Interesting article seen on the Talahasee.com

From the page:

“In his free time, young Wague (pronounced “wah-GAY,” it means “Man of Trust”) tracked the animals in the bush. And at night, he went to school.

It wouldn’t be your typical study session. The student didn’t sit hunched at a desk, poring over a book in the yellow flicker of an oil lamp’s light, fist wrapped around a stub of pencil and youthful brow furrowed with thought. The teacher in this class was Diakite’s grandmother, who would gather the children around the fire and tell them fantastical folktales.

….

“It was like going to a movie. Sometimes the stories seemed to be an action movie, sometimes they were about moral issues and sometimes they were about love.

“It was both entertainment and education. Grandmother always said that we would not go to school unless we were educated first in the traditional way.”

The stories told all those years ago in that far-away village take on colorful form and substance in Diakite’s art. An exhibit of his vivid hand-painted ceramics was unveiled Friday at Gadsden Arts Center in Quincy, with Diakite on hand at the opening reception.”

Baba Wague Diakite’s vivid hand-painted ceramics complement his stories. “Where they come from is my root, and part of that root is the farm work, digging in the soil every day, making adobe bricks and building adobe houses.”

Read the full article

I’ve just come across a web journal of a young engineering graduate, Tom Owen, who went to Mali to explore the role of technology in the lives of Malians. The post I looked at explored pottery techniques. I was interested to see that they were thinking of introducing the innovation of a diesel driven pottery wheel. My reaction was quite negative as I read about it. I then read on to the comments following the post and saw that others shared my reservations. I think we have to be very careful about introducing innovations which are difficult to sustain. Diesel fuel is expensive and in today’s awareness of green technology this is not a good idea. One of the commenters suggested that a foot driven wheel would be a better option. I would question whether either a diesel or foot driven wheel is capable of making the huge water jars that the women Owen described make. They currently make them in several stages for very good reasons - these huge jars need drying at various stages so that they do not collapse. The techniques used are very ancient, and we should also question whether an intervention which changes irrevocably this ancient technique would actually bring about culture loss. More is not necessarily better. This also impinges on the supply chain. Another commenter said:

Given social acceptability and widespread use of such a technology, would increased production be met with continued demand and thus greater income or market saturation and decreased returns?

To be fair, the Multifunction Platform  (a 10 hp diesel engine which can power things like corn mills) does seem to be making a lot of difference to women in the village. However, there are other projects in Mali which are now using locally produced green technology biofuels from Jatropha oil to power generators. See the Mali Folke Center.

So, for me there are two issues with using technology for culture change.

• Does the change promote culture loss?
• Is the change sustainable?

Source: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~anth/arch/niger/ceramics.html

