Description: |
A carved walrus-ivory drill bow, triangular in section, with three main faces along its curving length, as well as a narrower fourth face along one rounded corner, all carved variously with scenes of figures of human adults and children, walruses, caribou hunting, whaling from an open boat, a camp, winter villages and a drum dance. Collected in Alaska by Henry Forder aboard HMS Enterprise, 1850-55. |
Full description: |
A carved ivory drill bow, triangular in section, with three wider faces along its curving length, as well as a narrower fourth face, and a single perforation at each end for attaching leather bowstring or thong. Each face is carved with inked scenes of stick figures of adults and children, walruses, caribou hunting, whaling from an open boat, winter villages and a drum dance, all with a single incised and inked line above and below each edge to delimit the ground. One face depicts many walruses surfacing and hauling out onto land espied by a single hunter in a kayak in the background followed closely by three open umiak boats, from which figures in the bows are in various stages of targeting, harpooning and hauling on a walrus, and with a second kayak behind the latter. On a rounded edge above this scene is a further scene showing three snow houses, a smaller structure and two kayaks inverted and cached up on stilts to avoid the skin being chewed by sled dogs and itinerant wildlife. A third face shows one contiguous scene depicting, from left to right, the seasonal round: two whales each being harpooned, one from land and the other from an umiak, while on the adjacent land a figure stands with arms raised toward the rearmost crew member of the umiak who signals back with a paddle; behind the figure signalling from land is a second person in regalia with wide skirts and sleeves, arms raised, while a caribou is engaged by two figures with spears attended by a smaller figure, possibly a child, and an archer with a dog approaching the caribou from behind; adjacent is a summer camp with figures dancing and one emerging from a tent, behind which supplies and a kayak are both cached next to a winter snow house; and finally beyond the snow house, three figures are hauling on a sea-mammal carcass. The final face is divided into five discrete scenes delimited by their orientation or incised borders, from left to right: two caribou approach five figures with arms raised; upsidedown to the latter four figures appear to be ice fishing while a further pair haul a sea-mammal carcass; oriented back the other way and separated by diagonal lines from the hunting scenes, possibly delimiting the interior of a large dance house, are two seated figures with drums and five people dancing between them; beyond the dance house and again upside-down to the latter, two adult men face each other with arms raised while a child reaches for something beyond; and, finally, a scene oriented the opposite way show a hunter with a dog aiming his arrow towards a caribou, behind which is a juvenile caribou and four further adult animals, of which two are grazing and appear with vertical lines in skeletal form. The symmetrical line pattern also incised above the juvenile animal in the latter group delineates between the hunted caribou and the more skeletal grazing animals.
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