Amanda Herbert
was an Assistant Director at the Folger Institute of the Folger Shakespeare Library, where she ran the Fellowships Program. She holds the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in History from the Johns Hopkins University, and completed her B.A. with Distinction in History and Germanics at the University of Washington. Her first book, Female Alliances: Gender, Identity, and Friendship in Early Modern Britain, was published by Yale University Press in 2014 and won the Best Book Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. She was the 2015-2016 inaugural Molina Fellow in the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, where she worked on her second book project, Spa: Faith, Public Health, and Science in Early Modern Britain. — View all posts by Amanda Herbert
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The description of the circlet headband worn by the young Algonquian in Hollar’s Unus Americanus ex Virginia tells us that they are teeth, Do we know what animal they are from? (They look more like bobcat claws to me.)
Owen Williams — February 14, 2017
I couldn’t find anything specific talking about what kind of teeth/claws the headband might be. I did find one article that definitely came down on the side of “claws” though:
“In terms of shell, however, claw-shaped forms do not appear archaeologically until after ca. 1650. Curiously, there is some ethnohistorical evidence for them during the 1640s. The well known print of a “Unus Americanus ex Virginia. Age 23” by Wencelaus Hollar, dated 1645, depicts a young man with a headband of claw-shaped forms, in addition to other shell ornaments. Although usually identified as a “Virginia Algonquian” (Feest 1978:261 Figure 6), recent archival research by George Hamell has identified this individual as “Jacques, a Munsee from New Netherland” who was taken to the Dutch Republic in 1644 where Hollar drew him the following year.” — James W. Bradley, “RE-VISITING WAMPUM AND OTHER SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SHELL GAMES,” in Archaeology of Eastern North America, Vol. 39 (2011), pp. 25-51
If you ever come across something that identifies them more specifically, I’d love to know!
Abbie Weinberg — February 16, 2017