head-net
- Museum number
- Oc1990,09.404
- Description
-
Head-net, made from acrylic yarn in multi-coloured stripes (comprising chequered bands of yellow and black, flanked by green and pink, and separated by multiple bands of blue and white); incorporates a small amount of marsupial fur.
- Production date
- 20thC
- Dimensions
-
Width: 29.30 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- Head-net (in the Wahgi language ‘peng kon’: ‘head netbag’) purchased from Kala, natally from the Komblo sub-group Kulka Aluakup Semilngalem and married to Du of the Komblo sub-group Kekanem Kamanekanem. Kala made the head-net some months ago to wear herself. It is in the style of the head-nets worn in the 1970s/1980s by Hagen and Southern Highlands people and is displacing the buff-coloured/white head-nets worn by Wahgi people. ‘She [Kala] saw how the people upriver and below made [such head-nets] and copied it’ (‘Wul mene alamb enzipmal kane si pakle erim’. For an account of the making of the collection of which this is part, see ‘Paradise: portraying the New Guinea Highlands’, by Michael O’Hanlon (British Museum Press, 1993), especially p.14 where Wahgi cultural topography is outlined).
Field collection no:49.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1990
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- Oc1990,09.404
- Additional IDs
-
Miscellaneous number: 49 (field collection number)