Figure | adu zatua

The elongated wooden figure depicts a representative of the female upper class. She is wearing a high crown, the shape and design of which is modelled on a palm leaf, and heavy gold jewellery that stretches the earlobes. The broad golden necklace is recognisable by marks in the neck area. Such symmetrically conceived figures in the typical posture with bent knees and hands in front of the belly were made by the Niha, inhabitants of the small island of Nias, located to the west of Sumatra. They are ancestor figures that function as a kind of container for the spirit of the ancestors, so that it could be located and sacrificed.