BURIAL OF SKULLS

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 56, 4 September 1945, Page 5

BURIAL OF SKULLS

The Otago Museum has' received as a gift from Mr. Paul Nordmann, of the Swiss Consulate Staff. Wellington, a human skull in an ancient wooden bowl of unusual shape. It was found by Mr. Nordmann in a cave in Hanamenu Valley, Hiva Oa, Southern Marquesas. The bowl has been carved with stone tools and is quite different from the familiar circular wooden bowl used for domestic purposes throughout the group. This unusual method of burial is probably a variant of the method of skull burial known from several New Zealand examples. The most interesting of these is one found in a small walled-up cave between Little Akaroa and Okain's Bay, Banks Peninsula, and now in the Canterbury Museum, states "The Press." In this case the box was elaborately carved, and contained, besides the skull, a pendant made of greenstone and another of whale-ivory. Mr. Nordmann has also presented to the museum a wooden handle of a fan used by Marquesan embalmers when preserving the bodies of distinguished chiefs.