Dancing gorgets; 2 segment-shaped boards, notched and painted; lunate shaped with 1 straight edge and curved and serrated outer edge; each has a single red-painted anthropomorphic figure and several black-painted whales.
Donor:
Alaska Commercial Company, Benjamin Bristol, and Older University Collections
Collection place:
Point Barrow, North Slope Borough, Alaska
Verbatim coll. place:
Alaska; Point Barrow
Culture or time period:
Alaskan Eskimo
Collector:
unknown
Collection date:
1898
Materials:
Paint (coating)
Object type:
ethnography
Object class:
Gorgets (ornaments)
Function:
5.2 Magic: Objects Associated with Practices reflecting confidence in the ability to manipulate supernatural agencies
Accession date:
1904
Context of use:
Used in whaling ceremony dances. Worn on the chest with a certain kind of mask. According to ray, "These boards were hung on the chest... The giant man holding the whale in his hands was also carved as ivory sculpture when Ray and Murdoch were at Point
Department:
Native US and Canada (except California)
Dimensions:
a)— width 45 centimeters and b)— width 44.3 centimeters
Comment:
Published: Ray, Eskimo Masks, Pl. 39 and pp. 203-04. Ray, Eskimo Art (1977); p. 86, fig. 12.
Loans:
S1964-1965 #56: Lowie Museum of Anthropology (UC Berkeley) (February 24, 1965–March 29, 1965), S1969-1970 #13: Museum of Fine Arts, Texas (August 7, 1969–January 2, 1970), and S1973-1974 #65: Oakland Museum of California (March 8, 1974–April 24, 1974)