Pounder penu
Place: Tahiti & Society Islands
Category: Tools
basalt, Tahiti and the Society Islands, h. 17.5 cm, d. 11.5 cm (base), Hanover 1854, No. 39
Forster Register A.20: ‘2 short handle-patapatus from New Zealand.’
The provenance ‘New Zealand’ is incorrect. It may be assumed that one of the two ‘handle-patapatus’ is the object Oz 81 (see Tonga) and the other is the object released to Hanover, specimen No. 39. The pounder erroneously listed under Hawaii in the Hanover catalogue corresponds in form and dimensions very nearly to those of the specimen remaining in Göttingen, and no doubt came from the Society Islands.
Ignoring the fact that the tip of one wing has been broken off and lost, and that the tip of the other wing was broken but has been reattached, the condition of the piece corresponds to that of the Göttingen specimen. In contrast to the comparable piece in Göttingen, the pounder in Hanover has a string binding at the neck, plaited from plant fibres, and preserved for a length of 50 cm. It evidently served to suspend this household implement, as Urban (1966: 45) also presumed for the string of the pounder in the Sparrmann Collection in Stockholm. Gundolf Krüger
Sources
Urban, Manfred, ‘Polynesische Stössel. Belegstücke aus der Bestanden der Ethnographischen Sammlung der Universität Göttingen’, Jahrbuch der Museums für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig, Berlin, 1966, vol. 22, pp. 40-58.
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