Title: A message stick from Western Australia held in the British Museum
Description: Wooden ritual artefact, (or message stick?) circular in section and decorated with an irregular pattern of incised grooves. Light brown.
Date Created: 1967
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: 455mm Dimension 2: 44mm Dimension 3: 42mm
Materials: wood
Techniques: incised
Source types: museum collection
Date collected: Acquisition date: 1967
Institution/Holder file: The British Museum object identifier: Oc1967,05.10
Collector: Field Collection by: Alpin Fowler-Thomson Donated by: Mrs V Lewin Curator's comments: "Register 1967: Wood ritual object; circular in section; decorated with irregular pattern of incised grooves; light brown." Acquisition notes: "Register 1967: All collected between the late 1870s and 1901 by donor's father, Alpin Fowler-Thomson; he was Resident Magistrate at York, and possibly in the gold fields, and later Under-Secretary for Railways."
Media copyright: The British Museum British Museum Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
URL institution: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Oc1967-05-10
Notes: 5.12.23 NR: checked against BM online catalogue.
Media Files:
Data Entry: Nitzan Rotman