Sociolingo’s Mali

For those interested in the Dogon peoples of Mali this report by Roger Blench may be of interest:

A survey of Dogon languages in Mali: overview - Roger Blench
Mallam Dendo Ltd., Cambridge, UK

The languages spoken on the Dogon Plateau and adjacent areas in northern Mali are generally known to outsiders as ‘Dogon’, but this term is not used by individual groups. For a long time, research on the Dogon was dominated by the work of Marcel Griaule and his successors, which focused on a very specific group, the Dogon of Sangha. Bertho published short comparative wordlists of some Dogon lects but these made little impression. Calame-Griaule (1956) published a dialect map of Dogon, the relationship between the named communities and the Tr-S represented in her dictionary (Calame-Griaule 196 remained unclear in the absence of data. Until recently, Dogon was treated in reference books as if it were a single language (e.g. Bendor-Samuel et al. 1989), but Hochstetler et al. (2004) estimated there are no less than 17 languages under the Dogon rubric and that the family is highly internally divided.

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 Many people come to Mali with the intention of visiting the Dogon villages. Places of Peace and Power has a good article on the sacred sites of the Dogon with excellent photos.

The Dogon are an ethnic group located mainly in the districts of Bandiagara and Douentza in Mali, West Africa. This area is composed of three distinct topographical regions: the plain, the cliffs, and the plateau. Within these regions the Dogon population of about 300,000 is most heavily concentrated along a 200-kilometer (125 mile) stretch of escarpment called the Cliffs of Bandiagara. These sandstone cliffs run from southwest to northeast, roughly parallel to the Niger River, and attain heights up to 600 meters (2000 feet). The cliffs provide a spectacular physical setting for Dogon villages built on the sides of the escarpment. There are approximately 700 Dogon villages, most with fewer than 500 inhabitants.

The precise origins of the Dogon, like those of many other ancient cultures, are lost in the mists of time. The early histories are informed by oral traditions (that differ according to the Dogon clan being consulted) and archaeological excavation (much more of which needs to be conducted). Because of these inexact and incomplete sources, there are a number of different versions of the Dogon’s origin myths, as well as differing accounts of how they got from their ancestral homelands to the Bandiagara region. The people call themselves Dogon or Dogom, but in the older literature they are most often called Habe, a Fulbe word meaning ‘stranger’ or ‘pagan.’ Certain theories suggest the tribe to be of ancient Egyptian descent. After living in the region of Libya, they are believed to have migrated to somewhere in the region of Burkina Faso, Guinea or Mauritania (different scholarly sources give different places for this period). Around 1490 AD, fleeing invaders and/or drought, they migrated to the Bandiagara cliffs of central Mali. Carbon-14 dating techniques used on excavated remains found in the cliffs indicate that there were inhabitants in the region before the arrival of the Dogon; these were the Toloy culture of the 3rd to 2nd centuries BC, and the Tellem culture of the 11th to 15th centuries AD.

