Stick Navigation Chart
date: label: Accession Date
content: 24 Aug 2006
label: Collection Date
content: 1940 to 1959
name: label: Donor Name
content: R. Naomi Cannon
notes: label: Notes
content: Square shaped stick navigation chart. Wooden sticks tied at intervals with brown twine. Cowrie shells attached at intersection of certain sticks. Sticks broken in 7 places. Some breaks wrapped with white string. Donor commented she had used string to hold broken sticks together.
label: Notes
content: Long narrow reed materials tied together with twisted bast fiber twine and string, in a roughly square two-dimension depiction of water currents and eddies. At some of the intersections where the reeds meet, white cowrie shells are tied on top of them, also using twine. There are 28 shells.
label: Notes
content: The chart is an abstract illustration of the ways that ocean swells interact with land. Curved sticks show where swells are deflected by an island; short, straight strips often indicate currents near islands; longer strips may indicate the direction in which certain islands are to be found; and small cowry shells represent the islands themselves. The stick chart is an instructional tool meant for use before a voyage, rather than something to be used for real-time navigation. See: "How Sticks and Shell Charts Became a Sophisticated System for Navigation" by Cari Romm, Smithsonian.com, January 26, 2015, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-sticks-and-shell-charts-became-sophisticated-system-navigation-180954018/
label: Record Last Modified
content: 24 Feb 2023
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Marshall Islands, Micronesia
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Marshallese
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 2040621
label: USNM Number
content: E432083-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Navigation Chart
physicalDescription: label: Length - Object
content: 128 cm
label: Width - Object
content: 100 cm
label: Depth - Object
content: 4.5 cm