Ear sticks teunga telinga

Humphrey No. 88: ‘Two long round slender pieces of hard Shell, made very smooth, & worn in the Ears by the Natives of the Friendly Isles.’

Two variably long, round and white rods, polished from a seashell.

Apparently, both men and women wore earrings of this type: ‘In the earlobe, there were two piercings, in which he [a Tongan] wore a small, round rod...’ And: ‘They [Tongan women] had piercings in both earlobes, sometimes two in each, and in this case they wore a small round piece of tortoise-shell or a piece of bone’ (Forster 1989, I: 339 and I: 347; cf. also Anderson in: Beaglehole 1967, Illb: 931f.). Inken Köhler, Ulrike Rehr, Gundolf Krüger

Sources

Beaglehole, John Cawte, The Journals of Captain James Cook on his Voyages of Discovery The Voyage of the Resolution and Discovery 1776-1780, Hakluyt Society, Extra Series, 36, 1 u. 2. vol. 3, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1955-1967 IIIa and IIIb.

Forster, Georg, Reise um die Welt, 2 Teile, in Georg Steiner (ed.), Georg Forsters Werke (2 und 3), Sämtliche Schriften, Tagebücher, Briefe, herausgegeben von der Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin, [1777] 1989.