Porcupine-Fish Helmet from Kiribati, c.1800-1880 CE: this helmet was crafted from the carcass of a porcupine-fish
This helmet was made using the skin of a porcupine-fish that was killed and then carefully dried. The front edge is lined with vegetable fiber and human hair, and it's equipped with coconut-fiber ties that were used to fasten the helmet onto the wearer's head.
Above: another porcupine-fish helmet from Kiribati
Helmets with this design are also known as te barantauti, and they were created as part of a traditional costume that was worn by the warriors of Kiribati (an island nation located in the South Pacific). Most of the surviving examples date back to the mid-1800s.
Above: a porcupine-fish helmet displayed with a high-backed cuirass, wrist-guard, and spear, c.1800s CE
Te barantauti were typically worn with body armor that was crafted from coconut-fiber and stingray skin, along with braided wrist-guards covered in shark's teeth, high-backed cuirasses, and wooden swords, spears, and daggers studded with stingray spines and shark's teeth.
Above: wrist-guards and cuirasses from Kiribati, c.1800-1880 CE
In some cases, the warrior's helmet was crafted from coconut-fiber instead. The same material was also used to construct sleeves, belts, and "overalls" that effectively covered the rest of the body.
Above: a coconut-fiber helmet with a full set of armor
The porcupine-fish helmets provided very little protection -- they were primarily created and used as a way to intimidate enemies during ritual combat.
As this article explains:
The men of Kiribati were famed for their fierceness, and when it came time for battle, they dressed the part, in head-to-toe armor made from coconut fiber and stingray skin. Their weapons were wooden swords lined with sharks’ teeth.
The crown jewel of Kiribati armor, though, was a spiky helmet made from the porcupinefish. A member of the blowfish family, a porcupinefish looks like an adorable big-eyed cartoon character—until it’s threatened. Then, it sucks water into a cavity between its body and skin and inflates to several times its normal size, stiffening the spines that usually lie flat.
Porcupinefish helmets, known as te barantauti, were made by capturing one of these agitated, puffed-up porcupinefish, killing it, peeling the skin away from the body, and drying it. The spiny skin that remained was reinforced with coconut-fiber padding and fashioned into a brittle helmet.
Though the helmets offered little in the way of actual protection, they instantly made their wearers appear bigger, taller, and more formidable.
For Kiribati warriors, this intimidation was more important than protection from death. That’s because in traditional Kiribati culture, a person who took someone’s life—even in a fair fight—paid with their most prized resource: their land. So instead of going for the kill, warriors sought to wound and humiliate their enemy. Fish-skin and coconut-fiber offered just the right amount of protection.
Above: a shark-tooth spear from Kiribati, c.1800s CE
Unfortunately, most of the surviving helmets, weapons, and pieces of armor are now housed in Western museums:
Over the years, dozens of these helmets made their way into museums across the globe, while few remain in Kiribati. The Smithsonian actually has three, the British Museum five, and Sweden’s Världskulturmuseerna “at least eight,” according to their digitization curator Magnus Johansson. One te barantauti even wound up at the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium, in the tiny town of St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
Over the last four decades, since Kiribati gained its independence from the United Kingdom in 1979, the armor has taken on a new meaning—as a potent symbol of local culture. It features on tourist trinkets, but also stamps and school mascots. “The armor is not just a garment to me,” says Rareti Ataniberu, an I-Kiribati craftswoman. “It is a piece of art, a craft.”
Above: an armored warrior from Kiribati, mid-1800s
Hakai Magazine: Kiribati’s Porcupine-Fish Helmets were More about Drama than Defense
Atlas Obscura: The Mystery of the Puffer-Fish Helmets of Kiribati
Pacific Presences: Fighting Fibres: Kiribati Armour and Museum Collections
Time Magazine: Why Indigenous Artifacts Should be Returned to Indigenous Communities
The Museum of New Zealand: Te tauti from Kiribati
The Museum of New Zealand: Rere (Knife or Short Sword) from Kiribati
The British Museum: Porcupine-Fish Helmet
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