A Longer Thought on Elema Shields
A Longer Thought on Elema Shields
Crispin Howarth, Curator of Pacific Arts, National Gallery of Australia
In 2019 I was asked to write briefly on the shields of the Eastern Papuan Gulf for the book War Art & Ritual: Shields from the Pacific. Due to pressing commitments, a short version of this article was published. Over the past year I have been able add some further information.
Papuan Gulf Shields Illustrated in “Decorative Art of British New Guinea” by Professor A. C. Haddon in 1894
The wooden shields of the Elema people of the Papuan Gulf in southeast New Guinea are known as Laua. Their function was to protect the body of an archer while their bow arm would be extended through the upper cut-away aperture. According to LMS missionary John Henry Holmes,1 Elema warfare was conducted according to a set of governing rules; often the conflict took place upon a cleared beach where archers (presumably protected by such shields) would fire their volleys of arrows upon one another. This form of warfare was apparently quite orderly, with agreements negotiated between elders (Avai, or ritual leaders Hii Haele) as to the date and location for a fight to take place. The enmity was highly structured, with willing hostages volunteering to be placed with each opposing group for the period of the fighting. This assisted in minimizing needless deaths by ensuring terms of compensation for any wounded or killed men. The Elema were quite different from their neighbors—the Purari to the west and the Angas to the north—in that both groups were prone to undertake raiding activities,2 which the Elema did not.
Laua shields have been documented to have been hung amongst the viscerally charged displays of Hohao spirit boards and crocodile and pig skull trophies in the Eravo ceremonial houses, so was it possible that the Laua shields, with their powerfully carved imagery, could act in a similar manner to Hohao spirit boards?
Visually, Laua shields have shallow relief carving taking a form and pattern structure closely related to Hohao spirit boards. The toothed designs along the border of some shields were described by 19th-century naturalist Andrew Goldie as a “semblance of shark jaws.”3 This might not be a Westerner’s interpretation, as Michael Hamson4 notes. If a shield is viewed when placed upon its the side, it becomes suggestive of the open mouth of a beast—in a similar manner to the open mouths of Elema Apa drums (which in some examples are delicately carved with “teeth”), which in turn visually associate with the looming entrance of the Eravo ceremonial house.
Photograph by George Bell and Henry Langford, 1887. Albumen print, Private collection
Further, when contemplating the dual imagery apparent in the Marupai coconut charms (seen as a pig-like animal from one angle or a spirit face from another), the imagery upon Laua shields is often, but not always, designed to equally create the appearance of another spirit face when the shield is inverted. Perhaps this is not as surprising as it may at first appear. The Apa drums often have faces to each side, and there are also examples of the long warclubs, Boti, and the very sacred Kaiavuru bullroarers with images of figures with two heads, one at each end of a central body.
This folding up, the doubling of imagery, where a single face can be viewed in two differing positions of the shield, may relate to stories of twins within Elema Lauu or Oharo myths.5 Perhaps the most relevant myth to this dual imagery found on shields is the ancient story of Larvare-ovu and Peke-ovu, two ancestral sisters, conjoined twins joined back to back. The sisters lived in a time when the ghosts of the dead co-habited the world of the living, and this story tells of how they prevented the activity of the dead in the living world. This mythological story is found across the Papuan Gulf, yet the key elements remain the same.6
When Larvare-ovu wanted to go forward, Peke-ovu was pulled backward. Life was difficult for them both. Lavare-ovu became pregnant and gave birth to a son called Tito and both sisters became his mothers. One day, Tito, as a young man, wanted to help his twin mothers from their predicament. He took a wooden knife and hid in the bush waiting for them to pass by. His ambush attack quickly separated the two women, after which he moved away to a neighboring village to marry a young woman.
Unfortunately, the men of the village became jealous of newcomer Tito7 and killed him. His two mothers managed to reclaim Tito’s skull and used it, instead of a coconut, to drink water from. Tito’s ghost decided to visit his mothers. At this meeting, his two mothers horrifyingly offered him a drink from his own skull. This terrible act changed the world; the ghosts of the dead from this time on were then prevented from remaining in the world of the living. They were forced to travel and live in their own spirit land beyond the western horizon.
While our understanding remains unclear, this origin story about the creation of death, or the permanency that death entails within a society respectful of spirits and ghosts, is a fitting story to place upon shields used in serious events of staged warfare where death is a possible outcome.
Bibliography:
Brown, H. A. (transl.), 1977. Tito: The origin of death (a Toaripi story translated by H. A. Brown) in Gigibori, Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies in association with Niugini Press, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 8–13.
Davis, S. M., 2012. Andrew Goldie in New Guinea 1875–1879: Memoir of a natural history collector. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum—Culture, Volume 6, accessible online at: https://www.qm.qld.gov.au/About+Us/Publications/Memoirs+of+the+Queensland+Museum/894+MQM-C+Vol+6#.XkC0DmgzYRE.
Hamson, Michael, 2010. Red Eye of the Sun: Art of the Papuan Gulf. With essays by Richard Aldridge, Michael Hamson, Crispin Howarth and Virginia-Lee Webb. Michael Hamson Oceanic Art, Palos Verdes Estates.
Holmes, John Henry & Haddon, Alfred Cort, 1924. In primitive New Guinea: an account of a quarter of a century spent amongst the primitive Ipi and Namau groups of tribes of the Gulf of Papua, with an interesting description of their manner of living. Seeley, Service & Co., London.
Knauft, Bruce M., 1993. South coast New Guinea cultures: history, comparison, dialectic. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York.
Landtmann, Gunnar, 1927. The Kiwai Papuans of British New Guinea. Macmillan & Co., London.
Williams, Francis Edgar & Schwimmer, Erik, 1976. The vailala madness and other essays [by] Francis Edgar Williams; edited with an introduction by Erik Schwimmer, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, Queensland.
1 Holmes 1924, pp. 262–265.
2 Knauft 1993, p. 205.
3 Queensland Museum catalogue record for QM E10094 collected prior to 1886.
4 Hamson 2010, p. 126.
5 Williams 1976, p. 64.
6 The story of Tito is echoed across the Papuan Gulf. Landtmann (1927, p. 285–287) records a Kiwai myth of Sido who is “reborn” of two mothers grown back to back. In this story, he also splits the mothers and they convince him to drink from his own skull, but it would seem the mythological story is visually represented in Elema arts and less so across the Papuan Gulf.
7 Brown 1977, p. 11. Tito is also referred to as Iko in other Elema myths.