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108 no. 14), the head alone of which is visible in the photo, can nevertheless be positively recognized by its unique shape (Specht 1988: 6–7) and by the netting affi xed at the back covering the hair (E.46 361, fi g. 11). It was collected in Andua village (Howarth 2015a: 121) and is a representation of a man squatting on a base of three superposed conical elements. Its function was ostensibly to protect a men’s house. The sculpture seen in front of Wauchope’s legs (fi g. 3, no. 7/E.46 363) was collected in a Biwat village and again depicts a squatting male, a guardian spirit of the men’s house,16 perched on two conical bases.17 The fi nal sculpture in the Australian Museum from the van den Broek photo is also another guardian spirit on a single conical base (fi g. 3, no. 2/E. 46 364). According to its inventory card, its function was to warn the assembly of the presence of an intruder during the initiation of the young men (fi g. 12). Four other fi gures squatting on conical bases (fi g. 3, nos. 3, 11, 20, and 21) were not found in the Australian Museum’s collection. The sculpture with the very slender bust (fi g. 3, no. 17) seated on a single conical base bears a striking resemblance to an object exhibited by the Nasser & Co art gallery at the 2010 Parcours des Mondes in Paris (fi g. 13). It had previously been in the collections of Philip Budrose, Charles W. Mack, and Norman Hurst. Quite similar is another sculpture of the same type (fi g. 3, no. 12) purchased from Burns Philp in Rabaul by the members of the La Korrigane expedition (Coiffi er 2001: 21 and 201). A small sculpture of a human-shaped bust lacking arms and legs (fi g. 3, no. 8) appears to be another object in the photograph, and it is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Five small sculptures (fi g. 3, nos. 1, 4, 10, 15, and 16) of seated males with their hands on their knees have not been located. The photo also shows fl ute stoppers, one lying on the ground (#9) and the other staked into it, the latter being in the style of the larger sculptures. Are these the two Wauchope Collection stoppers (E.46 232 and E.46 231) that are now in the Australian Museum?18 The other smaller pieces lying in the grass are not identifi able. The four Biwat objects that the Wauchopes gave to the members of the La Korrigane expedition were added to the fl ute stoppers that the expedition had purchased at the Burns Philp store in Rabaul six weeks earlier. These latter may have been among the Biwat objects that Margaret Mead collected in 1932 but were probably absconded with by Robert Overall after Mead asked him to ship them to New York. The La Korrigane expedition thus brought a total of six Biwat (or supposedly Biwat) fl ute stoppers back to Paris, as well as sago-spathe paintings (Coiffi er 2013), without ever having actually visited the Yuat River area. Years later, in December of 1961, at the La Korrigane Collection auction at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris, three fl ute stoppers were sold as lots 111, 112, and 113 in the Drouot catalog (fi g. 17). Two of these were Wauchope’s gifts and one was from their Burns Philp purchase in Rabaul.19 One of the Wauchope stoppers from this group20 has now been located in a private collection. It now appears that it was actually a charm rather than an actual fl ute stopper. The location of the other two remains a mystery. BIWAT AND ANDUAR SCULPTURES FROM THE YUAT RIVER In the early 1930s, the Anduar (or Andoar),21 who spoke a Pondo language of the Angoram area, lived in six villages near where the Yuat River ran into the Sepik River: Andua, Kundima, Agrumara, Kausimbi, and Sapalu. The Biwat (whom ethnologist Margaret Mead called the Mundugumor) spoke a dialect of the Yuat linguistic family and lived further upriver in a remote “no man’s land” area in another six villages: Biwat, Branda, Akuran, Kinakaten, Andafugan, and Dowaning. They numbered about 1,000 individuals. The villages on the banks of this tumultuous river had come under Australian control only a few years earlier. In light of the above-mentioned account of the September 1935 trip by Sarah Chinnery, the objects Wauchope collected could only have come from the Yuat River villages of Anduar, Biwat, or Bun, or from Kambot on the Keram River. An interesting question arises with regard to the large sculptures in the Australian Museum. They are partially painted with local colors of white and red ocher, particularly on the faces. Another sculpture of the same type (E. 87395) but of cruder manufacture and not collected by Wauchope has industrial white, red, and blue colors all over its body. According to Crispin Howarth (2015a: 101), this is the oldest of the group. All of the sculptures Wauchope collected are also decorated with knotted fi - ber cords, either around the ankles or passed through the pierced ears or nasal septum. Moreover, there is a sago fi ber apron tied around the waist. These fi ber elements are in an excellent state of preservation and, together with the painted surfaces, suggest that the objects were not used outdoors, since if that had been the case, water quickly would have damaged the fi bers and faded the pigment. According to Newton (2000: 300) and Howarth (2015a: 99), these sculptures were intended FEATURE


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