Mendi Valley, Southern Highlands, PNG. Pre-contact.

This is a pre-contact, stone-carved shield collected by an Australian patrol officer in the early 1960s. The shield has a beautiful patina, most obvious on the back of the shield, and a strong central spine. The shield is engraved over its entire surface with geometric motifs employing triangles and semicircles. Though appearing abstract, the design does have underlying meanings that suggest an anthropomorphic figure. The shield is carved from a medium hard wood called warr in the Mendi language. This wood is used almost exclusively for shield making, as it has a tight grain that stops an arrow penetrating far into the shield. The Mendi word for a shield is warrumbi which literally means “wall of the warr tree”.