Evolution in Art: As Illustrated by the Life-histories of Designs

by Alfred C. Haddon

One of the most widespread of the isolated designs is that shown in Fig. [21], A, B, and Fig. [22], but it is subject to many variations. Similar designs are tattooed on people below the armpit or on the shoulder. Now that attention has been called to this and other designs, we shall probably learn what significance is attached to them. Occasionally we find what appear to be undoubted plant motives on pipes and other objects from this district, as, for example, on a pipe from Kupele in the Berlin Museum (Fig. [21], C), and it is probable that the designs just alluded to are also plant derivatives.

Fig. 22.

Part of the decoration of a pipe in the Cambridge Museum; one-sixth natural size.

Throughout this district, especially along the coast, the women are tattooed, and in some localities they are entirely covered with tattoo marks. The men are much less tattooed than the women.[8] The designs employed are for the most part the same as those used to decorate pipes and gourds. The angled design tattooed on the chests of women (Fig. [20], A, B) is found on a pipe in the Cambridge Museum. (Fig. [22].)

Noticeable features in the decorative art of this district are the preponderance of straight lines over curved lines; as well as the occurrence of dotted lines and of very short lines, which form a kind of fringe to many of the lines. (Figs. [21], [22], [51].)

Very remarkable also is the absence of the delineation of the human or of animal forms. Bounded on the north-west by a luxuriant art based on human faces and forms, and limited to the south-east by bird-scrolls and bird and crocodile derivatives, not to mention human effigies and representations of various animals, these central folk are unaffected by these two very distinct forms of artistic activity. The only exceptions, so far as my evidence goes, is in the transitional country north of Hall Sound, and a few carvings of crocodiles in certain tabu houses or dubus.

The rigid conservatism of the native mind is the sheet-anchor of the ethnographer; no better example of this mental rigidity is needed than is supplied by the Motu people who live in the vicinity of Port Moresby. The women make large quantities of pottery, which the men trade for sago up the Papuan Gulf even to a distance of two hundred miles. Three or more canoes lashed together and fitted with crates constitute a trading canoe or lakatoi. A fleet of twenty lakatoi carrying about six hundred men, each of whom would take about fifty pots, has been known to sail from Port Moresby. The 20,000 or 30,000 exported pots will bring in exchange a cargo of 150 tons, or more, of sago. Notwithstanding this great annual trading, the decorative art of the Motu is absolutely untouched by that of the Gulf natives, or vice versâ; the artistic motives, scheme of decoration, and technique are entirely different.

It seems probable that many of the decorated objects that are labelled in European museums as coming from this district are the work of the hill tribes, or of that coast population which does not belong solely to the Motu and allied tribes.