Decorated and Sculptured Skulls from New Guinea

Sir Wm. Turner

doi:10.1017/S0370164600051476

Decorated and Sculptured Skulls from New Guinea

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 September 2014

Sir Wm. Turner

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The ten skulls to which I would direct attention this evening were collected in the island of New Guinea. The first to come into my possession was given to me in 1895 by one of my pupils, Mr F. N. Johnston, the nine others have been recently purchased from dealers. I am not able to name the tribe or tribes by whom the skulls had been sculptured, neither can I state the precise locality at which they were obtained; but the dealer from whom I bought eight specimens told me that they came from the Purari River district. This river rises in the range of the Albert Victor Mountains, and after a known course of 130 miles, it discharges its waters by several mouths into the head of the great gulf of Papua. It is said to be the largest river in the British territory, next to the Fly River.

In a valuable memoir by Messrs Dorsey and Holmes, on a collection of sixteen decorated skulls from New Guinea, published in 1897, the authors state that although they cannot give the locality from which the specimens came, it is probable that they were collected on the northern shore of the Papuan Gulf, in the British Protectorate. Mantegazza and Regalia have figured a skull from Canoe Island in the Fly River, where the frontal bone was sculptured with four concentric circles. Professor Haddon, in his elaborate memoir on the Decorative Art of New Guinea, says that in the museum at Florence are seven skulls, collected by D'Albertis in the Fly River district, which have designs carved on the frontal bone.

Type: Proceedings
Information: Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 22 , 1899 , pp. 553 - 572

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0370164600051476 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1899

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^{page 553 note *} I have figured and decribed this skull in the Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, April 1898, vol. xxxii. p. 353Google Scholar.

^{page 553 note †} Brilish Mew Guinea, by SirMaegrfgor, Win., London, 1897Google Scholar.

^{page 553 note ‡} The mouths of this river were recognised by the Rev.Chalmers, James, Work and Adventure in New Guinea, p. 143, et seq., 1885Google Scholar, but he did not ascend the main stream or give it a name.

^{page 553 note §} Field Columbian Museum, Anthropological Series, vol. ii. No. 1, Chicago, August 1897Google Scholar.

^{page 553 note *} Archivio per l'Antropologia e la Etnologia, vol. xi. pi. iii., 1881Google Scholar.

^{page 553 note ||} Cunningham Memoirs of the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, 1894Google Scholar.

^{page 554 note *} Pioneering in New Guinea, 1887.

^{page 554 note †} With two exceptions the figures in illustration are from photographs of the skulls kindly taken for me by Mr W. E. Carnegie Dickson, B.Sc. Figs. 3 and 5 are from pen and ink sketches by Dr David Hepburn, which show more clearly than the photographs the scratched character of the designs.

^{page 557 note *} Studii Antropologici ed Etnografici sulla Nuova Guinea, Firenze, 1877Google Scholar.

^{page 558 note *} It should also be kept in mind that the incised circles are not limited to the above skulls, but are found in others where the general design shows a different pattern. Possibly the circles may be intended, as in the hieroglyphical writings of the ancient Egyptians, to represent the sun.

^{page 559 note *} Figured in Wilson's Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, Stewart's Sculptured Stones, and Joseph Anderson's Scotland in Eirly Christian Times, 2nd Series.

^{page 560 note *} Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, vol. xxxii. p. 353Google Scholar.

^{page 563 note *} Work and Adventure in New Guinea, 1877 to 1885, by James Chalmers and W. Wyatt Gill, 1885.

^{page 563 note †} British New Guinea, London, 1897Google Scholar.

^{page 566 note *} I figured this skull in the Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, vol. xiv. p. 479, 1880Google Scholar.

^{page 566 note †} Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, vol. xxxii. p. 359Google Scholar.

^{page 567 note *} These skulls were sent to Mr M'Farlaue by the Rev. C. W. Abel.

^{page 569 note *} Crania Ethnica, p. 25.

^{page 569 note †} Mittheilungen aus dem K. Zool. Mus. zu Dresden, 1875, 1876, 1878.

^{page 570 note *} Stengel & Co., Dresden, 1899.

^{page 570 note *} Challenger Reports, 1884.

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