Abai (council house) in the Palau Islands 

 (photograph by Roland W. Force) 



of Mindanao, and make valuable additions to our very limited 

 collection of Tiruray material. Robert Trier, formerly of Chicago, 

 gave three fire pistons from Kota Bharu, Malaya, one of unusual 

 design with date in Arabic (about 1866) and another of buffalo horn. 

 A collection of materials from the Eastern Highlands of New 

 Guinea was purchased from the collector, Professor James B. 

 Watson, of the University of Washington. The collection represents 

 an area of New Guinea about which very little is known, and no 

 specimens of the region represented by this collection have ever 

 before been included in the Chicago Natural History Museum 

 catalogue. The feather-work in the collection is noteworthy. 

 Among the 142 items that were collected by Curator Force during 

 his expedition to the Palau Islands for the Tri-Institutional Pacific 

 Program and presented to the Museum are some valuable specimens 

 of pottery (pottery, which is extremely limited in its distribution 

 in Oceania, is rare today because of its replacement by trade goods 

 where pottery was made in aboriginal times). In the collection are 

 two complete pots, a rare ceramic lamp, and an extensive collection 

 of type-sherds from a series of archaeological sites in Palau. 



43 



