Pitt Rivers Museum Anthropology and World Archaology

 

Americas

 

Neck Ornament

Guyana

 

Thought to have been collected by Everard Im Thurn

Given to the Museum in 1895

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Some South American native groups believed that wearing an animal’s claws and fangs imparted its strength to the wearer. The right to wear certain kinds of teeth was determined by rank in the community. This neck ornament is made from carved jaguar bones. It was collected in the late nineteenth century.

View database record 1895.11.23