Hat
date: label: Accession Date
content: 22 May 2013
name: label: Collector
content: Richard Feinberg
label: Donor Name
content: Richard Feinberg
notes: label: Notes
content: Hat woven from coconut leaf. Flat-topped oblong crown and medium brim all the way around, similar in style to a boater hat.
label: Notes
content: Kapa rau niu (coconut leaf hat) -- Kapa is the Anuta pronuciaion of cap, rau is the word for leaf and niu is the word for coconut. Made by Pu Nukumanaia. Though others made sun-visors from coconut leaf (taumata), Pu Nukumanaia was the only man on Anuta to make hats. Feinberg doesn't know how he got the idea. He was probably in Honiara or the Russell Islands and saw Europeans wearing hats, and it occurred to him that he could make something functionally similar. According to Feinberg, Pu Nukumanaia was a creative guy. He was someone said to have replaced the triangular sail with a square sail. This shift in sails increased the amount of wind a sail took, and thus the speed of a canoe, without the loss of stability [see Plate 26 in Polynesian Seafaring and Navigation 2003 [1988].) He was a general innovator of objects and one of the two best canoe builders in Anuta and also the strongest man on Anuta. His son was the first Anuta to be ordained as a priest. Pu Nukumanaia was making this hat for himself and a few others. On plate 61 in Polynesian Seafaring, you can see a pith-type helmet that people wore at the time - a hat with a big brim - this is what he modeled his on. (Per curator Joshua Bell; notes from speaking to Feinberg, Aug 16, 2012.)
label: Record Last Modified
content: 2 Dec 2014
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Anuta Island, Solomon Islands, Melanesia
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Anutan
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 2059846
label: USNM Number
content: E433245-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Hat
physicalDescription: label: Length
content: 33 cm
label: Width
content: 28 cm
label: Depth
content: 10.2 cm