Large feather headdress RV-1999‑550 Erna Lilje
In many parts of New Guinea feather headdresses were, and continue to be, worn for dancing on important ceremonial occasions. This headdress (Figure 1) is a century old, and though its place of origin has been recorded in museum records as Yule Island, further investigation suggests that this attribution was made because it was the location of the Sacred Heart Missionaries headquarters rather than the location of the source community. There are good reasons, which are described below, to think it is actually from the nearby mainland. New Guinea is famously linguistically diverse – within a 15 km radius of Yule Island there are four language families, each with many dialects (Figure 2). Despite this, the peoples within this area share many similarities in material culture and practices, for example the production and use of large feather headdresses.
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