Fishing device
Place: Tahiti & Society Islands
Category: Fishing & hunting
cowries, sticks, plant fibre, mother-of-pearl, Tahiti and the Society Islands, l. 44 cm, Hanover 1854, No. 10
The fishing device is a lure; the fish-hook and the string which were connected to the lure are missing. Although this lure is larger overall than the object Oz 391, material and form are the same for both. Lures such as these are typical for the Society Islands, as confirmed by the respective illustrations in Moschner (1955: 190, Fig. 57) and Kaeppler (1978a: 156, Fig. 286 and 287), in comparison with octopus fishing implements from Tonga. The entry ‘Viti Isles’ on the Hanover file card (Catalogue No. 10) must in any case be incorrect. The lure is listed neither in the Humphrey catalogue nor in the Forster legacy. As part of octopus fishing devices used on the Society Islands, this lure probably belongs to those individual pieces which came into the possession of the Academisches Museum before G. Forster first visited Göttingen.
Sources
Kaeppler, Adrienne L, ‘Artificial Curiosities’ Being An Exposition of Native Manufactures Collected on the Three Pacific Voyages of Captain James Cook RN [Exhibition catalogue], Bishop Museum Press, Honolulu, 1978a.
Moschner, Irmgard, ‘Die Wiener Cook-Sammlung, Südsee-Teil’, Archiv für Völkerkunde, Vienna and Stuttgart, 1955, vol. 10, pp. 136-253.
Related artefacts