Trivial Art Tribal Art = TA-TA : oktober 2020

Borneo Asoq protective head of ironwood with inlaid ivory eyes, Dayak/

What strikes me , is the craftsmanship, such hard resisting wood as ironwood is most difficult to carve. The solution of not giving up with the part at the lower nose, lobes, is smart, a carver with spirit. How many costly blocks offered before this result?

I did have a small ironwood asoq statuette, someone told me it was carved by a master, hard work even if it were with modern tools. Now this large protective head is old. It has been made with some hard iron kiris like knife and maybe with some sharp stone chisels. The surface has been smoothed by the many years of rubbing.

similar type with tiger teeth

The large ivory disks inlaid eyes are rare, the iris is large and black and painted, probably with the same ink they -the Dayak headhunters from Borneo- still use for tribal tattooing. The large forehead and the protruding mouth is I believe a fusion form detracted from a dogs mouth and a monkey face. In their Hudoq masks we find large eye-disks around the iris. Often they broke out or off or were removed after stopping to use it.

I am thinking Solomon Islanders Nsusu prowbow protective heads.

Yet one has to realise the significance of the hairdo and the ringed ears with large lobes. This part it is the connection with ancestors of human like form.

The statues from Malakula with their prolonged lower jaws protruding makes you think, same cultural route? If we move to the Marquesas and then to Easter Island we shall find more similarities.

Ba or baby-carrier with hudoq, birdlike nose line and large eyes and teeth.

Dayak are real seafarers, built great canoes. The connection in DNA form this Malaysian/Melanesian mix with the old Polynesian tribes, is striking enough and has been proved physically through DNA. The curly Moko tattoo comes to mind!

The use of the large mouth as well as the large fierce eyes is of course no coincidence. Power statuettes as prestige and practical and a fertile presentations of your roots. Prepared to fight for the sustenance and customs of your family and their tribal area.

Could the head once have been on top of a larger Hamaptong statuette with a fierce Asoq like face?

I see connections with the Papua/ Sepik area, bird like upper parts of carved heads, strange large eyes, protruded teeth and chins. (Bird in eyebrow-nose form and a bird comb-like protrusion on top of its forehead).

Anyhow, teeth were important, betel-chewing black and filed teeth proved ones wealth and thus ones procreative powers. Shells and Ivory are regarded as kind of valuta, exchange, thus wealth too!

Tuntun, Bruce Frank

Paying the ferryman with disks – money -laid on the eyes, a formal admittance of death! Money glass trade-disks, but these specific disks are made of ivory. The reason for a certain skull or head-type is to my opinion a residue of the headhunters honour.

Often one sees the skull of overwhelmed (beheaded) people upon a war shield with traditional designs. These skulls from the hunt have large eyeball sockets and the jaws with the teeth protruding still in it are significant for my carved protective head and skull-type theory. To make this point, a mere speculation of my intuition, I added some explanatory pictures of this protruding teeth and large eyes (sockets) theory of mine.

Moreover, it springs to mind that the Korwar geelvinkbaai typology has a bridge to or from Borneo! Skulls in exaggerated styles and forms of carvings. Even though, could the prototype headhunters large statue Hampatong once have been with only a neck to place the hunted head upon it? Like those with the Korwar, the ancestors heads, not the hunted head, were placed in it (in the Korwar carvings or upon it) and later the skull often was not necessary any more and people started carving in its abstract skull imago in wooden korwars?

It is not unthinkable that this large skull was on top of a complete very large statuette Hampatong in the Hudoq style! If this is the case, it has been done a long time ago. Often these statuettes got full with termites and were eaten away in the forests. For trade it is not unusual to only cut out the most beautiful parts and pieces of these tribal arts.