Friday, February 29, 2008

What is this?

As the cataloging project moves forward, we occasionally encounter objects we can't quite classify. For instance, this object:

double figure

Our records tell us that it is a "New Guinea double figure." I tried to track down similar objects on the internet but wasn't particularly successful. Some objects from the Sepik River region have similar design, but no large flat carvings in this manner.

This week's Whatzit is a reversal of the normal. I don't know what this object is (currently it's going by the name "carving") or what its purpose originally was, but I have this feeling that it should be something relatively easy to find out. Good old google has not been particularly forthcoming, so I was hoping some one out in internet-land might have an insight.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

In looking on the internet it looks like it could be a ancestor board/skull rack (gope/agiba). I didn't see anything just like it but similar.