Prow of a pirogue

The boat assumes great importance in many Indonesian islands, as much for maritime as symbolic and ritual reasons. Such is the case in Tanimbar, an archipelago in southwest Moluccas where some villages were organised around a stone platform whose end was shaped like a boat’s prow. The inhabitants called themselves “the crew” and gathered there under the auspices of the supreme deity Ubila’a. This wooden item, with an openwork design of single and double spiral motifs, forms the matching piece to the stone figureheads which were anchored in the social structure of the community. Paradoxically a symbol of movement, it adorned the bows of prestigious boats, metaphorically incarnating the ancestors that linked the world of the living to the world of the dead. The fighting cock and fish, most probably sharks, represented on the lower part of the sculpture, may have symbolised the aggressiveness and predatory might of war expeditions against the enemy and the prestige of these boats, which also set sail in search of trade partnerships.