om 15.75 inches to 22.5 inches with an average of about 18.5 inches.
The suspensory element which passes through the perforated lugs of the ornaments is thin coir cord with the one exception of fine sennit. The seizing element in eight necklaces is fine human hair braid; in one necklace it is of fine sennit stained black; and in one of the British Museum specimens the mixed plies of human hair and coir give the fine braid a variegated appearance.
The ornaments are spaced along the length of the neck band. Five of the necklaces have nine ornaments, and it is evident from the even spacing between the end loops that nine is the normal number. Four necklaces have seven ornaments and one has eight, but it is evident from gaps in the spacing and from page 112breakages in the suspensory cord that those having less than nine have lost ornaments. In the ten necklaces, 81 ornaments are available for study. Of these, 80 are made of whale ivory or bone while one unique, in the form of a bird, in the Oldman collection (no. 478) is made of turtle shell. The bone and ivory ornaments divide into four motifs: 40 four-sided plates, 27 ball ornaments, 9 animal ornaments, and 4 miscellaneous figures.
The sides and ends of the four-sided plates are concave. Oldman (54, vol. 47, p. 12) likens them to the tops of seats; but, as there were no wooden seats in Mangaia, the origin of the motif remains unknown. No attempt was made to make the plates perfectly symmetrical, for the lengths of the two sides or the two ends rarely coincide. Each plate has two perforated lugs projecting from the upper long edge. They vary in size and the smaller plates are usually placed toward the ends. (See figure 58, a, b, c.)
The ball ornaments are of the same shape as the ear ornaments (fig. 56), but there is some variation in the treatment of the lugs. Some have a plain rim, as do those of the ear ornaments, but others have the sides of the rim lip grooved with vertical lines. Others have no lip but the upper surface is expanded and notched with lines radiating from the central pit. In some, the central pits are small, whereas others are large. Of the 27 ornaments, 25 are divided into two balls. Of the remaining two, one is a single ball and the other has a notch on the under surface which does not extend far upward on the sides (fig. 58, d, e).
The nine animal figures have heads with pointed snouts, most of which are notched at the end to represent a mouth. The ears are represented by a raised vertical flange, which is continuous over the top of the head. Eyes are not represented. Behind the ear flange is another raised flange which is continuous over the back of the neck, descends vertically down both sides, and projects downward on the under surface to give the appearance of the front feet. The body is elongated and slender and ends in two short hind legs and a short, vertical, truncated tail. Each hind leg is perforated from side to side to take the suspensory cord. The upper surface of the truncated tail is usually pitted in the center. In some figures, the tail stump has an outer projecting rim which, with the central pit, resembles the lug of the ball ornaments from which the technique was probably copied as an artistic finish rather than for suspension (fig. 58, h-l).
The origin of the animal motif in the necklace ornaments is extremely puzzling. As neither the dog nor the pig was present in Mangaia, the choice of a local animal as an art motif was of necessity restricted to the rat. Some of the more slender figures are not unlike a rat except for the tail. The truncated tail certainly conveys the impression of an amputated tail, and the trimming of a long tail would have incurred waste of valuable material. How-page 113ever , a similar animal motif occurs in Rurutu in the neighboring Austral Islands. The possibility of diffusion from Rurutu is discussed on page 440.
The four miscellaneous figures are somewhat rectangular in form and the narrow upper edge has a perforated suspension lug at each end. All four are grooved horizontally on the front surface to