Pitt Rivers Museum Anthropology and World Archaology

 

Oceania

 

Shell armlet

Papua New Guinea

 

Thought to have been collected by Miss E.E. Gage-Brown

Given to the Museum in 1933

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Shell armlet, Papua New Guinea

This is a conus shell armlet, or mwali. It is believed to have been used in the famous kula exchanges of the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea. The kula ring consisted of a series of exchange partners in a circle of island groups. They traded conus shell armlets, which passed around the circle in one direction, with red shell necklaces, which were exchanged in the opposite direction.

View database record 1933.40.18