BM_Oc1927_1006_12

Title: A message stick from Northern Territory held in the British Museum

Description: Message stick made of wood.

Message: 1927 register: "Said to summon natives to funeral ceremony. Notes from Ian Coates from the National Museum of Australia Nov 2012: In 1927 J.S. Litchfield sent this and other objects to the British Museum. She noted that: 'The letter-stick was to tell the blacks that a burial-corroboree was to be held on Mendil Beach, and that there would be a big mob of [Aboriginal people] there. So the boy said who told me the meaning of the writing. He was using the thin stick and the very thick one as clapping sticks, for the dancing.'"

Date Created: 1927

Notes on date created: terminus ante quem

Item type: message stick in a collection

Subtype: traditional

State/Territory: NT

Linguistic area 1: Chirila: Larrakia Austlang: N21 - Larrakia Glottolog: lara1258

Notes on linguistic areas: The origin of the message stick is given simply as “Northern Territory, Australia”. It therefore cannot be a associated with a linguistic area. However going from notes provided by Ian Coates (in 'Message' below), it is associated with Mendil Beach. Presumably this is Mindil Beach in Darwin.

Cultural region: TopEnd

Semantic domains: sd_ceremony_funeral

Dimension 1: 265mm Dimension 2: 15mm Dimension 3: 12mm

Materials: wood

Source types: museum collection

Date collected: Acquisition date: 1927

Institution/Holder file: The British Museum object identifier: Oc1927,1006.12

Collector: Purchased from: Mrs Jessie Sinclair Litchfield Curator's comments: "Litchfield's book, Far North Memories, 1930, p.126 describes likely this object: 'we were interested in the carved letter-stick given by the king, and we asked Pannum if he thought the king would sell it'."

Coordinates: 12°26'42.698400"S,130°49'49.101600"E  (-12.445194, 130.830306)

Media copyright: The British Museum British Museum Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Notes on coordinates: Coordinates for Mindil Beach, Darwin

URL institution: http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=499104&partId=1&searchText=message+stick&images=true&sortBy=fromDateDesc&page=1

IRN: EOC16697

Notes: PK: No new images to request from BM. 30.11.23 NR: checked against BM online catalogue.

Media Files:

Data Entry: Olena Tykhostup, Nitzan Rotman