club;
marriage equipment
- Museum number
- Oc1848,0821.4
- Description
-
Club, "idam", used in marriage ceremony and also as boy's weapon, of wood.
- Production date
- 19thC (before 1848)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 49.80 centimetres
-
Width: 5 centimetres
-
Depth: 4 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- Original Register is "Acquisitions, British and Medieval, v.2 (1844-1849)"; no provenance given. See also Ethnography Department "British and Medieval Extracts" Register, p.96.
Dimension given in Registers is 1 ft, 4 in [16 inches / 41 centimetres] - item found is longer, but has Register number marked-on. (AMD,5/1999).
4. Waddy or ceremonial club, 1’ 4”, used at marriages as well as by boys as a club. Called Idam – for boys.
Here is the only other correspondence found relating to this acquisition:
ANE archive correspondence 1827-1867
Bound volume7
2671
copy
Sir,
Will you have the goodness to deliver to the bearer the Australian objects which you present to the British Museum. I should also feel obliged by your sending a hand bill & the names of the places in Australia whence procured. I have the honor to remain
Your obedient servant
Samuel Birch
Mr S. Hexter
Email from Philip Jones of South Australian Museum 17 September 2013: 'It is clearly from the Adelaide Plains or possibly Yorke Peninsula area...clubs of this kind were used, symbolically, in the representational 'capture' of a wife, as part of the marriage ceremony on the Adelaide Plains'. The collector was more likely to have been Samuel Hexter's brother, W. Hexter, who was a butcher in Adelaide during 1840-1842.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
2015-2016 27 Nov-28 Mar, Canberra, National Museum of Australia, Encounters
- Acquisition date
- 1848
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Oc1848,0821.4
