Sacrificial pot

Varnished container ornamented with totemic figures (lizard, pigeon, turtle, snake, human). Used in the ritual cooking of the first yams, a symbol of the ancestor, man and the clan. There are only a few decorated examples in the world.

This one was collected on Belep Island in the north of New Caledonia, by Father Lambert, a Marist missionary in New Caledonia in the late 19th century who came from Queyrac in Gironde. The Kanak people invoked their ancestors in the cooking vapours.