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Lot 710
Wooden soul ship
Estimated Value:
3.000 € - 5.000 €
Result:
incl. Premium and VAT
Description:
Tanimbar, Indonesia, East, Alfuren, early 20th cent.H. 51 cm, L. 84 cm
Wood (mangrove). Very rare ancestor or votive boat from eastern Indonesia, probably from the island of Tanimbar, carefully crafted in the floral-ornamental openwork tendril motifs typical of Tanimbar on the bow and stern of the ship. The standing figure also has limbs stylised into tendrils and a flat headdress. There are two variants for the interpretation of the ships. They may be votive boats, which were placed next to the sarcophagus during the secondary burial to guide the soul of the deceased, or they may be a depiction of the well-known dancing boats. In favour of the ancestral boat interpretation is the fact that on Taminbar there are still village squares surrounded by megaliths in the shape of boats. Especially during the Porka festival, when the sun god Upuleno marries the earth goddess Upusena, all the women and girls of the village dance here. There are also special dance boats in which the women dance and travel to the neighbouring villages or islands to motivate the inhabitants there to dance. Dancing maintains or renews pro-creative acts of creativity in prehistoric times. These events also deepen the social bonds between the villages and promote weddings. The Tanimbarese are known for their boat building skills. The boats are used to harvest trepang (sea cucumber) and for local trade. They also have great symbolic significance as a vehicle of the ancestors who came across the sea and as a vehicle of souls to the afterlife.
Collected from an old German private collection since the 1950s
The Tanimbar archipelago consists of 30 islands in the Maluku Tenggara kabupaten (regency), Maluku provinsi (“province”), in eastern Indonesia The islands are located between the Banda and Arafura Seas. The area used to be forested, with dense mangrove forests that offered the locals good protection against attackers. The Moluccas were settled tens of thousands of years ago. Between 10,000 and 2000 BC, the Austronesian expansion reached the islands. The population consists mainly of Malays and smaller ethnic groups with Melanesian and Papuan roots, formerly known collectively as Alfurs. The trade in spices, which has been known for thousands of years and gives the archipelago its name, was already practiced by the original inhabitants. The inhabitants of the smaller volcanic islands traded nutmeg and cloves for palmsago from the larger islands, such as Halmahera and Seram. The spice trade, which was already practiced in Greek and Roman times, but above all by Arabs and Europeans in the “colonial era”, brought the Moluccas into the focus of international interest. The medieval Arabs and Indians were followed by the Portuguese, Spanish (16th century) and then the Dutch and English (17th century and later) as monopolists
