Starting as early as 1500 BCE in the Mariana Islands, people used distinctive rigging of cut and drilled pieces of cowrie shells, as parts of compound devices, for attracting octopuses. Small-shell version of octopus lures. Upper image: an ethnographic example from Tonga, made with two cowrie shell plates (Cypraea tigris), each with drilled holes, bound onto a gray stone sinker, using plaited sennit fiber, in the collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum,...
