This wooden figure belongs to a group of three ancestral carvings collected by Captain Giovanni Battista Cerruti (1850–1914), an explorer who spent 30 years travelling around Southeast Asia. Carvings such as this were commonly found in households throughout Nias. Ancestor carvings served as reminders of the deceased and as charms to protect the household. They were containers for ancestral spirits. It was believed that by trapping the last breath of a dying person, the soul could be contained and transferred to the carving.
