Boars' tusk ornament of 4 tusks forming two loops joined together by a cane spiral overlaid with ? mastic, into which are set job’s tears, abrus and a kidney bean like seed alongside white and blue trade glass beads. The tails of two cuscus hang from one of the loops.
Chief’s Boar Tusk Pendant, Mekeo People, Central Province, Papua New Guinea. Although they are prodigious farmers of the betel nut (Areca), raising pigs was the only form of animal husbandry traditionally practiced by the Mekeo people. In general, Mekeo clans avoided eating their own pigs, and swapped them for pigs raised by another clan with whom they had a special relationship of pig-exchange. Alongside the pigs themselves, boar’s tusks were a valuable commodity, and played an important role as ceremonial payments (kaua). The Mekeo did not practice the technique used in other parts of Melanesia, whereby a boar’s upper teeth are knocked out, so that the lower tusks could curl round into a ring. The tusks used here are entirely natural. When you consider that a male pig has to be fed and cared for over a number of years to produce two tusks, and those are only guaranteed if he has no accidents using them for the rooting and self-defence, for which they were evolved, you can quickly understand the value of each tusk: each one was the outcome of months and months of work. Boar’s tusk body adornments such as this were important and prestigious objects for the Mekeo, and every Mekeo chief inherited two different tusk breast ornaments from his father. The Mekeo traditionally made a distinction between the peace-time chief and the war-time chief: while war-time chiefs were expected to be fierce and unpredictable, the peace-time chief was only admired and obeyed if he could demonstrate his capabilities as a grower, animal tender and trader. Boar’s tusks, flying fox fur cordage, vegetable fibre, cuscus tail. Late 19th Century. Collected among the Mekeo by Mr. A. E. Pratt and purchased from him by the Horniman Museum in 1905.
