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FEATURE Völkerkunde in 1965 (fi g. 7).28 Not only had garra become objects to trade externally, but the infl ux of metal tools sped up their creation. Very little metal would have found its way to the Hunstein communities prior to the 1960s, which accounts for the fact that the majority of traditional 102 examples of garra appear to have been carved with stone bladed adzes. However, metal blades were not entirely absent from the region, so a cult hook that has been carved with metal tools does not necessarily discount its authenticity as an object created for indigenous purposes. Hunter observed that stone adzes were commonplace but did see a handful of metal objects during his patrol of 1962, including “a solitary rusty old bush knife, a couple of cheap trade store sheath knives, and a large piece of metal from a wrecked wartime plane.”29 Unless a garra is clearly an old piece, it is not possible to determine purely on aesthetic grounds whether or not it was carved for traditional purposes. Craig saw a number of recently made cult hooks at Bekapeki in 1972 (fi g. 15) and noted that these carvings were considered not to be “correct” because their carvers had never seen the spirit beings fi rst hand. It was only men who had seen the spirits who could carve them properly.30 FIG. 15 (below): Five garra hook sculptures in the men’s house, Inaro village, May 6, 1971. The two garra on the right were acquired by David Attenborough and are now in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia. Photo courtesy of Ray Langford. FIG. 16 (right): Male garra. Likely Salumei River area, Hunstein Range, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. Collected May 1971 at Inaro village. Wood, pigment (carved with metal tools). H: 147.5 cm. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, inv. 2016.32, gift of David Attenborough. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following for their contributions towards this article: David Attenborough, Chris Boylan, Laurie Bragge, Wayne Heathcote, and Jonathan Fogel. Also I thank Barry Craig, James Hunter, and Ray Langford for the generous use of their fi eld photographs, and a very grateful note of recognition for Barry Craig, senior curator of world cultures at the South Australian Museum, Adelaide, for his great assistance with this article, which would not have eventuated in the form presented without his signifi cant input. NOTES 1. Kawasaki, 1998, pp. 79–91. 2. Newton, 1971, p. 18. 3. Newton, 1971, p. 22. 4. Newton, 1971, pp. 20–21. 5. Craig was told that the Bahinemo men’s cult house at Gahom was called yeweina and the Sanio men’s cult house at Bekapeki was called yolosin (Craig fi eld diaries, Monday, 25 December 1972, pp. 164–165). 6. Hunter, 2015, p. 60. To the author’s knowledge, no examples of these artifacts described by Hunter exist in museum collections. 7. Hunter, personal communication, March 2016. 8. Newton, 1971, p. 20 & 31, nos. 49 and 50. Another good example is held in the collection of the Musée du Quai Branly, inv. 70.2007.66.3. Newton’s view that the


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