collar (neck ornaments (personal adornment))

intsasela (pl. Iintsasela), necklet, worn by abafana (young men), iintombe (girls), and abafazana (young women), to dances and festivities. Strung on sinew. Closes by means of isango and ighosha. The beads are white, yellow, blue and red.

This object and others were collected by Erich H. Bigalke. According to Anthony Shelton, Bigalke was enlisted as one of a number of 'outside fieldworkers' to collect on behalf of the Horniman Museum. Bigalke collected among the Xhosa and 'neighbouring groups' and the collection was made in cooperation with the East London Museum in South Africa. Presumably, the Horniman Museum’s catalogue details are based on information provided by Bigalke’s (for example, his fieldwork notes). It might be useful to refer to Bigalke’s published work, for example, Bigalke, 1972. See also Shelton, 2003.

object
MUSEUM NUMBER
1972.311
PLACE
COLLECTION
MEASUREMENTS
overall: 279.4 x 88.9 mm
MATERIAL/TECHNIQUE
glass; string; plant fibre; shell
CATEGORY
Anthropology: Ethnography
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Collection Information

These objects are only a part of our collections, of which there are more than 350,000 objects. This information comes from our collections database. Some of this is incomplete and there may be errors. This part of the website is also still under construction, so there may be some fields repeated or incorrectly formatted information.

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