Wood Carving-Turtle
date: label: Accession Date
content: 1878
name: label: Donor Name
content: Frederick A. Ober
notes: label: Notes
content: DESCRIPTION OF FINDING THIS OBJECT ON THE ISLAND OF BATTOWIA PUBLISHED BY THE COLLECTOR, F.A. OBER, IN "CAMPS IN THE CARIBEES: THE ADVENTURES OF A NATURALIST IN THE LESSER ANTILLES". BOSTON: LEE AND SHEPHARD, PUBLISHERS. N.Y.: CHARLES T. DILLINGHAM, 1880, PP. 220-223. Illus. Fig. 1, p. 138, and discussed pp. 143-146, in "'This Relic of Antiquity': Fifth to fifteenth century wood carvings from the southern Lesser Antilles" by Joanna Ostapkowicz, Christopher Bronk Ramsey, Alex C. Wiedenhoeft, Fiona Brock, Tom Higham, and Samuel M. Wilson, a chapter in Hofman, Corinne L., and Van Duijvenbode, Anne. 2011. Communities in Contact Essays in Archaeology, Ethnohistory and Ethnography of the Amerindian Circum-caribbean. Sidestone Pr. . Identified there as turtle carving/snuff tube, Guaiacum sp., resin inlays, white pigment, AD 1160-1258 (combined resin and wood AMS radiocarbon dates). Identified as a probable composite snuff tube used for inhalation of cohoba (a hallucinogenic drug.) Illus. Fig. 10b, p. 59 in Ostapkowicz, Joanna. "Conduits to the supernatural: Bifurcated snuff tubes in the pre-Columbian Caribbean," Journal of Caribbean Archaeology 20 (2020): 45-67. https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/44/2020/08/JCA-Osnuff-tube-final-1.pdf
label: Notes
content: Object has two holes where hollow heron bones were put to inhale the cohoba snuff. In Taino myth a female turtle is born in the back of Deminan Caracaracol when he is impregnated with a spat full of cohoba secretions by his mythical. There are various representations of night herons eating turtles in pictographs. This is related to Cosmology, Ancestor cult, and Supernaturals. Comes from a cave at the Battowia Island in the Grenadines.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 7 Jul 2021
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Battowia Island, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Caribbean
topic: label: Topic
content: Archaeology
culture: label: Culture
content: Prehistoric
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 007332
label: USNM Number
content: A34542-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Snuff Tube
physicalDescription: label: Length - Object
content: 102 mm
label: Width - Object
content: 57 mm
label: Height - Object
content: 33 mm