Batak Tunggal panaluan, Indonesian Magic or Shaman Staffs

milandro · 17th February 2023, 04:56 PM

I suppose that the matter of authenticity can be seen in may many different ways.

I think that this is particularly true of so called " primitive arts".

A friend of mine, whom, at some point, had a considerable ethnographic collection centred on Indonesia and Africa always told me that he wouldn't be able to say in no uncertain terms that , for example, that all his gold weights from Ghana were all very old.

The 19th century was the beginning of the era in which a larger portion of the people of some means in the "Western World" ( for lack of a better word in this context) started to be exposed to this kind of items which, previously, had been reserved to royalty, gentry or extremely wealthy collectors.

Even a commoner (sic!

) and a, relatively wealthy, bourgeois could start filling his curiosity cabinet with some exotic items.

And they did.

So from that time onwards there was no shortage of people from the countries where these things came from, who were willing to produce these items and part with it against a reasonable price either to be sent around the world or sold to visiting tourists.

But, and here comes the contentious part, if the item was produced by the people it originally came from and it was well made, according to traditional methods and could even be used by the concerned people themselves within that cultural context, would the fact that they were" modernly made" make them any less valid as an ethnographic object?

I am not yet the owner of such a staff but if I will be I will probably discover that it is not an " antique " even if it may be 100 or more years old and even if it was made by the Bataks. But does this make it any lesser a good object?

17th February 2023, 04:56 PM	#5
milandro Member Join Date: Jan 2022 Location: Netherlands Posts: 487	I suppose that the matter of authenticity can be seen in may many different ways. I think that this is particularly true of so called " primitive arts". A friend of mine, whom, at some point, had a considerable ethnographic collection centred on Indonesia and Africa always told me that he wouldn't be able to say in no uncertain terms that , for example, that all his gold weights from Ghana were all very old. The 19th century was the beginning of the era in which a larger portion of the people of some means in the "Western World" ( for lack of a better word in this context) started to be exposed to this kind of items which, previously, had been reserved to royalty, gentry or extremely wealthy collectors. Even a commoner (sic!) and a, relatively wealthy, bourgeois could start filling his curiosity cabinet with some exotic items. And they did. So from that time onwards there was no shortage of people from the countries where these things came from, who were willing to produce these items and part with it against a reasonable price either to be sent around the world or sold to visiting tourists. But, and here comes the contentious part, if the item was produced by the people it originally came from and it was well made, according to traditional methods and could even be used by the concerned people themselves within that cultural context, would the fact that they were" modernly made" make them any less valid as an ethnographic object? I am not yet the owner of such a staff but if I will be I will probably discover that it is not an " antique " even if it may be 100 or more years old and even if it was made by the Bataks. But does this make it any lesser a good object?