MUS2026-275 - museum specimen
New Britain fish-head pair
Papua New Guinea - New Britain (museum attribution uncertain) - Oceania - Sahul
Function not recorded
Source term: Schwirrholz
A fish's head becomes engineering here. On the plainer of the two blades the fish's eye is the cord hole — the line runs straight through the socket where the eye should be. On its more elaborate twin the eye is left whole and the line bites instead at a pair of notches cut into the edge. Both keep their red paint and the same chain-and-zigzag banding running the length of the body.
Anstelle des Auges Loch zum Durchziehen des Fadens.
In place of the eye is a hole for passing the cord through.
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, catalogue description, MIR 1283
- Object
- Two closely related wooden blades with chain-and-zigzag carving and stylized fish-head ends; one uses an eye-hole, the other paired binding notches.
- Function
- Not recorded.
- Source
- MIMO/Germanisches Nationalmuseum MIR1283–MIR1284; New Britain (?); consecutive, closely related carved blades; MIR1283 ends in a stylized fish head whose eye is the cord hole; MIR1284 is a more elaborate variant tied through paired notches; both retain red paint
- Source location
Page references
MIR1283; MIR1284; OAI_GNM_907602/OAI_GNM_907639
- Source confidence
- low Broad New Britain anchor; museum attribution is questioned.