Carved Tongan akau (club) of 'pakipaki' type. It has an unusual design of five carved collars with several ridges on each collar.

This is a light, decorative club, likely to have been used for dancing rather than warfare. The slight damage to the top of the head may have come from hitting the ground with it during such a dance.

This club comes from the collections of the London Missionary Society and may have been collected by the missionary John Williams, who was active in the Pacific between 1817 and 1839. Dance was often suppressed by missionaries as part of the conversion process, but the proud continuation of Tongan dance is part of surviving heritage, linking to ancestors, traditional language and voyaging stories.