Summary Description of the Pottery of the Jenne-jeno, Hambarketolo, and Kaniana Assemblages Copied and adapted from Mcintosh, Susan, ed. (1995). Excavations at Jenne-Jeno, Hambarketolo, and Kaniana (Inland Niger Delta, Mali), the 1981 Season. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Phase I/II (c. 250 B.C. - A.D. 350). The pottery assemblage in the earliest levels consists primarily of simple rims from ovoid-shaped open bowls, restricted globular jars, and domed potlids. Together, these constitute 70-100% of the rim sherds in early occupation levels. Rims from more complex forms (everted rims, carinated forms) are rare. Many of the Phase I/II vessels must have had rounded bottoms as the ratio of base to rim sherds is 12.5/100. Ring bases predominate, but flat and pedestal bases are also found. Several fragments of cylindrical potlegs were also recovered. Rim diameters are generally small, and there are remarkably few sherds with demonstrable signs of use as cooking pots.
In general, Phase I/II pottery was very well made. Paste was predominantly medium textured, with grog tempering. Occurring in variable frequencies was a distinctive category of thin-walled, finely prepared pottery that produced the high-pitched clinking of fine china when two sherds were knocked together. Its fine fabric is responsible for its high-pitched sound and refined appearance: the paste includes clay, variable amounts of quartz sand, and a small quantity of finely ground grog. Sherds with medium-texture paste have larger amounts of coarser grog. This fineware was produced only in Phase I/II. The care with which it was produced is evident not only in the fineness of the paste and thin walls but also in the exceptionally smooth and even surface finish. From the fine surface lines, it is clear that a tournette was used to turn the pot slowly during manufacture, just as it is by Jenne potters today. The careful smoothing was probably done with a piece of leather. One fineware rim and several others in the Phase I/II study collection had the characteristic dimpled surface created by the hammer-and-anvil technique which would have thinned the walls, removed irregularities, and smoothed the surface of the piece.
The dominant decorative mode in Phase I/II is twine impression. Over 75% of the body sherds are decorated with twine alone (plain sherds = <5% of the body sherds; slipped = 10-15%). Impression with a plaited strip roulette accounts for 70% of the twine-decorated body sherds. Rim sherds have smaller relative frequency of plaited strip roulette and larger frequencies of twisted twine rouletting due to the popular practice in Phase I/II of placing a zone of twisted twine roulette impression near the rim, directly above the plaited strip roulette impression covering the greater part of the pot surface. In addition to these two roulette types on the same pot, other decorative modes unique to Phase I/II include rockering, fine horizontal incision superimposed on other roulette types, cord-wrapped stick roulette, and red paint applied in cross-hatching on an unslipped zone below the lip of simple open bowls. Black and white paint and channeling (multiple grooves) are virtually non-existent in the early part of this phase. They appear at the end of the phase, foreshadowing the explosion in popularity of paint-and-channeled pottery in the succeeding phase. With the exception of single grooves and incision (on twine), other plastic motifs are largely absent throughout Phase I/II, although two examples of raised applique were recovered, both on singular objects that may not have been used in a domestic context.

More 

Continuing my thoughts on Mali archaeology today, here is an article from a travel blog - Michael and Doria’s travel tales. The photos are about the best yet that I’ve seen of archaeology in situ in Mali, and I have taken the liberty of posting the whole article here rather than just a snippet. Please go to the blog and enjoy all the other articles too!

Djenne and Djenne jenno

The city of Djenne is known first and foremost for its magnificent mud mosque, built in 1906 on the site of several more ancient mosques dating back to the thirteen century. It’s hard to communicate the experience of standing in front of this building - its sheer size coupled with the otherworldliness of its aesthetics…

Only a few kilometers away is the Djenne Jenno - Old Djenne. It’s the original site of the city, abandoned when the town moved to its current site in the early thirteenth century. In the 1990’s there was an active dig here, but work stopped in 1999. The site is remarkable - it is absolutely covered in potshards.

Here’s a photo of Sarah taking a photo of one …

We spent a couple hours wandering around, and could have stayed longer. But we were accompanied by the director of the little archeology museum on the site, who wanted to get back. I have a hunch he was along primarily to make sure we did not remove any artifacts.

Here is a fragment of a black pot with elaborate desgins etched into the surface…

Further along we came upon the ruins of the cemetery. Burial was in large urns, in foetal position. I was startled to see the occupant of this one so plainly visible. At first I thought it rude to photograph him-or-her, but then seeing how he was tucked in so cosy and sleeping comfortably all these hundreds of years, I took a photo anyhow.

But let’s not leave Djenne on a note of death. It’s a very lively town. We spent new years eve there - Doria and I downed quite a few Grand Castels, the Malian beer in the the big, big bottle. On New Year’s day Sarah took this shot, which shows how the life of the town goes on not indoors, but on its rooftops and in its courtyards.

Source: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/afar.2007.40.1.30

Spring 2007, Vol. 40, No. 1, Pages 30-41
Posted Online February 6, 2007.

(doi:10.1162/afar.2007.40.1.30)

Marks of Identity: Potters of the Folona (Mali) and Their “Mothers”

Barbara E. Frank

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