Identifier: handbooktoethnog00brit (find matches)
Title: Handbook to the ethnographical collections
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: British Museum. Dept. of British and Mediaeval Antiquities and Ethnography Joyce, Thomas Athol, 1878-1942 Dalton, O. M. (Ormonde Maddock), 1866-1945
Subjects:
Publisher: (London) : Printed by order of the Trustees
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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to make or to procure, by which the worth of goods could bemeasured (figs. 26 and 27). Currency takes many varied andpeculiar forms in different quarters of the globe, and shells,bright feathers, axes, spear-heads, fish-hooks, blocks of salt,and a hundred other things, may all represent the indispensablemedium of exchange. Trade, intermarriage, and war, as pro-moting alliances, or the establishment of a dynasty by a war-chief, resulted in the expansion of large tribes and the growthof confederacies. The way was thus prepared for the moreperfect organization of the state. III. Man in his relation to the supernatural. The ceremonial law tends to adopt useful rules of customarylaw, so that there ultimately results a fusion of the twoS3stems; this leads by a natural transition to the third IXTRODUCTION 29
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a g Fig. 26.~Africaii cuiren-y. a. Conventional spear-head, Upper Congo.I; c. Conventional lioe-blade.s, Upper Nile. d. Conventional axe-blade, StanleyFalLs. e. Copper saltiro, Urua. /. Conventional knifc-hlade, Sierra Leone.g. Conventional spear, Lomanii River. 30 INTRODUCTION heading- into which the subject is divided. A j^roininent partis pkiyed by the tahu^ a prohibition forltidding contact witlicertain persons or things considered sacred or dangerous, andtherefore inviolate. Such an institution might be made mostirksome not oidy to the unprivileged lower class but even tosacred and inviolate persons themselves, or to privilegedpersons subjected to restrictions for temporary and particularreasons. For example, a sacred chief or king in Polynesiamight not even touch the ground for fear of dangerous con-seqiiences to his people, and had always to be carried fromplace to place upon mens shoulders; after the operationof tatuing, Maori chiefs were not allowed to put food intotheir own

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