FEATURE 124 house guardians, that is, for protective magic. On the other hand, the spatula in fig. 1 was reported to have been used in sorcery. The peg figure was one of a pair to pin a pig net to the ground but also served, once the appropriate magic spell was said over it, to attract pigs into the net. The freestanding figure with long ears and a long snout reported by Cecil Abel had once belonged to a sorcerer and may therefore have been used in sorcery. According to the sources mentioned, some of the carvings were used with “white” magic to benefit their owners and some with “black” magic, or sorcery, to inflict harm onto others. However, the distinction between “white” and “black” magic is not a sharp one, as the magic used for the protection of a spatula’s owner may inflict harm on a person who wishes to attack him or her. Just what do the figures with long ears and long snouts represent? An informant in the Buhutu Valley told Aldridge that the sculptures on the spatulas in figs. 1–9 represent someone capable of sorcery. Beran’s informants in the Buhutu Valley and in Savaia Village on the south coast of the mainland said, more specifically, that the figure on one of these carvings, namely the spatula in fig. 1, represents a man called Sinofo (or Seinofo) who was so full of magical power that he grew long ears and a long snout. The idea that the possession or exercise of magic can cause a person’s facial features to enlarge has been found in various parts of the Massim region. For example, on Kitava in the Trobriands, Geoffrey Gumaligisa told Beran in 2006 that when a woman who has the power to send an aspect of herself flying is on the point of doing so, some of her facial features, including her ears and tongue, become enlarged.3 These flying witches are greatly feared in the Trobriands because they feast on the innards of shipwrecked sailors (Malinowski 1932: 244–5). Deborra Battaglia (1991: 88) reports that in Sabarl Island in the Louisiades there are male sorcerers who can make their spirits fly and engage in cannibalism. The most lethal ones “take monstrous form: They have huge mouths and ears and long tangled hair.” In another publication (1990: 37), she writes that on this island a cannibal monster, Katutubwai, also has “a huge mouth and ears and long hair and nails.” And Michael W. Young (1983: 215) reports a story of a spirit with a ghastly face, long ears, and huge teeth that appeared in a dream to someone on Goodenough Island. In addition to the artworks already discussed in this essay, there are at least two others which may express versions of the beliefs just reported. A clapper lime spatula in the British Museum (fig. 11) displays an anthropomorphic figure with very long ears but no other facial distortions on one side, and another anthropomorphic figure with only slightly extended ears on the other. Another carving (fig. 12), perhaps a fragmentary FIG. 10: Figure on a peg used to fasten a net for pig hunting. Massim region, Papua New Guinea. Collected by Abel Abel in Wagahuhu Village on the north coast of mainland Milne Bay Province. Wood. L: 70 cm. Richard Aldridge Collection, Australia. Image © Richard Aldridge. architectural object, includes an anthropomorphic figure with a greatly engorged tongue. In this respect the sculpture in fig. 12 differs from the sculptures on lime spatulas whose mouths and tongues are clearly represented. On these it is the figures’ faces which are greatly elongated, but the mouths and tongues are small and delicate (figs. 1, 2, 5, and 6). The sculptures on the spatulas in figs. 3 and 9 and the peg sculpture in fig. 10 have small mouths, but the tongues are not shown. Barry Craig, who has done extensive fieldwork in Papua New Guinea and is now a senior curator at the South Australian Museum, commenting on the spatula in fig. 2, writes that it features an “animal, perhaps the giant bandicoot (Peroryctes broadbenti)” (2007: 176). When the spatula in fig. 1, which is almost identical to that in fig. 2, was offered for sale by Sotheby’s in Paris on June 17, 2009, the cataloger interpreted the figure on it as a bat.4 Though it may appear somewhat like a bandicoot or even a bat, we place more weight on the interpretations of Beran’s informants in the Massim region who said that the figure on the spatula in fig. 1 was a person so full of magical power that he grew long ears and a long snout. As mentioned above, the head of the figure on the spatula in fig. 2 does resemble that of a giant bandicoot, which is widely distributed in mainland New Guinea (Van Deusen 1972: 711–12). So do the heads of the carvings in figs. 1, 4, and 10. We can rest reasonably assured that Massim woodcarvers, in fact, have never seen anyone with facial features distorted or engorged by the possession of magic or witchcraft. Therefore, it is reasonable to ask how these artists might imagine such a person’s appearance. Could their depiction of a person in such a state be influenced by something they have seen, namely a bandicoot with large ears, a long snout, and a small mouth? Even if the answer is in the affirmative, one also needs to consider that the artist who carved the otherwise unrelated Massim sculpture in fig. 12 clearly had no difficulty in imagining what a face with greatly enlarged mouth and tongue would look like without resorting to such obvious animal imagery. Craig has mentioned another possibility as to why the head of the figure on the carvings mentioned resembles that of a bandicoot. He speculated that perhaps someone who knows the right magic can assume the shape of a bandicoot for the purpose of sorcery (pers. comm., August 30, 2012). Surprisingly, the backs of the sculptures on the spatulas in figs. 1 and 2 are shaped and decorated in the manner of the handles of clapper lime spatulas, such as those illustrated in Beran (1988, fig. 19), Bourgoin (1994, figs. 3–5), and Hamson and Aldridge (2009, figs. 24–25). The back of the peg figure in fig. 10 is also somewhat similar to the shape of the handle of a clapper spatula but less clearly so. It is possible that the backs of the figures on these carvings resemble the handles
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