Ivory Carving Human Figure
date: label: Accession Date
content: 16 Dec 1879
name: label: Donor Name
content: Lucien M. Turner
notes: label: Notes
content: E35921 - 35926 are Illus. Fig. 115b, p. 107 in Black, Lydia. 2003. Aleut art = Unangam aguqaadangin. Virginia Beach, VA: Donning Co. Publishers. They are identified there: "Human figurines from Attu with removable arms and weapons. Pegs at bottom of feet indicate that these figures were originally on a plate or a pedestal. Note minimal emphasis on genitalia and egg-shaped bodies." These figures are also described on p. 112: "The bodies are ovaloid, the legs ... crude appendages in a forklike shape. The arms are long tubes inserted into holes drilled in the shoulders, peg-like .... The position of the arms varies from figure to figure. One of the figures "holds" a long spear, also of tubular shape, in the right hand. Other figures, too, apparently held weapons which are now lost. The heads are crude ovaloids. Interestingly, the only parallel to this type of anthropomorphic sculptures on the North Pacific Rim appears to be found in the Evenk (Tungus) sculpture of the Sea of Okhotsk littoral and in Siberia in the Yenisei River valley. The similarity lies in style as well as in the pegged attachment of limbs and, in the particular case of the figurine holding a spear, in the manner in which the weapon itself and the way it is attached to the hand are represented."
label: Record Last Modified
content: 7 Jul 2021
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Aleutian Islands, Alaska, United States, North America
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: 79A00065
label: USNM Number
content: E35926-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Figure