The carvings from Ambrym : in the past, complex grade systems have existed and still continue in most of the areas of the North and Central Vanuatu. They permit to the individual to increase his power over the world of the living and his future influence on the one of the dead. Those systems exist for women too. The main way of access to the upper grade is the boar. This explains the importance and the number of objects and ornements in touch with this animal.

Those seizure of grade are completed by the setting up of memorials that surround the dancing place like the carving tree fern statues. Each of them has a shape and a design painted in touch with the acquired grade. They are introduced in the scenery according each grades too : gates, plants, flowers, shelters. 

The drums from Ambrym : the erected drums with a split are special to Vanuatu. They can be found nowhere else in the world. Grouped in miniature forests, they were settled on round dancing places turning anticlockwise, influencing the way of beating drums. They are always beaten with the right hand.

The drums can have one, two or three heads according to the carver's grade who makes them.

Masks used for funerary rituals

During initiation ceremonies, commemorative celebrations or some grade takings, men make items, carvings and headgear with extremely various shapes. They evoke spirits standing for animals or plants like yams. Made in secret in a forbidden place, the headgear are introduced to the public during dancing exhibitions which come with the ceremonies.

This kind of art is still alive in the southern part of Malekula island.

Pentecote Island currency mat ("sese" mat) : mat currencies are entirely tied to women. They are exchanged for a favour, a song or a medicinal recipe. More than some fifty mats are counted in Vanuatu tied to several original myths. For the technique of weaving, they do not differ a lot from the common mats. On the other hand, they get their exchange value from their size and their colored patterns which also establish their function.

In the past, the mat were painted with natural pigment like ocher which was also used as exchange item. Today those pigments most often come from commercial tints. Each pattern gets its history, its identity and its use which permits to identify where does the mat comes from. Hundreds of different patterns exists in Vanuatu, all classified. The design is obtained in applying maps cut in vegetal patterns over the mat, then in plunging the rolled mat in the dye.

The boar : boar is the most important domestic animal in Vanuatu where it lives in a half-wild state. It gets a religious, ritual, economical and social role. It is a sacred animal that is exchange in the southern part of the country for food, to sign peace, for traditional settlements, to pay for a wife or for ritual circoncisions.

In the North part of the country, due to the "grade society", their worth is more prestigious.

Boar jaw

Ceremonial pig-killing club

In the Northern part of the country, due to "grade society" system, their worth is more prestigious. Those societies vary in their forms but all are founded on the concept of a social scale composed of grades that are staggered according to their relative prestige. To reach a new grade, an individual (or sometimes a group) has to accumulate and then ritually kills pigs whose tusk are on various stage of growth. The more pigs tusks are developped and curved, the more important will be the individual's (or group's) prestige reaching this grade.

To get curved boar tusk, man has to intervene by removing both upper eyeteeth from the boar jaw. It takes 7 or 8 years to obtain a whole circle. Those curved teeth have a currency function in most parts of the archipelago. The more the circle formed by the tusk is perfect, the more the value of the tooth is high.