Pavel Durdík (1843–1903), Life and Work. Ethnological Collection of the Island of Nias

The monograph deals with the collector Pavel Durdík (1843–1903) and the period during which he worked on the island of Nias as a physician in the services of the Dutch East Indies army (1880–1882). While there he collected important ethnographical material that until now, however, had not been typologically analysed and evaluated. The collection was already significant in its time, and from Pavel Durdík's correspondence with Vojta Náprstek we know that it occupied a prominent position among the Náprstek collections. The collection includes almost 1200 items from the everyday life of the Niasans in the 19th century. They include containers, instruments, weapons, clothing and jewellery. The most important part of the collection are the figures known as adu, which represented ancestors and provided protection against various illnesses and disasters.