This small hahao ancestral board comes from the Elema culture of the Papuan Gulf. It has a nicely carved ancestral face carved in high relief. The nose is raised and there is a chip out of the end. There are traces of red, white and black pigments and a hole cut a few inches below the top. There are also some fairly fresh scratches on the reverse—unfortunately these once revered ancestral carvings are often not looked after properly and in the hands of a bored man armed with a pocket knife the PNG version of doodling can occur. The piece is carved from a medium density wood, dates to the 1930s, is 17 ˝" in height. sold