block
- Museum number
- Oc1915,-.27
- Description
-
Barava tridacna-shell slab pierced with money-ring and figure designs
- Production date
- 19th century
- Curator's comments
- Register reads:
Stone fretwork carving, apparently very old. (placed in front of model huts, containing skull of chief.) N. Georgia, or Vella Lavella
The identification as a skull-house door is not mentioned in Woodford's original list sent to Hercules Read 21 June 1915 and probably derives from Edge-Partington & Joyce (1904) Man No.86 and Woodford (1905) Man No.20.
Barava is a name for these pierced slabs in several New Georgia languages. Some were made as doors for the skull-houses of important ancestors and in general they were kept as symbols of a clan's claim to its land.
see: Richards, R. & Roga, K. (2004) Barava: Land title deeds in fossil shell from the western Solomon Islands. Tuhinga No.15:17-26, Te Papa Museum of New Zealand
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1915
- Acquisition notes
- From a collection of 43 Solomon Islands artefacts purchased from Woodford for £90 from the Christy Fund in 1915, registered as Oc1915.21 to 64.
Woodford visited and resided in Solomon Islands between 1884 and 1914, first as a naturalist, then as first Resident Commissioner for the British Solomon Islands Protectorate
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Oc1915,-.27
- Additional IDs
-
CDMS number: Oc1915C3.27 (old CDMS no.)