Pilar de la casa dels homes amb figura femenina

This figure belonged to the ceremonial house of the Gaikorobi village, in the region of the Sepik River to the east of the Chambri lakes, on the island of New Guinea. The ceremonial houses, which went by the name of ¿Men¿s houses¿, formed part of the ritual life of many communities in New Guinea, especially those from the region of the Sepik River. Generally, the ground floor of these houses was used as the men¿s meeting place, where they met and debated important questions for the group. The first floor was where the most sacred rituals were held and where they kept the precious figures and other artistic objects linked to the most important initiation ceremonies. This example was placed over a crossbeam on the first floor of the house. In the region of the Chambri lakes, these posts, often sculpted in a female form, were a symbol of fertility and probably referred to the grand primordial creator, an outstanding ancestor or another mythical being of the village. As occurs in posts like this one, the final shape of the figures depended on the tree that was used, since the body, arms and legs were sculpted in the roots. The men¿s house where this post comes from is an outstanding example of the architecture of the environs of the Chambri lakes. In this sense, it is similar to the men¿s house in the settlement of Kanganaman, one of the oldest and most spectacular ceremonial houses conserved today in the extensive region of the Sepik River.