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48: Even stranger artefacts
Below is a collection of 4 similar shaped pendant/amulets. The first is at Te Papa and is a well known example in bone from ....and said to be made before 1600AD and was found in 1936 by railway workers at Kaikōura inside a fibre package buried beneath a dead tree and has Marquesas characteristics. The 2nd photo is of a Taino artifact from Haiti. The 3rd is from Rapanui (Easter Island) and the 4th and 5th are from Taranaki and are both in the Otago Museum. The 4th is a simple and unfinished example of the 5th. It is the 3rd and 5th photos I want to bring to your attention. (Taranaki seems to have the most prolific source of unusual items).
The Rapanui artifact is obviously a fish but the one from Taranaki is very strange and once again…does not match anything else found in NZ that I am aware of yet, but does resemble the Rapanui pendant and has similarities with the more fanciful bone carving and the Taino artifact which I just thought had similarities (making no correlations).
The above Taranaki Artifact is at the Otago Museum. It is made of fine-grained andesite. It has a stylized head with suspensory hole drilled through sides. The median decoration is similar to a reel or bead. Outward curving tail grooved at the back. It measures (H x W x D): 63 x 19 x 11mm. Place of origin is North Taranaki (of course it is - that's where most unusual artefcats have been found)
