FEATURE
Transforming Pig Bones into Objects
of Art and Metaphorical Meaning:
The indigenous peoples of New
Guinea have long had great traditions of decorating
themselves in manners ranging from scarifi cation and
painting to body and nose piercing. These include
adornment in daily life as well as exuberant attire for
ceremonies and festive occasions. Everything imaginable
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that nature can offer was employed for this
purpose: colored earth for body paint and seashells,
plant seeds, bamboo sticks, feathers, cassowary
claws, turtle shell, animal teeth, coconut shell, bone,
etc., for a staggering variety of decorative elements.
These raw materials were designed and crafted with
great dexterity into artistically appealing adornments.
Among this bewildering diversity of nature’s richness,
skeletal material was a favorite choice. For example,
human and cassowary bones were used for making
daggers, as we reported in a previous article in these
pages (Tribal Art, spring 2017). In this article, we will
explore the material employed in the carving of nose
NOSE ORNAMENTS OF THE
ASMAT OF NEW GUINEA
By Nefertari Tabak Tadema, Maurice Stevens, Henk Tabak, and Michel Thieme
FIG. 1 (above): Examples of
two nose ornaments of very
different design.
Authors’ photos.
ornaments by the Asmat and look into the meanings
of the various different forms. They are each cut from
a single piece of bone but are designed with an astonishing
variety of forms, despite the simplicity of the
starting material (fi g. 1).
NOSE ORNAMENTS
Known as otsjes, nose ornaments are part of the normal
apparel of the initiated adult male of the Asmat
people, who live in the swampy regions of southwestern
New Guinea. They were not the exclusive prerogative
of men, however, and occasionally, women
wore nose ornaments too (fi g. 2c). Wearing them
required a substantial perforation of the septum.
Initiating this opening and then enlarging it to the
necessary size was a painful and lengthy process that
was begun at a young age. The septum was pierced
with a sharp pointed stick, and then the wound was
gradually stretched with rolled-up bamboo leaves. A
photograph illustrating this process speaks for itself
(fi g. 3). Once the process was completed, the adult
could put objects of substantial size through the
nose, not only otsjes but also large ornaments made
from seashell (bipane), for example.
According to the literature, the bone used for otsjes
is derived from humans, cassowaries, or pigs (G. and
U. Konrad and T. Schneebaum 1981; F. Borel 1999).
We were curious to fi nd out exactly which bones of
the three species were used and to discover something
about the inspiration for their ornamentation.
To address the fi rst issue of species and type of bone,
we encountered the following issues. The nose ornaments
are relatively small, generally ranging between
10–15 cm in length and 2–2.5 cm thick in the mid-