Subject: warrior
Culture: Sumbanese
Setting: Sumba late 18th - early 19c
Object: jewelry
Mamuli
* Metropolitan Museum of Art > Oceania
"Ear Ornaments or Pendants (Mamuli) Gold ornaments play a central role in marapu, the indigenous religion of the island of Sumba, which still continues today. In the ritual exchanges of gifts that accompany marriages, alliances, and other rites, gold jewelry and other metal objects, considered symbolically male, are exchanged for textiles, which are identified as female. Perhaps the most important Sumban gold objects are the Omega-shaped jewels known as mamuli. Created as prestige ornaments for the nobility, mamuli can be worn as ear ornaments or pendants, or attached to jackets and headdresses, depending on the occasion and local custom. They portray stylized female genitalia; however, each is considered male or female depending on secondary characteristics. Male mamuli ... have flaring bases, which, in the finest examples, are embellished with minute figures of humans, animals, and other subjects."
* Richter 1993 p31
"Gold and silver ear ornaments and pendants are frequently in the form of stylized female genitalia; the mitre, diamond and U-shaped pieces have an open-ended cavity in the centre; in Sumba these are called mamuli. Mamuli are male because they are metal, but their shape invigorates them with the female capacity to nurture life. When worn by women they enhance fertility. According to the Manggarai people of Flores, in the past they were also worn by men to grant them multiple lives in battle. Some of the larger, very powerful Sumban mamuli are elaborated with tiny horses and riders, birds and tableaux of ceremonial activities; as heirloom treasure, they are wrapped in magic cloths in the rafters of clan houses and are only brought down to summon up the guidance of ancestral spirits."
* Keane 1987 p247 n12
"The mamuli can be either plain (lobu) or decorated (karagat) .... In some parts of Sumba, people identify their omega shape with female genitalia. But the most elaborate, 'those with feet,' sport detailed figures on the base representing such things as roosters, cockatoos, horsemen, buffalo, and headhunting skull trees, which are conventional symbols of male greatness and bravado. In parts of east Sumba and in Laboya to the west, decorated mamuli are considered to be male, undecorated ones female. In Onvlee's structuralist logic, the gender of valuables is a function of their position relative to other valuables rather than of any inherent semiotic characteristics. Thus valuables form a series of recursive oppositions in such a way that the gender marking of the object can be reversed at the next level of generality. One virtue of this approach is that it recognizes that in specific contexts Sumbanese are able to treat valuables as gendered, even if these particular treatments do not add up analytically to form a single, overarching iconological system." [references omitted]
* Dallas Museum of Art > Pacific Islands
"... Formerly worn as an ear ornament, the mamuli is now most often used as a pendant. Depending on the type, mamuli were considered prestige items used for dancing and other rituals, sacred altar objects that aided priests in contacting the ancestral spirits, or sacred heirlooms that were rarely removed from their special storage containers. ..."
* Taylor/Aragon 1991 p210-214
"Among the most beautifully crafted and symbolic of ... class heirlooms are ear pendants. These, like other precious clan valuables, are stored in the dark loft of a clan house and are associated with the clan's founding ancestors. The oldest mamuli heirlooms, which are used periodically in ceremonies contacting clan ancestors, are almost never traded in marriage-alliance exchanges. Mamuli that have been more recently traded into the house can be worn and then given away again in marital exchanges. According to early Dutch reports, battles were at one time waged over ownership of particularly valuable mamuli, which signified clan leadership and hereditary rights. The portrayal of the most sacred mamuli ornaments on stone grave monuments was intended to indicate their privileged, and ideally, continuing ownership. Keane writes, 'the tomb is particularly suitable as the most permanent sign of a stable value. It is death which removes a person, as a corporeal and individual presence, from the risks of exchange, and constitutes a first step to becoming an ancestor and a marapu [ancestor spirit], elevated like a clan valuable beyond circumstance and change.'
"Sumbanese say the mamuli shape represents the female sexual organ. Holmgren and Spertus have documented this identification as it appears in the iconography of Sumba textiles by illustrating a mamuli shape located in the anatomically correct place on a female figure. Nevertheless, there are both male and female mamuli. Those ornamented with metal-braid spirals and beads or with decorated bases, or 'feet' (ledu), are considered male; those that are plain and without feet are considered female. The bases are often decorated with bird figures, especially cockatoos. According to Adams, in East Sumba only members of the nobility owned mamuli with very elaborate figures at their base. The finely wrought figurative decorations are warriors in battle dress with accompanying slaves and 'skull trees' (ceremonial stands for headhunting trophies and buffalo horns) set beside forked stakes, traditional Southeast Asian monuments commemorating sacrificial feasts. Hoskins points out that the human and animal figures adorning the mamuli bases are always male, 'representations of the wealth and power of the men who give mamuli to acquire wives'. In this way mamuli refer to both male and female forces, which are joined through the exchange of gifts that result in the union of marriage.
"On Sumba, prospective grooms present mamuli to the bride's family during marriage negotiations. They are one of the standard gifts brought by the wife-takers, the other being buffalo, horses, dogs, weapons, and other gold ornaments. The wife-givers give counter-gifts of pigs, cloth, rice, ivory bracelets, and sometimes gongs. The following passage describes the mamuli's significance as an irreplaceable marriage gift:
In the context of marriage presentations, in daily life, and in myth, a mamuli appears to be a substitute for the body of the bride. It is a replacement for her capacity for giving life from the moment mawo and dewa [soul elements] are joined together, until death, when putrefaction sets them apart once more. The mamuli embroidered on the plaited betel and areca nut bags, worn by married women of childbearing age, refer to this idea. At weddings, the mamuli is a countergift for the fertility that is given away by the house. The flow of mamuli between houses characterizes marriage exchanges." [references omitted]
Marangga
* Geary/Xatart 2007 p223
"Other forms of adornment from Sumba include pectorals (marangga) from the western part of the island. Blacksmiths, who initially arrived on Sumba as itinerant workers from neighboring Savu, created them from precious metals such as gold or silver. Marangga were among the heirlooms clans accumulated over time and displayed during feasts. These objects visualized the wealth of their owners, embodied history, and alluded to ritualized exchanges of valuables between families that reenacted and confirmed alliances, such as marriage transactions. Their elegant shape places them among the most iconic works from Indonesia, and more recently, ... artists have fashioned them from metal alloys."
Mendaka
* Dallas Museum of Art > Pacific Islands
"The pendant called mendaka is a symbol of rank, prestige, and power. Its cleft-oval shape implies that is [SIC] was used as an ear ornament. The Sundanese interpret the organic form as a winged snake-dragon or serpent. The mendaka is found only in West Sumba. ..."
* Dallas Museum of Art > Pacific Islands
"... A mendaka was worn only by aristocrats as a chest piece or jacket pin, or was displayed when an important person died. They were also worn by the paramount war chiefs as an emblem of their rank and prowess."
