The Conch Horn © Jeremy Montagu 2018
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1 Jeremy Montagu The Conch Horn © Jeremy Montagu 2018 The author’s moral rights have been asserted Hataf Segol Publications 2018 Typeset in X LE ATEX by Simon Montagu The Conch Horn Shell Trumpets of the World from Prehistory to Today Jeremy Montagu Contents Illustrations vii Introduction 1 1 The Conch in Europe and around the Mediterranean 9 2 The Conch in Africa and Nearby 43 3 The Conch in the Indian Sub-Continent 53 4 The Conch in South-East Asia and the Orient 75 5 Oceania – The Islands of the Pacific 101 6 The Americas 149 Bibliography 191 General Index 203 v Illustrations Fig. 1‑1 A modern example of Charonia nodifera (La- marck) from Catalunya, in Spain, Montagu Collection, XI 280. .............. 11 Fig. 1‑2 Reed-blown foghorn, c. 1930s, Montagu Col- lection, I 142b. 36 Fig. 2‑1 Bursa shell from Tanzania, East Africa, Mon- tagu Collection, IV 102. 48 Fig. 3‑1 Small Indian chank, Montagu Collection, VI 38. 54 Fig. 3‑2 Another small chank from the Tibetan borders, with parts of the body encased in silver and covered with semi-precious stone, Montagu Collection, XIII 242. 62 Fig. 3‑3 Tibetan dung-dkar or Rag Gshong Ma, with added silver mouthpiece, bell flange, tail, and other decoration. Photo Aurelia Hartenberg Collection, used by her kind permission. 64 Fig. 3‑4 Two chanks, India, Montagu Collection, III 70a/b. ...................... 67 vii Fig. 3‑5 Turbo marmoratus shell, Bhima’s conch Paun- dra, Montagu Collection, I 10a. 70 Fig. 3‑6 Trochus niloticus shell, Sahadeva’s conch Ma- nipushpaka, Montagu Collection, X 260. 72 Fig. 4‑1 Pottery conch of the 12th century, Khmer cul- ture of Kampuchea, Montagu Collection, XIII 220. ....................... 78 Fig. 4‑2 MRI scan of the same shell, showing the inter- nal blockage. 80 Fig. 4‑3 A young Naxi dongba, He Xiudong, blowing the conch during the 2007 Smithsonian Folk- life Festival. Photo with kind permission by Helen Rees. 87 Fig. 4‑4 Japanese horagai, Montagu Collection, XI 44, missing its open-mesh network of silk cord. 92 Fig. 5‑1 Map of Oceania. Kindly made available for public use by Kahuroa. 102 Fig. 5‑2 Side-blown wooden trumpet, from the Black- water River area of Papua New Guinea, a conch substitute. Montagu Collection, IX 210. 111 Fig. 5‑3 End-blown bamboo trumpet, Asmat People, Southern Papua, Indonesia, a conch substitute. Montagu Collection, V 4. 112 viii Fig. 5‑4 Side-blown Syrinx aruanus Linnæus shell from Papua New Guinea. Montagu Collection, XI 24. 113 Fig. 5‑5 Side-blown conch, Charonia tritonis (Linnæus), from the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Gui- nea. Montagu Collection, IX 212. 119 Fig. 5‑6 End blown Tutufa bursa shell with a fingerhole in parietal wall, Fijian style. Montagu Collec- tion, I 8a. 127 Fig. 5‑7 Side-blown Cassis cornuta shell used by Al- fred Snelling to call people to church at Ana- pauo on Fefan Island in the Carolines. Photo courtesy Nancy Thym, his great-niece. 133 Fig. 5‑8 Side-blown Charonia tritonis shell from the Marquesas Islands, with two blowing holes, one filled with wax. Montagu Collection, III 68. 140 Fig. 5‑9 End-blown Charonia lampas rubicunda shell with added wooden mouthpiece and tassel of pukeko feathers, Māori, New Zealand. Aure- lia Hartenberger Collection, used by her kind permission. 144 Fig. 6‑1 End-blown Lobatus gigas (Linnæus) shell, used to call farm hands in for meals near Belle Plaine, Iowa. Montagu Collection, V 76. 154 ix Fig. 6‑2 Pottery skeuomorph of a Lobatus gigas shell, México, modern. Montagu Collection, X 272. 165 Fig. 6‑3 Pottery skeuomorph of a Malea ringens conch, Mochica people, Peru. Montagu Collection, XI 122. 172 Fig. 6‑4 Scan of the interior of the same shell. 173 Fig. 6‑5 Two modern pottery conchs by John Taylor, London, 1991. Montagu Collection, XI 18a and b. 175 Fig. 6‑6 Two Inca conchs, Malea Ringens and Loba- tus galeatus. Aurelia Hartenberger Collection, used by her kind permission. 