NAGA-008 - museum specimen
Tangkhul Naga
Myanmar - Somra Tract, Naga Hills - Southeast Asia - Mainland
Sacred / spirit
Among the Tangkhul Naga, a death far from home did not have to remain there. The missionary William Pettigrew recorded that when a person died where the body could not be carried back, the skull was brought to the village, and "in place of the trunk left behind a piece of wood, generally the wooden pillow of the deceased, is attached to the skull," wrapped in cloth "to represent the whole person." Two boards in the Pitt Rivers Museum keep that logic close: each bears a child's skull ornamented with a wooden blade, hung with a fringe of bull-roarers, brought from Manipur and given by J. C. Higgins in 1934.
In place of the trunk left behind a piece of wood, generally the wooden pillow of the deceased, is attached to the skull, and covered also with a piece of cloth, to represent the whole person.
T. C. Hodson, The Naga Tribes of Manipur (1911), pp. 146-147, recording Rev. W. Pettigrew on the Tangkhuls
- Object
- Mortuary board (PRM 1934.61.1 / 1934.61.2) with twelve bull-roarers suspended alongside wooden blade-ornamented children's skulls; from Somra village.
- Function
- Twelve bull-roarers form part of a mortuary/skull-display assemblage with ritual character.
- Map confidence
- high - approximate territory centroid (mining 2026)
- Source location
- acc. 1934.61.1 / 1934.61.2
- Spirit voice
- Death and rebirth