Wooden Image
date: label: Accession Date
content: 27 Mar 1968
name: label: Donor Name
content: David D. Thomas
notes: label: Notes
content: From card: "Crudely carved human figure; standing; hands on hips. Heavily painted; head black, black line at waist, hands and feet black; dark blue-green stripe down front from chin to waist, and down outside of each leg. Balance a dirty white. Sexless. Looks old, [Donald] Marshall unable to place it. Said to be from temple in Tahiti but Marshall said that it could not be Tahiti, as there were no functioning temples at that time. Roland Force says Fiji. I tend to agree, Saul Riesenberg 3/27/74"
label: Notes
content: Early wooden figure, matakau, representing a female ancestor or divinity. Such figures were found in temples (bure kalou) and other sacred spaces. It is most likely an early piece from Fiji that was painted and thus "dressed" in what looks like a military male uniform, perhaps by missionaries of the London Missionary Society.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 30 Jul 2020
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Fiji, Melanesia
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 277609
label: USNM Number
content: E409621-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Figure