Fathom (money)

Shell money from the island of New Ireland (near New Britain ), Papua New Guinea around 1900 (2011)

Fathom (of English fathom "thread") is the unit of the shell money of the indigenous people of Tolai on the island of New Britain , which in their province of East New Britain as official complementary currency to local currency Kina is used. A fathom is a string of money made from clam shells that extends between two outstretched arms; the current exchange rate is 4 kina for 1 fathom (June 2013, about 1.50 euros).

The designation of the money line is the nautical measure of length "thread" derived (English fathom , German also " fathoms "): 1.8 meters is the span of a man with outstretched arms. 1 fathom is "1 thread length of mussels" or " 1 fathom clam money" with 300 to 400 cut shells of the small sea snail Nassarius arcularius . When exchanging ideas with the early British sailors, the islanders adopted this expression in their Kuanua language. They call their shell money taboo, tambu or diwarra .

The name fathom was also mentioned by the Swiss ethnologist Felix Speiser in 1923 as historical money from the South Pacific island state of Vanuatu .

literature

Alexander Solyga: Taboo - the shell money of the Tolai: An ethnology of money in Papua New Guinea. Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3496028512 .
Info: Solyga's economic ethnology study was awarded the prize of the city and the University of Bayreuth in 2011.
William Taufa, Heinrich Fellmann: About the shell money (a taboo) on Neupommern, Bismarck Archipelago (German New Guinea).
In: Communications from the seminar for oriental languages at the Friedrich Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin, Dept. 1: East Asian Studies, Volume 5, 1902, pp. 92-102.
AL Epstein: Tambu: The Shell-Money of the Tolai. In: RH Hook (ed.): Fantasy and Symbol. Studies in Anthropological Interpretation. Academic Press, London 1979 (English).

Web links

Sigrun Preissing: Tabu - The shell money of the Tolai in Papua New Guinea. (PDF; 233 kB; 4 pages, accessed on July 29, 2013) In: Zeitschrift für Sozialökonomie , Volume 46, Series 160-161, April 2009 , pp. 38–40, Gauke Verlag für Sozialökonomie, Kiel 2009, ISSN 0721-0752 .

Commons : Shell money - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ Carolyn Leigh, Ron Perry: Guide to Artifacts. (English) In: Art-Pacific , Tucson Arizona USA 2011. Retrieved July 30, 2013.
Quote: “Strings of shell disks or beads (called heishe in the US) are often valued by the fathom which equals 6 feet or slightly less than 2 meters. “
Info: Leigh and Perry have been collecting art from New Guinea since 1964.
^ Felix Speiser: Ethnology of Vanuatu. An Early Twentieth Century Study . University Press, Honolulu 1996 (first 1923), ISBN 0-8248-1874-1 , p. 245 (English; direct link to page 245 in the Google book search);
Original title: Ethnographic Materials from the New Hebrides and the Banks Islands. Kreidel Verlag, Berlin 1923 (since then various new editions / reprints, no Google preview).

[Leigh-2011-fathom-1] Carolyn Leigh, Ron Perry: Guide to Artifacts. (English) In: Art-Pacific , Tucson Arizona USA 2011. Retrieved July 30, 2013.
Quote: “Strings of shell disks or beads (called heishe in the US) are often valued by the fathom which equals 6 feet or slightly less than 2 meters. “
Info: Leigh and Perry have been collecting art from New Guinea since 1964.

[Speiser_1923-2] Felix Speiser: Ethnology of Vanuatu. An Early Twentieth Century Study . University Press, Honolulu 1996 (first 1923), ISBN 0-8248-1874-1 , p. 245 (English; direct link to page 245 in the Google book search);
Original title: Ethnographic Materials from the New Hebrides and the Banks Islands. Kreidel Verlag, Berlin 1923 (since then various new editions / reprints, no Google preview).