Made of barracuda jawbone(*) and wrapped in red-dyed barkcloth, this scarifier was used by mourners to draw blood from themselves in honour of a dead chief. You can see the original here along with a second picture and some curator’s notes.

(*) The source contradicts itself by saying both barracuda and porpoise – googling for images suggests it’s a barracuda, but I could be wrong.

This image is used under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license and requires this attribution: © The Trustees of the British Museum

Originally posted to Reddit by me in 2023.