2^/2 Memoirs Bcrnicc P. Bishop Mitsciiin 



(5) REPRESENTATIONS OF NATURAL OBJECTS 



The IMarquesans appear rarely to have carved rej^resentations of natural 

 objects other than human beings upon their containers, although a statement of 

 Langsdorff that they carved upon their bowls "little figures of human faces, of fish 

 and of birds" (38, p. 172) may indicate that this was done in former times. The 

 representations of natural objects upon the containers examined may all be as- 

 signed to some one of three classes : representations of human beings, representa- 

 tions of animals or insects, floral designs. With the exception of the human 

 figures carved upon one box, all such representations are highly conventionalized 

 and are linked by intermediate forms to \-arious purely decorative designs. 



(6) REPRESENTATIONS OF HUMAN BEINGS 



The decorations on Plate i.xiv, A may be divided into three classes: more 

 or less naturalistic figures, which occur only upon the si)ecimen mentioned in 

 the preceding paragraph; angular-geometric figures; and figures carved according 

 to the tiki convention. 



The naturalistic figures (drawings No. i) are crudely executed, resembling 

 the drawings made by a child. The persons are represented with the legs apart and 

 the arms akimbo. The body and limbs are shown as simple lines or bands. In 

 one example the toes are indicated. The heads are disproportionately large and 

 the features, when shown, are grotesque. Curiously enough the faces have little 

 or no resemblance to those of figures of the tiki type. 



Angular-geometric representations of human beings appear to have been 

 employed exclusively in the form of narrow bands (drawing No. 2) The repre- 

 sentations consist of an inverted triangle, representing the head, below which 

 there is a cross line for the shoulders, with three vertical lines, representing the 

 body and arms. No other features are indicated. Representations of this sort 

 sometimes occur in the same bands with decorations L, J\I and N, shown on 

 Plate Lxii, and it is possible that those band decorations originated from repre- 

 sentations of human figures. 



Human figures carved in the round or in relief appear to have been almost 

 never used upon containers; but flat figures, which stand to the true tikis in the 

 relation of a line drawing to a bas-relief or statue, were extensively employed. They 

 evince a strong tendency to modify the bodv bv substituting decorative elements 

 for its various parts, or to eliminate the body altogether. The convention used 

 for depicting the features was essentially the same as that of the true tikis, and 

 a suggestion of the relief form is usually retained in the modeling of the eyes 

 within and above the rings. (Drawings No. 3.) 



The eyes are shown by two rings joined at the inner ends and continued at tlie outer 

 ends into horizontal bars whicli terminate in double spirals or scrolls, representing the ear. The 



[112] 



