Names
Toa Collection
IDs
SAMA 41
Offline Only
Descriptions
391 Aboriginal toa objects mainly collected by Pastor Johann Georg Reuther, but also by Pastor Oskar Liebler.
Toas are small composite and painted artefacts made by members of the Diyari and collected by Lutheran Missionary Johann Reuther at the Killalpaninna Mission in South Australia beginning in 1904.
Reuther claimed they were use as 'signposts' on vacating a camp to tell those following where they had gone. Each toa thus represented a particular place, by way of its carved shape and painted detail.
The toas combined Aboriginal and European technologies and were made within a frontier context at the mission. They often used gypsum as substrate for painting and incorporating object such as shells, gypsum paste also hid European methods of joining pieces of wood which provided the armature. Gypsum was often used in Aboriginal mourning ceremonies.
See `Art and Land' (1986) by P. Jones & P. Sutton. Further information may be found in specimen document files. Related Collection notes: Associated archival component held in the SAM Archives collections
Subjects
Aboriginal artefacts; Aboriginal culture; Aboriginal peoples (Australians)
Aboriginal material culture; Cooper Creek; MacDonnell range; O. Liebler; Pre 1905; Reuther; Toa
Aboriginal peoples; Artefacts
Pastor Johann Georg Reuther; Pastor Oskar Liebler
Toa
Coverage Temporal
1905
Related Collections
Dates
2012-05-30 23:41
2011-03-18 23:25