Title: A message stick from Western Australia held in the British Museum
Description: Message stick of pale soft wood, pointed either end, decorated with two incised spiral bands crossing and recrossing, the vacant spaces filled with deeply-incised transverse incisions filled with ochre.
Date Created: 1903
Notes on date created: terminus ante quem
Item type: message stick in a collection
Notes on linguistic areas: The origin of the message stick is given simply as “Western Australia”. It therefore cannot be a associated with a linguistic area.
Dimension 1: 310mm Dimension 2: 14mm Dimension 3: 12mm
Materials: ochre, wood
Source types: museum collection
Date collected: Acquisition date: 1903
Institution/Holder file: The British Museum object identifier: Oc1903,1215.18
Collector: Donated by: Sir William Ingram
Media copyright: The British Museum British Museum Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
IRN: EOC10595
Notes: PK: No additional images to request from BM. 30.11.23 NR: checked against BM online catalogue.
Media Files:
Data Entry: Piers Kelly, Nitzan Rotman