Doll News Winter 2021 - 45

A satellite
map of
Papua New
Guinea
shows the
extremely
remote
location of
the Mendi
Valley.
Google
Maps Map
Data, 2020.

traditions of tribal warfare has made the situation
there extremely dangerous, as described in Conflict and
Resource Development in the Southern Highlands of Papua
New Guinea, edited by Nicole Haley and Ronald J. May.
The town of Mendi currently has a population of about
20,000. According to wikitravel.org, in 2000 the town
suffered major inter-tribal violence, when around 50
people were killed, and tour guides have avoided it
since then. They conclude: " This is very much a location
for the independent, adventurous traveler. " So, no road
trip for me, even though doing these searches caused
spectacularly beautiful ads for travel to New Guinea to
bombard my browser.
Still, searching on Mendi had not helped me much
with information on my dolls. Linda had discovered
that the dolls are called " Payback Dolls " or " Revenge
Dolls " and once I used those terms to search with, I got
more results.
Searching on eBay let me find other similar examples.
I first tried: (payback,revenge) dolls. That got me
thousands of results for Star Wars " Revenge of the
Sith " figures! Adding " sith " with a minus sign in front
of it excluded those, but the best results were from
using: (revenge,payback) (doll,figure,statue) ( "" new
guinea "" ,tribal,papua,papuan).
The terms within parentheses are alternates, and the
multiple quotes keep separate words grouped together.
Each separate word or group of words in parentheses
is required to be in the auction title in order for the
search to find it. Be sure to search for both current and
completed auctions.

The sellers' accompanying stories stated that the dolls
were called " payback dolls " because they were intended
to remind a bereaved family to get revenge for the
person's death. Sites that compile auction prices, such
as Worthpoint, showed some results and the Australian
site Carter's Price Guide to Antiques also had several.
Although I saw these " revenge " descriptions repeated
frequently, I now believe that this is not correct -- as you
will see later.
Although my eBay finds were interesting, Linda's
Google images search was the most helpful to identify
my dolls. I was convinced from their appearance that my
dolls were quite old, since the " Age: 3-5 years " tag could
have been written long ago, but an image of almost
identical dolls that Linda found and shared with me had
the following description:
" This riveting couple is from the Mendi Valley
of the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea.
Inspired by the " payback dolls " of earlier times,
which served as reminders to avenge the war death
of a fellow villager, these two were probably made
in the 70s and 80s by an old man long since dead.
These were made for sale to collectors, but have
such charm that I include them here as a form of
New Guinea folk art. There are a few bug holes
but the critters have long since been frozen out of
existence. Ex George Craig, Australia "
They were sold by the Zena Kruzic Tribal Art gallery,
zenakruzick.com and the photos and text are used with
permission. The style is so similar to mine that I am
convinced the same person made them.
DOLL NEWS * UFDC.ORG

45
http://www.wikitravel.org http://www.zenakruzick.com http://www.UFDC.ORG
Doll News Winter 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Doll News Winter 2021
