MASSIM SORCERY FIGURES 125 FIG. 11 (left): Lime spatula of the clapper design displaying a male with elongated ears on the side shown. The other side shows an apparently pregnant figure with even longer ears. Massim region, Papua New Guinea. Collected by H. O. Forbes on the mainland opposite Killerton Islands in the mid-1880s. Wood. L: 43 cm. British Museum, Oc,+.3843. Image © British Museum. FIG. 12 (right): Anthropomorphic figure with an engorged tongue. Massim region, Papua New Guinea. Wood. H: c. 38 cm. Private collection. Photo: Heine Schneebeli, courtesy of the collector. of clapper spatulas because these spatulas are associated with sorcery in some parts of the Massim region When Peter Hallinan collected the clapper spatula illustrated in Beran (1988, fig. 19) in Ununu Village, Milne Bay, he was told that it had been used in sorcery. Geoffrey Baskett (n.d.: 141) mentions that when sorcerers walk along a path at night in the Buhutu Valley, they sound a “small wooden clapper,” presumably a clapper spatula, to scare others off their path. In 1993, Beran was also told by a number of informants in the Suau area and on Rogea Island that clapper spatulas are used by sorcerers. All of these places are in the southwestern part of the Massim region. The resemblance of the backs of the sculptures in figs. 1 and 2 and clapper spatulas may not be coincidental. There are a number of issues regarding the sculptures discussed in this essay we have not been able to clarify. Do the long-eared and long-snouted figures on the carvings always represent the same historical person full of magic, or do they represent a number of different beings? How does the magic associated with such a carving operate? Is the recitation of the magic spell enough to give the carving its power to protect, to pull a pig into a pig net, or to do harm? Or does the spell induce a spirit to inhabit the carving—perhaps the spirit of a historical person, the spirit of a flying witch, or some other spirit not mentioned to us by our informants? If so, perhaps the carving does not represent a person with great magical power but is a vessel to be inhabited by a spiritual entity. Do the long ears and the long snout help to induce the spirit to inhabit the carving? Perhaps the information we have obtained about the long-eared and long-snouted sculptures does not provide answers to these questions because our informants had not themselves used the carvings in association with magic or perhaps we did not ask the right questions. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We are grateful for information provided by Chris Abel, Barry Craig, Penny Ikinger, and Sean Mallon, and comments on drafts of the essay by Irene Beard, Barry Craig, Ron Henderson, and Jim Specht. NOTES 1. Kwato, not shown on the map, is a small island west of Samarai. Ununu Village in Milne Bay and Didigina Village in the Buhutu Valley also are not shown on the map, as we do not know their precise locations. 2. A number of people in the southwestern area of the Massim region, including Abel Abel, are named after the well-known missionary Charles W. Abel, who ran the Kwato Mission station from the late nineteenth century until 1936, or perhaps his son Cecil Abel, who succeeded him. Abel Abel is not biologically related to them. 3. Beran’s Kitava informant left it unclear which aspect of a flying witch takes to the air. Cf. Malinowski (1932: 238–9). 4. The catalog writer attributed the bat interpretation to one of the authors of the present essay. When it was pointed out to Sotheby’s that this attribution was incorrect, a notice to this effect was posted on the company’s website and in the sales room. CITATIONS Abel, Cecil, 1974. “Suau Aesthetics.” Gigibori I: 1. Baskett, Geoffrey, N.D. Islands and Mountains, NSW, Australia: Castle Hill. Battaglia, Deborra, 1990. On the Bones of the Serpent: Person, Memory, and Mortality in Sabarl Island Society. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ———, 1991. “Punishing the Yams: Leadership and Gender Ambivalence on Sabarl Island,” in Big Men and Great Men: The Development of a Comparison in Melanesia, M. Godelier and M. Strathern (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beran, Harry, 1988. Betel Chewing Equipment of East New Guinea, UK: Shire Ethnography. Black, R. H., 1957. “Dr. Bellamy of Papua,” Med. J. Aust. 2. Bourgoin, Philippe, 1994. “Lime Spatulas from Massim,” The World of Tribal Arts I: 4. Chignell, Arthur Kent, 1911. An Outpost in Papua. London: Smith, Elder & Co. Craig, Barry, 2007. “Edgar Waite’s North-West Pacific Expedition: The Hidden Collections,” in Hunting the Collectors: Pacific Collections in Australian Museums, Art Galleries and Archives, Susan Cochrane and Max Quanchi (eds.), pp. 174–95. Hamson, Michael and Richard Aldridge, 2009. Art of the Massim & Collingwood Bay. Palos Verdes Estates, CA: Michael Hamson Oceanic Art. Malinowski, Bronislaw, 1932. Argonauts of the Western Pacific, London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd. Meyer, Anthony J. P., 1995. Oceanic Art, Cologne: Könemann. Van Deusen, H. M., 1972. “Marsupials.” In P. Ryan (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Papua and New Guinea, 3 volumes, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press/University of Papua and New Guinea. Williams, F. E., 1930. Orokaiva Society. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Young, Michael W., 1983. Magicians of Manumanua: Living Myth in Kalauna. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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