The ''totokia'' (also pineapple club or beaked battle hammer) is a type of club or battlehammer from

Fiji Fiji ( , ,; fj, Viti, ; Fiji Hindi: फ़िजी, ''Fijī''), officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consis ...

.Eric Kjellgren,
How to Read Oceanic Art
' (

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale Univers ...

, 2014), p. 153. The ''totokia'' was called the "pineapple club" because of the spiked ball behind the weapon's beak.Ron Ewins, "The Perils of Ethnographic Provenance: The Documentation of the Johnson Fiji Collection in the South Australian Museum" in ''Hunting the Collectors: Pacific Collections in Australian Museums'' (eds. Susan Cochrane &

Max Quanchi Max Quanchi is an Australian academic whose research specialisations have been the South Pacific nations and the role of photography in recording and transmitting its cultures and histories. Biography Quanchi was born in Victoria on 20 June 1945 ...

: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), p. 62. The name is a

misnomer A misnomer is a name that is incorrectly or unsuitably applied. Misnomers often arise because something was named long before its correct nature was known, or because an earlier form of something has been replaced by a later form to which the name ...

; the shape actually is modeled after that of the fruit of the ''

pandanus ''Pandanus'' is a genus of monocots with some 750 accepted species. They are palm-like, dioecious trees and shrubs native to the Old World tropics and subtropics. The greatest number of species are found in Madagascar and Malaysia. Common name ...

''. The spike ("beak") and head of the weapon were used to puncture the skull of the enemy and crush the head. In addition to its functional use as a weapon of war, ''totokia'' were also

status symbol A status symbol is a visible, external symbol of one's social position, an indicator of economic or social status. Many luxury goods are often considered status symbols. ''Status symbol'' is also a sociological term – as part of social and soc ...

s.Club (totokia), Accession Number 2009.2748

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

. Totokia are held in the collections of several museums, including the

Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa is New Zealand's national museum and is located in Wellington. ''Te Papa Tongarewa'' translates literally to "container of treasures" or in full "container of treasured things and people that spring f ...

, the

Auckland Museum The Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira (or simply the Auckland Museum) is one of New Zealand's most important museums and war memorials. Its collections concentrate on New Zealand history (and especially the history of the Aucklan ...

, the

in New York City, the

, the Peabody Essex Museum of

Salem, Massachusetts Salem ( ) is a historic coastal city in Essex County, Massachusetts, located on the North Shore (Massachusetts), North Shore of Greater Boston. Continuous settlement by Europeans began in 1626 with English colonists. Salem would become one of the ...

, the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology of the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

, the Menil Collection in

Houston, Texas Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 i ...

, and the Israel Museum in

Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...

. African and

oceanic art Oceanic art or Oceanian art comprises the creative works made by the native people of the Pacific Islands and Australia, including areas as far apart as Hawaii and Easter Island. Specifically it comprises the works of the two groups of people who s ...

expert Bruno Claessens writes that the weapons carried by the

Tusken Raiders Tusken Raiders (informally referred to as "Sand People") are fictional creatures in the ''Star Wars'' universe created by George Lucas. They are characterized as a nomadic race who live on the planet Tatooine. They first appeared in the 1977 film ...

Tatooine Tatooine () is a fictional desert planet that appears in the ''Star Wars'' franchise. It is a beige-colored, desolate world orbiting a pair of binary stars, and inhabited by human settlers and a variety of other life forms. The planet was first ...

in George Lucas' '' Star Wars'' were inspired by the ''totokia''.Bruno Claessens
George Lucas’ “Star Wars” and Oceanic art
'' BrunoClaessens.com'' (23 July 2015).

References

See also