MASSIM SORCERY FIGURES 123 FIG. 7 (left): Lime spatula. Massim region, Papua New Guinea. Wood. L: 39.7 cm. Melbourne Museum, X49820 – 297/7. Donated by Mrs L. A. Rogerson in 1958 and apparently purchased in Port Moresby in 1920. Image © Melbourne Museum. FIG. 8 (right): Lime spatula. Massim region, Papua New Guinea. Wood. L: 26 cm. Chris Abel Collection, Alotau, Papua New Guinea. Ex the late Cecil Abel’s collection. Image © Richard Aldridge. FIG. 9 (above): Lime spatula. Massim region, Papua New Guinea. Collected by Patrick Glass in Normanby Island in 1993. Wood. Present whereabouts unknown. Image © Harry Beran. A Freestanding Figure In his essay of 1974, Cecil Abel reported seeing a carved wooden “spirit figure about four feet (1.3 meters) high with a long snout and huge ears” in a Milne Bay village. No photograph of it is known. In the early 1990s, he told Beran that this figure had come to the coast from the Buhutu Valley, where it had been used by a sorcerer. The coastal people were frightened by it and buried it. Unfortunately, Abel did not say in his essay when and precisely where he saw the figure, nor where it was buried, and Beran failed to ask him for this information. As he was born in 1903 and spent most of his life in Papua New Guinea, he may have seen the figure as early as the first part of the twentieth century. Discussion The use of objects with long-eared and long-snouted figures may have been confined to the southwestern part of the Massim region. Five of the nine long-eared and longsnouted figures on spatulas, the peg figure, and the freestanding figure were collected or observed there (figs. 1, 3–5, 9–10, and the figure observed by Cecil Abel). The spatula in fig. 2 was bought in Samarai but was part of a collection that had previously been acquired near Port Moresby. Those in figs. 6 and 7 were bought in Sydney and Port Moresby, respectively. It is not known where the spatula in fig. 8 was collected. These last four spatulas are obviously of Massim origin and may have originated in its southwestern area. The variety of styles in which the figures are carved indicates that they were created by a number of artists and that there was a tradition of carving such figures in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The sculptures on the spatulas in figs. 1 and 2 are so close to each other in conception and style that they may be by the same hand. The peg figure in fig. 10 could also be by the same hand or by a carver familiar with the work of the one who made those spatulas. The ears of the peg figure are not unusually long, but its head is otherwise identical to the heads of the figures on the spatulas mentioned. It is possible that the ears may be comparatively short in order to prevent damage to them while being used with the pig net. Alternately they may have been shortened after having been damaged. The sculptures on the spatulas in figs. 3–6 are so different in style from each other and from those on the spatulas in figs. 1 and 2 that they are probably by four additional artists. Those on the spatulas in figs. 7–9 are perhaps by one carver or possibly by two or three artists closely related to each other stylistically. They are certainly distinct from the carvers of the other spatulas mentioned. The sculpture on the spatula in fig. 4 is a stylistic puzzle. The head of the figure is carved in the same three-dimensional style as the heads of the figures on the spatulas in figs. 1 and 2, except that the ears are of a different style. However, the figure’s body is carved in a highly stylized two-dimensional manner often used for ordinary anthropomorphic squatting figures on lime spatulas. The objects described as lime spatulas in this essay had two functions in the Massim region. Most seem to have been used in the chewing of betelnuts, but the vendor of the spatula in fig. 3 told Aldridge that it was used for sorcery and not as a lime spatula. As already mentioned, lime spatulas are used to pass lime from a container to the mouth. The end of the blade is licked, dipped into the powdered lime, and then the lime licked off. Over time this leaves a deposit on the blade that is sometimes cleaned off before the spatula is sold. Prolonged use of the spatula in this manner also produces signs of wear at the end of the blade. None of the spatulas discussed shows an obvious deposit of stained saliva on the blade; however, the spatula in fig. 1 seems to have small traces of it on the blade and the wear on the blades of the spatulas in figs. 2, 4, and 7 suggests use as lime spatulas. The spatulas in figs. 3, 5, and 8 show no clear evidence of having been used for this purpose. The evidence regarding the spatula in fig. 9 is not available. Hence, it seems that the spatula in fig. 3 is not unique among those discussed in having been used primarily with magic and hardly ever, if at all, as a lime spatula. As noted above, the second function of the spatulas with the long-eared and long-snouted figures reportedly was their use with magic. Aldridge’s and Abel Abel’s informants told them that the spatulas in figs. 3–5 had been used as
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