Context (Display)
An old display label found in the archives (OA2/1/13) reads: 'CHARMS / Z,226 RIVERS / Z,11228 VON HUGEL / Z,11229 VON HUGEL'.
Event Date
Author: Lucie Carreau

Context (Related Documents)
Catalogue card reads [handwritten in black ink:] 'Z 226. ? Two wooden human figures - with ear plugs - back to back - 1/2 figure. Rivers' Colln.'; [later addition handwritten in black ball point:] 'SOLOMONS? l. 9 cm w. 3 1/2 cm h. 8 cm'. [Red circular sticker top right of catalogue card.]
Event Date
Author: Heather Donoghue

Description (Physical description)
Catalogue card for Z 226: 'Two wooden human figures - with ear plugs - back to back - 1/2 figure'.
Event Date
Author: maa

Description (Physical description)
Beku. Wooden carving of two lifelike male figures terminating at the waist and stained in black. The figures sit back to back in a Janus-like arrangement clasping the sides of the unstained pedestal base. They are finely carved with well defined features and the tops of the heads are left unstained to represent hair. The ears are distended with earlobe plugs carefully indicated. These are unstained except for one plug on the figure, which also has incised unstained lines around the eyes. The object is broken at one end and part of the arm of one figure has sheared off.
Event Date 18/06/2012
Author: maa

Context (Production / use)
Object viewed by Tim Thomas 18.06.2012: he notes these were known as 'Beku' ('spirit image') and sat atop the tall prow of a 'tomoko' war canoe. They kept watch for weather, enemies, malevolent spirits etc. The figures are rendered in a lifelike, representational style, without prognathism. They emerge from a rough wooden pedestal, which has no place for affixing to a prow. These attributes suggest it is a later piece of 'tourist' art, or at least part of the corpus of objects featuring representations of people, sold or traded in non-ritual contexts, usually for Europeans.
Event Date 18/6/2012
Author: rachel hand

Context (References)
Illustrated in Lucie Carreau. 2016. Collections from the Solomon Islands. Cambridge: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.13275, p.43.
Event Date 2016
Author: Lucie Carreau