Source: http://icom.museum/redlist/afrique/english/page04.htm

	Terracotta, bronzes and pottery from the Niger Valley (Mali)
			Jenne statue, terracotta
			© Musée national de Bamako (Mali) Click on the photos to see an enlarged version
	Provenance I Characteristics I The urgency of the situation I Legislation I Sources
	–Provenance
	Niger valley, Mali.
	–Characteristics
	These objects come from mounds in the flood plains of the Niger river. They are usually known as Jenne after the name of the town close to the archaeological site of Jenne-Jeno, but are actually found throughout the Niger valley. This site is a national heritage site and is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. These terracotta sculptures, whose height ranges generally from 20 cm to 40 cm, represent mostly human figurines, often found intact. The human form is represented either kneeling or sitting, with arms crossed over the chest, or hands on thighs, gestures often being asymmetrical. Some horsemen and footmen may have their torsos wound about by a cross belt supporting a quiver. The bodies are smooth or covered with round pastilles, made from fine-grained clay. Pottery, some of which includes anthropomorphic motifs, and metal figurines are also found in this region. Among zoomorphic representations, snakes feature prominently. The shaven-headed human heads sometimes wear headgear and are characterised by protruding lips, triangular noses and above all by projecting eyeballs, whose brows are in the form of concentric grooves, and whose eyelashes are incisions radiating out from the eye. One subgroup stands out. It features longer and cylindrical bodies, smaller eyes not surrounded by incisions, as well as a large number of bracelets. These artworks are often classified into styles, from Bankoni and Segou. They come from the Bamako, Segou and Bougouni regions of the South of Mali.
	–The urgency of the situation
	The Musée national of Mali owns all statuettes found during official excavations. The majority of other statuettes known to exist from the Niger valley have been put into circulation by the looting of archaeological sites, 80% or 90% of which have been violated. Very little is therefore known about the cultures which produced these items, in spite of the very large number of objects now available on the art market. Their exact provenance will remain forever unknown, as also their date. The range of dates which the thermoluminescent examinations can provide is so wide that it leaves unresolved the problem of accurate dating. Given the urgency of the situation, programmes to raise awareness among the local population have been set up and the authorities are in a position to intervene and seize looted objects, as in Thial in 1990, and more recently in the spring of 1999, in a village close to Jenne.
National and international legislation protecting these objects:
	- Law No. 85-40/AN-RM, of 26 July 1985 concerning the protection and the promotion of the national cultural heritage, Decree No. 203/PG-RM of 13 August 1985 instituting a national commission for the safeguarding of the cultural heritage, Decree No. 275/PG-RM of 4 November 1985 regulating archaeological excavations, Decree No. 299/PG-RM of 19 September 1986 regulating the excavation, commercialization and export of cultural goods. (Mali) - Law No. 86-61/AN-RM of 26 July 1986 concerning dealers in cultural goods. (Mali) - UNESCO Convention of 1970 on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, ratified by Mali on 9 April 1987, in force on 6 July 1987. - Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Mali concerning the Imposition of Import Restrictions on Archaeological Material from the Region of the Niger River Valley and the Bandiagara Escarpment (Cliff), 23 September 1993, extended by an agreement of 19 September 1997.
	–Sources
	- M. Dembele, A. M. Schmidt, J. D. van der Waals, 1993 : « Prospection de sites archéologiques dans le delta intérieur du Niger », Catalogue de l’exposition / Exhibition catalogue, Vallées du Niger, Paris, Réunion des Musées Nationaux. - Samuel Sidibé, 1995 : « La lutte contre le pillage du patrimoine culturel malien et l’exportation illicite : efforts nationaux et coopération internationale » / « The Fight Against the Pillage of Mali’s Cultural Heritage and Illicit Exportation : National Efforts and International Cooperation », Le trafic illicite des biens culturels en Afrique / Illicit Traffic of Cultural Property in Africa, ICOM. - UNESCO Ð USIA.

Source: http://www.nsaccid.org/WARA%20Report.htm

Conserving Cultural Heritage with Microcredit: An Impact Assessment of the CultureBank in Fombori, Mali

This study presents an assessment of the social, economic and cultural impacts of the CultureBank in Fombori, Mali, based on field research in 2002. The CultureBank is a local initiative started in 1997 to conserve cultural heritage through the provision of small business loans to community members. Participants obtain credit by using cultural objects as collateral and the objects are conserved and publicly displayed in the CultureBank museum collection. This innovative approach to microcredit provides a financial incentive for cultural conservation in a rural community.

The Dogon CultureBank of Fombori

Submitted to The African Cultural Conservation Fund, Bamako, Mali

by

Tara F. Deubel

Graduate Research Assistant

Dr. Mamadou Baro

Assistant Research Professor

Department of Anthropology

Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology

University of Arizona

December 15, 2002

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Africa Shrine blogs about Dogon Architecture. with an article from Merkus, E. An Introduction to The Pyschology oF Architecture.

The homes the Dogon people of Central Africa are an excellent example of how the original container is reproduced almost literal form. Although these people live quite simply in our terms, their culture is very complex and closely aligned with nature. To the Dogon, home is not a particular building, but a series of stages, which includes several buildings. The home is closely related to the development of the individual. For example a Dogon wife stays with her father until she has had her third child. She does however sleep with her husband during the night and returns to her father’s house during the day. It is a hierarchical system where the family is spread over several houses until they have achieved the status required to own their own home. Their homes are not owned by individuals as such, but are stages in one could say, psychic development and are shared as such.

A friend put some nice Mali photos on Flickr for me to use. Here’s a couple of Dogon architecture from Tata Timbo:

Here’s an article from a journal I found a while back which addresses the issues of fake archaeological artefacts from Mali.