179 Fig. 6‑7 Cassis tuberosa (L), a fisherman’s horn from Barbados. Montagu Collection, I 18a. 186 x Acknowledgments I have many people to thank, especially those who have permit- ted me to use examples of their fieldwork, who have referred me to their published works, often providing me with offprints or other copies, who have suggested other people to whom I should write, who have sent me photographs of different shells, and who have permitted me to use photographs of shells from their collections. The first in time is Peter Dance, who some fifty years ago, when I was working part-time for Bernard Fagg at the Pitt Rivers Museum, came and identified the species of all the shells in that collection, giving me the basics on which I have worked ever since – any errors in that respect in this book are my fault, not his! The next in that respect are the curators of the many muse- ums in which I have examined, and often was permitted to blow, their shells, or who sent me photographs of examples. Many of their names I have regrettably forgotten or failed to note from the early 1960s onwards, but Karl Gustav Izikowitz and Karl Erik Larsson of Göteborg Etnografiska Museet stand out in my memory for the unrivalled access to that collection that I was given. Those who have so kindly spent their time in helping with the research for this book are, in order of appearance in this book, as they say, when announcing the cast of an opera on the radio: Peter Holmes, Emiliano Li Castro, David S. Reese xi (who sent me copies of many of his relevant publications), Ser- gio Bonanzinga (who also sent me copies of his publications), Judith Cohen, Sir Kenneth Oakley, Batya Bayer, Percival Kirby, Roger Blench, Edmund Herzig, Aurelia Hartenberger (who has been generous with permission to use photographs of her shells and went to much trouble to take them and to provide details), Lars-Christian Koch, Nazir Jairazbhoy, Dalaimergen Tosontsen- gel, Dawn Rooney, Uwe Pätzold, Helen Rees (who also kindly provided a photograph), William Waterhouse, Mr. Miyamoto, William Malm, Andrew McGraw, Margaret Kartomi, Patricia Matusky Yamaguchi, Vincent Megaw, Brian Diettrich, Stephen Wild, Don Niles, J. F. Peake, Raymond Clausen, Raymond Am- mann, Karl Erik Larsson, Nancy Thym (who went to much trou- ble to try to find details of her great-uncle’s use of his shell and to photograph it), Richard Moyle, Arnd Adje Both and his wife Olga Sutkowska, Aviad Montagu, Stephen Goss, Steven Turn- bull, and John Taylor. Penultimately I must thank Jeffrey Nussbaum of the Historic Brass Society who, over a meal in Rome in 2015, suggested that I should write this book. And finally I thank my son Simon who has had the skill and who has taken the time and trouble to publish this book for me on my website. And I must also thank my grand-daughter Kate Roseman for all her care in taking all the photographs of my shells. xii Introduction The Conch can claim to be one of humanity’s first trumpets or horns, perhaps indeed the first, for one has been found in one of France’s caves from the Upper Palaeolithic period, dating back some 20,000 years. Blowing shells are found all around the world, roughly between the 35th parallels north and south of the equator, with some exceptions both south and north. In this book, we shall survey that belt from one continent to the next, beginning with Europe simply because that is where we have the oldest examples, and proceeding eastwards until finally we reach the Americas, ending with the waters of the Caribbean seas. The word ‘conch’ means shell and derives from the Greek konchē or konchos, and Sanskrit čankha, and thus the commonly used term ‘conch-shell’ is a tautology. There is a huge variety of shells around the world of many different shapes, and each is the external skeleton, and simultaneously the home, of an an- imal, for our purposes a marine one. Of all the world’s shells, excluding the bivalves (clams, scallops, mussels, oysters, etc), the cephalopods (nautilus, cuttlefish, etc) and others, only one type concerns us here, that of the gastropods. These are those 1 2 The Conch Horn creatures that walk, using their stomachs as a foot, as the name implies, while carrying their helical shells on their backs, such as our garden snails. Of those that can become trumpets, only the larger varieties will serve. Small ones from land or sea can be used as whistles, and often are, but all of those large enough for trumpeting come from the seas. I use the word ‘helical’ rather than ‘spiral’ because a helix (Greek for a snail) is a form of spiral that expands in diame- ter from the narrow tip at the top to a wide opening at the bot- tom, whereas ‘spiral’ has connotations such as a spiral staircase, which is the same diameter all the way up (or down) with paral- lel sides, and shells are not like that – they all widen as they go and as the creature grows. Those large conchs that can become trumpets prefer warmer waters to colder and therefore they seem to thrive in the central belt of the world’s circumference, but not all the peoples that live within this belt seem to have used them for blowing, as we shall see, whereas others, to the north and south, through trade or other means, do also use them.