Stone
Art & Artifacts
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PESTLE
submitted by Jim Moses DESCRIPTION: Pestle used for mashing berries, leaves, and other plant material for medicine SIZE: about 6" long, slightly curved, roughly oval cross section MATERIAL: volcanic rock LOCATION ACQUIRED: Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands, Micronesia DATE: June 1973 Item(s) Collected by: JIM MOSES (PCV TINIAN, NMI 1971–1973; PCV SAIPAN, NMI 1973–1974) |
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Information, pictures, and story submitted by Jim Moses, May 2021
"While I lived on Tinian I did a lot of archaeology, and most of the artifacts were donated to the museum on Saipan when I left the islands in 1979. This one, however, was a gift. I had been interested in native medicine, and my landlady on Tinian was a local siruana named Tan Victoria King, who taught me a few things about medicine. When I left the island, she gave me one of her medicine stones. You can still see the dark area on one end where she would grind berries and other things to make her medicine."
"While I lived on Tinian I did a lot of archaeology, and most of the artifacts were donated to the museum on Saipan when I left the islands in 1979. This one, however, was a gift. I had been interested in native medicine, and my landlady on Tinian was a local siruana named Tan Victoria King, who taught me a few things about medicine. When I left the island, she gave me one of her medicine stones. You can still see the dark area on one end where she would grind berries and other things to make her medicine."