Explore highlights
Hohao (spirit board)

 

Height: 129.000 cm
Width: 32.000 cm

Gift of Dr W. M. Strong

AOA Ethno 1914.Oc4-18.42

Room 24: Living and Dying

    Hohao (spirit board)

    Elema people, late 19th/early 20th century
    From the Gulf of Papua, Papua New Guinea

    To hear an audio description of this object, written especially for blind and partially sighted visitors, follow this link: Audio description (3m 29s) (mp3 format, 2.39 MB). To download, right click and 'save target as' (PC) or hold down 'Control' key and click, and select 'Download Link to Disc' (Mac).

    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)

    Highlights

    Browse or search over 4,000 highlights from the Museum collection

    Shop Online

    Rosetta Stone mousemat, £8.99

    Rosetta Stone mousemat, £8.99