Faking African Art	Volume 54 Number 1, January/February 2001
by Michel Brent

A five-year investigation reveals that most West African terra-cotta sculptures are fakes that have fooled specialists, sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and ended up in some of the world’s most prestigious museums.

An African forger named Amadou added a body and hind legs to the authentic front part of the Kuhn ram (shown in white), a Malian terra cotta sold at Sotheby’s for $275,000 in 1991. (Photograph courtesy Michel Brent) [LARGER IMAGE]

On Wednesday, November 20, 1991, Sotheby’s New York auctioned the Kuhn collection of African objects. On the cover of the auction catalog was the collection’s masterpiece, a West African terra-cotta ram. Since thermoluminescence (TL) tests–a primary means of authentication–had indicated the figure was between 570 and 1,000 years old, there was no suspicion about the piece’s age. A little before noon, the animal was sold for $275,000. The Kuhn ram has not been the object of much discussion in the years since the sale, except in Mali, its country of origin. There, rumors have it the piece may have been faked.

Since the 1980s, nearly 80 percent of the allegedly antique terra cottas that have left Mali have been counterfeit. Prized by collectors, Malian terra cottas have been looted from hundreds of archaeological sites on the middle Niger River. As these pieces have become increasingly scarce, Malian antiquities dealers have sought faked pieces from local potters. The resulting trade has seriously corrupted the art historical record: in most cases it is now simply impossible to tell if terra cottas published in scholarly works on West African art are genuine.

One day in 1995, while investigating a story on West African cultural heritage, I saw a terra-cotta animal leg, remarkably similar to those of the ram sold in 1991, in the backyard of a Bamako antiquities dealer’s house. I had a sudden and inexplicable feeling–born of years of staring at these objects–that this leg had been fashioned by the same hand that had made the Kuhn ram. I decided to find out whether my intuition was correct.

Early in 1997, after persistent inquiry, I was put in touch with a Bamako potter named Amadou. Our meeting took place in March 1998 in the courtyard of a modest Bamako hotel. I asked Amadou if the Kuhn piece was real or fake. “It’s a fake,” he answered. “At least part of it. I was the one who made it.” Amadou told me that back in October 1986, in the village of Dary, a hamlet along the Niger River, erosion had exposed several pieces of terra cotta at an abandoned village site. “As for the [Kuhn] piece, I was able to fashion it from nose to hindquarters.” His handiwork from this prolific period also ended up in the Belgian count Baudouin de Grunne’s celebrated collection, as well as in Geneva’s Barbier Muller Museum. The stomach of the Pregnant Ewe on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, was also found among the fragments in Dary and the entire piece refashioned by Amadou.

Once I heard Amadou’s story, I hurried to Dary, 450 miles northeast of Bamako, to find out if the villagers’ version corresponded with the forger’s. The village has a population of about 200. There are no roads leading to it, and three months out of the year when the Niger River overflows there is no overland access at all. There are no phones here, no electricity, and no running water.

When shown Amadou’s photos of the intact pieces that had emerged from the site, Denba Traore, the village chief, quickly grasped that I knew what had gone on there nine years before. For several hours I sought information from people in various parts of the village. Those who had taken part in the digging confirmed Amadou’s story, corroborating the names of the antiquities dealers involved in the digging, the time they spent at the site, the number of intact pieces recovered, and how the pieces were transported out of the bush in jute bags on a donkey cart. They also provided details concerning the authentic fragment of the Kuhn ram (its findspot and the depth at which it was buried) as well as the stomach of the Pregnant Ewe at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Everything checked out; Amadou had told me the truth.

Another factor favored the spread of fakes: publication during the 1980s of monographs, art books, and auction house sale catalogs devoted to West African terra cottas. Seyni M. Karabenta of Kourikoulo told me that once catalog photos of African terra cottas started appearing in Mali, he began producing nearly 100 fakes annually. In fact, he made so many forgeries over a 15-year period that insiders started calling his fakes “Karabentos.” Mobo Maiga, one of the two major Djenné dealers, confirmed that each time an authentic local piece was brought to him, he hired local sculptors to make several copies. Forgers no longer had to wait until new looted pieces emerged to copy them–they just worked directly from photos. Faking was simpler this way and the range of objects to copy wider. According to the forgers, to whom I showed a fair number of art books such as Bernard de Grunne’s Ancient Terra-cottas from West Africa and catalogs including that of the Menil Collection in the United States, the most important published African terra cottas have been copied several times, and the copies sold as ancient.

