Ear Ornament

Across Solomon Islands, men and women wear a wide variety of adornments for everyday and ceremonial use. This ear plug would have been worn as part of a pair, through a loop in the ear. Both men and women wear ear plugs. Ear piercing occurs at a young age, and over time an individual will gradually increase the size of their piercing through the wearing of increasingly larger plugs. Once ear loops become too enlarged to support a particular plug, the adornments could be wrapped in leaf strips to increase their diameter and extend their use.

The plug is carved from a piece of wood with inlaid pieces of nautilus shell set into a layer of parinarium nut paste. The nuts are high in fatty acid making a paste that starts out as soft and malleable, becoming harder over time. Other known examples of such ear adornments feature a central red seed or glass trade bead. Examples of similar ear plugs, as well as the practice of stretching the ear lobe, can be seen in carvings from Western Solomon Islands, including figurative human sculptures and the representation of spirit ancestors in canoe prow ornaments (1976.351).