Animal scrotum purse with iron ring, with a flap made from pink, red and white glass beads [RTS 23/6/2004].

Long description

Small purse made from a piece of hide, taken from the lower part of an animal's scrotum. This forms a naturally shaped pocket, with open top and curved sides tapering in to a double curved base; there is a slight ridge running down the centre of the hide on either side. The hide is a dark brown colour (Pantone 7519C), and is covered with patches of short light brown hair on either side (Pantone 7508C). At the top of the purse, the back piece of hide has been slightly bent over the front, and a small flap has been attached to the end of this, constructed out of a series of 100 small opaque glass ring beads with convex sides in white, pink (Pantone 196C) and dark red over a white core (Pantone 202C). These have been strung onto twisted plant fibre thread, probably cotton, in vertical groups of two, arranged as three vertical tiers, with the thread sewn onto the hide at the top, and knotted off at the base. The top two tiers have 17 rows; the lower tier has only 16 rows, making the flap taper slightly to fit the tapering shape of the purse body. The arrangement of the beads is fairly regular; the top tier is made of vertical groups of two red beads (making a total of 32 red beads), except for the end group, where two slightly smaller pink beads have been used instead. The remaining 66 beads are white. An iron ring has been pushed through a hole in the top corner of the purse; this ring is made out of a small rod with tapering ends and roughly oval section bent into a loop with overlapping ends. This was presumably used to attach the purse to a cord or belt. The purse is essentially complete, although some of the surface hair has worn away in patches and there is a small hole through the back; it weighs 20.1 grams. The purse is 84 mm long, 69 mm wide and 5 mm thick; the flap is 20 mm long. The beads are of similar size; a typical example has a diameter of 4.5 mm and a thickness of 3 mm, while the slightly smaller pink beads have diameters of around 4 mm and thickness of 3 mm. The iron ring is 13.9 mm long, 13.7 mm wide and 1.3 mm thick [RTS 23/6/2004].

Geographical reference

South Sudan

Africa > Eastern Africa > South Sudan

Bahr el Jebel Mongalla

Cultural groups

Bari (Nilotic)

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

12th February 1933

Acquisition information

Donated: 1934

Materials and processes

Material Animal Hide Skin, Material Iron Metal, Material Glass, Material Cotton Seed Fibre Yarn Plant, Process Beadwork, Process Strung, Process Hammered

Dimensions

Width 69 mm, Length 84 mm, Depth 5 mm, Weight 20.1 g

Object numbers

Accession number: 1934.8.43 Other numbers: 261

Research and responses

The accession book and RDF entries imply that the object was collected from the town of Mongalla, rather than from the province of that name; this town is located in the modern administrative district of Bahr el Jebel.

For a similar flat bag made from an animal's scrotum see 1934.8.42; this currently lacks any decoration over the purse flap, although stitching holes suggests something of this kind may have once been present. Animal scrota were also used by groups such as the Nuer and Shilluk to make a different style of bag, where the body is fully expanded and hardened to create a more bulbous receptacle. See, for example, 1931.66.19-20, and E.E. Evans-Pritchard, 1940, The Nuer, p. 30 and fig. 3, bags which the Nuer used to hold tobacco, spoons and other small objects, and a Shilluk version now in Hamburg (R. Boccassino, 1966, "Contributo allo studio dell'ergologia delle popolazioni nilotiche e nilo-camitiche, parte V", Annali Lateranensi XXX, fig. 58, and p. 302; Hamburgisches Museum für Völkerkunde und Vorgeschichte Accession number 17.28:288) [RTS 4/8/2005].

Search terms: Currency, Bag, Clothing, Ornament, Bead, Purse, Waist Ornament