NAGA-008 - museum specimen
Tangkhul Naga
Myanmar - Somra Tract, Naga Hills - Southeast Asia
Sacred / spirit
In the Pitt Rivers Museum's catalogue of human remains from Asia, two consecutive entries read word for word the same: a child's skull, ornamented with a wooden blade, mounted on a board with a fringe of bull-roarers. Both came from Manipur, donated in 1934 by John Comyn Higgins, who served as Political Agent for the Manipur State from 1917 to 1933. The museum records the people as Tangkhul Naga, with a query mark of its own. The bull-roarers are catalogued not as separate instruments but as a fringe along the board that carries the skull and its blade.
Child’s skull ornamented with wooden blade on a board with fringe of bull-roarers.
Pitt Rivers Museum, "Human Remains from Asia and SE Asia in the Pitt Rivers Museum," acc. 1934.61.1 / 1934.61.2 (donated by John Comyn Higgins, 1934)
- 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