A special kind of headdress worn by young men. The basket was placed obliquely upon the occiput and the long hair pulled through the opening. This had the effect of forming a bun at the other end. Different versions of these hairbands were used in in the ​​Sepik and Ramum estuary regions of New Guinea. This specimen is particularly richly decorated with snail shells, large glass beads of European provenance and bird feathers. As status symbols, they were considered to be the preserve of young men as opposed to senior men, who no longer wore such headdresses.
The object was collected by Lieutenant Paul Werber from Freiburg, 1st Officer in the Imperial Navy who sailed the South Seas for a total of two years on the S.M.S. Cormoran and donated about 100 objects from various regions of Oceania to the museum.