TERA Gallery - African Art and Antiquities

"Altering The Way You View The World Of Art"
Type of Object:     
    Hole Stones

    These are pierced quartz disks, some 2 to 2½ inches  in
    diameter, and about 1 inch thick. Suggestions for their use
    are: spindle whorls, digging-stick weights, loom weights, net
    sinkers, necklaces, arrow and implement sharpeners, fire-
    making apparatus, and sacred insignia. But as they have
    been found in considerable numbers, one hoard under an
    old tree (Worobong, Kwahu district) containing hundreds if
    not thousands, they may be an early form of currency.

    There is less uncertainty about their modern use, which is as
    charms or amulets. The natives believe that they have fallen
    from the sky, some regarding them as the female
    counterpart of the miniature stone implements or 'god axes '
    of the same region (Wild, 1927, pp. i82-4; Man, I943, i[8).
    The holed stones collected by Rattray in Togoland (now in
    the Pitt Rivers Museum) were placed in water and the water
    thus impregnated was used for washing and drinking, and
    stones were occasionally ground and the powder
    administered for medicinal purposes, just like that of ' aggry
    ' beads."

Ethnic Group:             

Country of Origin:         
                                                       Togo

Material:                       
    Stone

Deminsions:
    2" to 2.5" diameter (center)

Reference:                  
    Quiggin, A. Hingston, A Survey of Primitive Money, 1949