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Hohao (spirit board)
Elema people, late 19th/early 20th
century
From the Gulf of Papua, Papua New Guinea
The figure on this carved and painted board depicts a forest
spirit known to the Elema people, who live on the long coast of
Orokolo Bay in southern Papua New Guinea. The figure is dressed to
dance, wearing a pearl shell crescent on his breast and a bark
belt.
Elema men carved boards like this, called hohao, and
kept them inside a men's ceremonial house. Although some
hohao were merely decorative, others were made as a home
for a forest spirit with which the maker had developed a particular
relationship. Personal spirits helped the men have success in
hunting.
Hohao like this one, depicting a whole human figure,
are rare. This board almost certainly housed a spirit and would
have had a personal name. The Elema considered the principal
hohao in a men's ceremonial house to be highly sacred.
They sometimes repainted the boards and presented them with
offerings in order to keep the spirits in a good humour.
F.E. Williams, The drama of Orokolo: The soci (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1969)
M. Young & J. Clark, Anthropologist in Papua: the p (Canberra, National Archives of Australia, 2001)