Inhabitants of the Malian village of Dary recognized a photograph of a genuine ram pillaged from the hamlet in 1986. The forger Amadou used fragments recovered during the looting to make the Kuhn ram and the Pregnant Ewe at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. (Photograph by Michel Brent) [LARGER IMAGE]

Today, West African forgers are counterfeiting Nok and Ife statues from Nigeria and Benin in response to trends in collecting. There’s no question that some African forgers are geniuses at what they do. Malian and Nigerian dealers have often told me how difficult it can be to distinguish fake from genuine when terra cottas arrive at their doorsteps. If those in the trade have such doubts, the deck is obviously stacked against their clients. Furthermore, West African terra cottas represent a relatively new market. It was only at the end of the 1960s that European collectors first started buying these pieces. The very “newness” of the art leaves the door wide open for forgeries. And a new class of collectors, less knowledgable than their predecessors, has now emerged who view authentic African art as a good financial investment. African dealers have now installed themselves in the United States, a huge market with potentially limitless profits. American buyers are considerably less careful than their European counterparts in distinguishing authentic from fake.

Also regrettable is the obsession among Western collectors with ancientness; white dealers who sell to them often disdain works of art younger than 100 years old, even when copies of wooden effigies made in Malian villages earlier in the twentieth century are sometimes better executed and more beautiful than the originals. Contemporary African art is flourishing, with Zimbabwean sculptors and Congolese bronze sculptors showing the way. While some forgers have created lucrative businesses selling their own wares, many more like Amadou are waiting for the time when they can step out of the shadows and own up to their considerable skills as legitimate creative artists.

A former regular contributor to the Belgian news magazine Le Vif-L’Express, Michel Brent has for the past eight years focused on cultural heritage issues in West Africa.

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The following article from BBC News draws attention to the fact that the smuggling of illegal artefacts from African countries is a growing trade. The US has banned all imports of Malian artefacts unless they are accompanied by an official export permit, but not all other countries have such strict laws.

Mali relics recovered in France

Some of the artefacts confiscated may be up to one million years old

French customs officials say they have seized more than 650 ancient artefacts smuggled from Mali in one of the largest such finds at a Paris airport. Described as an “archaeological treasure”, the objects were thought to be on their way to private US buyers.

Experts say most of the items are from the Neolithic period, but some may be up to one million years old.

The artefacts are thought to have been taken from archaeological sites on the edge of the Sahara desert.

The 669 items - 601 stones and 68 bracelets - were confiscated on 19 January at Charles de Gaulle airport and included axe heads, flintstones and stone rings.

Most of the artefacts date from a few thousand years BC. But others are from the Acheulean period, between one million years and 200,000 years old, and from the Middle Stone Age (200,000 years BC to 20,000 years BC).

The artefacts were shipped in nine parcels from the Malian capital, Bamako, which the accompanying paperwork described as handcrafted objects.

Customs officials look out for artefacts being exported from specific countries such as Mali which may be smuggled, a customs spokeswoman told the BBC News website.

If they have a doubt, they then seize the objects and have them assessed by experts to establish their age - in this case an expert from the Department of Prehistory at the Natural History Museum in Paris, she said.

Growing traffic

This type of traffic was unheard of a few years ago, an airport customs official told the AFP news agency.

“Since 2004 we have observed regular traffic in this kind of contraband. There is a big market and we are pretty sure that these items, which had been neatly sorted and were of very high quality, had been pre-sold,” Eric Cailheton said.

French customs officials made two similarly large finds of archaeological items from Niger in March 2004 and December 2005.

The 2005 haul included more than 5,000 stone arrowheads and 90 carved stone artefacts, dating back 5,000 years.

The items were found in the baggage of a passenger who arrived on a flight from Niger’s capital, Niamey.

The Dogon of Mali are better known for their astronomy and wonderful cliff dwellings. But there are also wall paintings in caves. Here’s a great picture of some of the paintings by Arctic Photo

Here’s what seems to be a close up of the same place from Staffan at Flickr

He says it is the place of boy’s initiation, Songo

http://www.flickr.com/photos/staffan_martikainen/91859555/

A further pic and more information from Judy D at Flickr who says that ‘The rock paintings are spiritual symbols for the circumsion ceremony and are repainted each time’.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/judyd/391622380/