1920.] 
Best. —Two Greenstone Pendants. 
169 
TWO GREENSTONE PENDANTS. 
By Elsdon Best, Dominion Museum. 
Pekapeka, a Rare Form of Neck-pendant. 
Fig. 1 shows a curious form of pendant formerly worn by the Maori. It 
was apparently a much rarer form than the tiki, or heitiki, but not so rare 
as the koropepe. It has been noted that no good illustration of this style 
of pendant appears in 
Hamilton’s Maori Art — 
merely a few in plate xlix, 
on so diminutive a scale as 
to be of no service. 
This specimen was 
found at Oeo, Taranaki, 
about twenty years ago. 
It is a well-finished object, 
the result of long-continued 
and patient labour. So in¬ 
tensely hard is this form of 
nephrite that one marvels 
how neolithic man could 
have worked it so well. 
The pendant measures 2^ in. by ljin., and in design it is much simpler 
than some I have seen. The two heads are unusually clear-cut and 
distinc , lacking the conventionalized or excessively grotesque aspect often 
seen in such things. The eyes are disproportionately large, but they 
could scarcely have been made smaller owing to the rudeness of the 
process employed by the Maori lapidary. 
Fig. 1.—Greenstone pekapeka. 
Fig. 2.—Greenstone 
koropepe. 
Koropepe . 
Fig. 2 shows a well-formed and smoothly 
finished koropepe pendant of nephrite found at 
Kawakawa, Bay of Islands district. It is a small 
object, in. in depth, and is pierced for 
suspension. The task of manufacturing this object 
must have been extremely slow and tedious, stone 
gravers and sand-grit being the agents employed. 
A similar specimen is shown at page 76 of vol. 11 
of the Journal of the Polynesian Society, where 
it is stated that two specimens in bone are 
known, and apparently specimens in ivory are 
referred to. 
