Head from an Ancestor Figure, New Ireland

Norman P. Hurst, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Abraham Rosman and Paula Rubel, New York, acquired from the above

This smiling stone head is a fragment from a kulap, or funerary figure, from the southern part of New Ireland. Carved from soft chalky stone, these figures were central to ancestral cults and depicted particular deceased individuals, serving as a locus for the spirit of the deceased to settle and act as a benevolent intermediary to the spirit world.