Object Number: MIPCM 206.006
Object Name: Body Ornament
Collection: Goldie Objects Collection
Description: Southeast coast or Massim area.
Collected c. 1876–1890.
Donated by Mr & Mrs Goldie, Ferry Road,
Millport, 1978.
Chest ornament of two (?) boar tusks bound together and suspended from a string of discs made from red Spondylus shell, white shell and coconut shell. 45 x 11.7cm
Notes: This boar tusk ornament is similar to the valuable chest ornament (doa, dona or doga) which traditionally featured a single boar tusk which had grown in a spiral or almost to a full circle (Seligmann 1910: 89). While circular boar’s tusks, known as
doga, were traded with the mwali conus-shell armlets in the Kula trade, they became very rare and were often replaced by an imitation boar tusk made from shell. Among the Motu and Koita people of Port Moresby, doa neck laces were important possessions and featured with other valuables associated with first-child ceremonies and bride-price.
In 1894, A.C. Haddon wrote that Goldie had informed him that Cloudy Bay was the northern limit for the ‘necklaces made of flat, pink shell, to which real or shell-imitation boars’ tusks are appended’.
