SEPIC RIVER ASMAT TRIBAL BIPANE SHELL SEPTUM NOSE PIECE HEAD HUNTER METAL STAND

Description

Sourced by me when I lived in Indonesia from P.N.G. BEST PRICE ON EBAY.
Until the 1950s, warfare, headhunting, and cannibalism were constant features of Asmat social life. The people would build their houses along river bends so that an enemy attack could be seen in advance. Many Asmat believe that all deaths—except those of the very old and very young—come about through acts of malevolence, either by magic or actual physical force. Ancestral spirits demand vengeance for these deaths.The ancestors to whom they feel obligated are represented in shields, in large, spectacular wood carvings of canoes, and in ancestor poles consisting of human figurines. Until the late 1980s, the preferred way for a young man to fulfill his obligations to his kin and his ancestors and prove his sexual prowess was to take the head of an enemy and offer the body for cannibalistic consumption by other members of the village.
The Asmat have traditionally practiced headhunting, cannibalism as part of heir ritualized warfare scheme which usually involved revenge rectification of cosmic or clan imbalances. The heads from captured enemies were baked and skinned; a hole was cut in the skull and the brain was scraped out and eaten. The lower jaws was ripped off and worn as a pendant advertising prowess in war, and the skull was used as a pillow.
Asmat believe they are related to praying mantises which also eat their own kind. Trophy skulls, bone daggers, stone clubs are all associated with headhunting. As a symbol of the their headhunting skills men often wear bamboo and cassowary-quill pendants decorated with human vertebrae. Women sometimes borrow the pendants during feasts and wear them with dog-tooth necklaces and possum fur bonnets.
Officially headhunting ended the Indonesian part of New Guinea in the 1960s. But it still seemed to be going on in the 1970s and who knows perhaps it goes on from time to time even now in remote areas. Some anthropologists have said prohibition of clan warfare and headhunting has left a huge void in Asmat culture that the modern world has yet to replace.
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