On Artifact and Identity at the Niger-Benue Confluence ... · On Artifact and Identity at the...

On Artifact and Identity at the Niger-Benue Confluence

John Picton

African Arts, Vol. 24, No. 3, Special Issue: Memorial to Arnold Rubin, Part II. (Jul., 1991), pp.34-49+93-94.

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On Artifact and Identity J

at the Niger-Benue Confluence

JOHN PlCTON

diate and more relevant than whatever it is we think we mean by the use of an "ethnic" label.3 Indeed, this paper is about the continuing need to stop thinking that such terms inevitably signify the boundaries of categorically distinct populations. We must learn instead to understand how individual people, households, and communities build their identities with one another, and understand the place of artifacts in that

process. Time and time again, when we find the same kinds of artifacts in use among neighboring populations of distinct language, political affiliation, or whatever, we habitually note that here is something that has crossed an ethnic border. But surely, if the distribution of a particular kind of artifact is not con- strained by the boundaries of language or political affiliation, then it is more precise to note that such boundaries do

PHOTO RCHARDCSUAGWU

E t in arcadia ego

The photograph in Figure 2 was taken on New Year's Day, 1970, in Lagos. Arnold Rubin is among a group of people who had come to know him, to like him, and to love him. He had arrived in Nigeria to set up a further period of field research in the Benue valley; his family would soon be joining him. The others in the photograph are, left to right: Andrew Ogembe, my field assistant, now also, sadly, no longer living; Margaret Picton, my mother; Susan Connell, later my wife, whose work in Akoko-Edo provides much of the data summarized here; and Richard Osuagwu, who organized and took the photograph, and who looked after us all.

Before Arnold arrived I had studied his contribution to the Lagos Museum archive (often referred to these days as the Kenneth Murray archive, because he, of course, started it). During his time in my Lagos apartment, we talked for hours and hours, comparing research experiences and sorting out the future of African-art studies. Arnold went on to do something about it, whereas I continued thinking about those conversations: indeed, although William Fagg taught me to look at African sculpture, it was Arnold who taught me to think about it. Twenty-seven years later, Arnold arranged for me to teach at UCLA in the 1987 fall quarter. The conversations resumed, and the Ebira papers I have written since then are the result.

2. ET IN ARCADIA EGO. LEFT TO RIGHT: ANDREW OGEMBE, MARGARET PICTON, SUSAN CONNELL (LATER PICTON). ARNOLD RUBIN, JOHN PICTON, RICHARD OSUAGWU. WHO ORGANIZED AND TOOK THE PHOTOGRAPH. LAGOS. JANUARY 1.1970.

T his paper is about a region of Nigeria west and south of the con-

fluence of the Niger and Benue rivers, some 80 kilometers from east to west and some 120 kilometers from north to south (Figs. 3,4). Its population includes the most northeasterly of Yoruba-speaking groups and, to their south, diverse communities of people, many grouped into the administrative unit now called Akoko-Edo Local Government Area, who speak several mutually unintelligible Edo-related languages. The diversi- ties of language notwithstanding, these communities each have a social structure based upon lineages crosscut by age grades leading to the taking of titles. The social and cultural details, of course, may vary considerably, but this variability subsists within that common pattern nevertheless.' However, at some point in the past, Ebira people moved into the territory between these Edo and Yoruba communities, speaking a language related to neither and bringing a lineage-based social order otherwise lacking the distinctive features of their neighbors.2 Then, throughout the whole region one finds Uneme smiths, a distinct Edo-speaking group, largely en- dogamous due to their depressed status. Finally, one must take into account the Nupe marauders who overran much of the area in the late nineteenth century, soon followed by British marauders in the early twentieth.

Whatever the differences of language and of social order, however, the presence of relationships through trade, intermarriage, and oral tradition provides for a sense of identity between diverse communities that is more imme-

LEFTAND ABOVE: 1 . AGE-GRADE MASK CALLED DAUDU. CARVED IN 1968 BY GARUBA OBlRO AND TWO ASSISTANTS. WOOD. OIL-BASED PAINT. TWENTY YEARS AFTER KENNETH MURRAY'S VISIT, THE IMAGE OF THE EUROPEAN HAS BEEN REPLACED BY THAT OF A NIGERIAN SOLDIER. SEE ALSO FIGURE 7. OGBE. AKOKO-EDO. 1969.

N I G E R I A

1

1

0 t oo 200

3 THE NIGER-BENUE CONFLUENCE AREA. NIGERIA

YORUBA GROUP Yoruba, Akoko 1comprsng eleven languages), lgala ...........

NORTH WEST E D 0 GROUPI Okpamer Okpe Akuku (21 shua (31 Ekpenm, 141 k z NORTH-CENTRAL E D 0 GROUP Etsako, kpesh 151. Otuo (61 Uneme (71. Ate-Okpela 181. a % k w o M u Ososo 191, Sasaru-Enwan-lgwe 110) Ora, lshan Ed0 ................... NUPE - ncludng Basa-Ngge

i Karl18

I BASA KWOMU Y O R U B A

UNCLASSIFIED Ogor-Magongo ( i l l . Ukaan (121. Akpes (131 ,,-"

ORA : ,oren ,,,vir,.,n,

Z

ED0 ISHAN L .

K I L O M E T E R S i LY - > '

0 15 30 I. -: e

......... . . "......... .l K W A R A ,S T A T E L O ~ O ~ .............Kabba "......-f.--. I g b r r a I

d l v l s l on..* *. ; ................. ,:Q

: O O b o r o k e ;'4'. i. . ., * a O N D O f'"-i.. lOkene lEganyl

I ; :=

Alaokuta 0: 2.. l.-.. t -", ~ k ~ e d o i . . . ' lOsoso x U

01a l :..,,'*.Ikpeshlo.: ; ......3.. O g b e o .,.-,,..Adamode f l . . : B E N U Ei igara l .::"'''.., o o k p e l a................. ''...-..+'S T A T E

lkao"'..., Akoko -Ed0...'O t u o o i d ~ v ~ s ~ o n ?i

".........I:.' B E N D E L S T A T E ioldah ,

lAuchl

K I L O M E T E R S -0

1

15 30

4 ADMINISTRATIVE BOUNDARIES IN THE CONFLUENCE AREA, 1970

I 1 Eblra

Eblra , ,,

KEY ...... . . .

EB - N.Central ED0

---0 Ebira-Etuno

5 LANGUAGES AT THE NIGER-BENUE CONFLUENCE (AFTER HANSFORD, BENDOR-SAMUEL & STANFORD 1976)

not exist for that artifact, and perhaps for the institutions of its manufacture, use, and distribution. People live simul-taneously within several dimensions of relationships, and the boundaries exist-ing in one dimension will not and need not necessarily coincide with the bound-aries within another. Moreover, the boundaries and identities signified by or embodied within one set of artifacts can be denied by others. Recognition and discussion of the frequent irrelevance of

6 LANGUAGE DISTRIBUTION IN AKOKO-EDO, 1970 RESEARCH BY SUSAN PICTON

ethnic or "tribal" labels, and of the need to understand the sense of identity from within, rather than continually impos-ing it from without, constitute part of my contribution to that long-running and still essentially unresolved debate about relationships between aesthetic categories and social categories (e.g., Bravmann 1973, Kasfir 1984, Vansina 1984).The continued use of words such as Yoruba and Ebira in this paper is a convenient shorthand, but should be

understood as no more than a slipshod representation of the complexities of individual and social identity.

The artifact traditions of the region include textiles, pottery, sculpture, met-alwork, and masquerade. Some are com-mon to the entire area, others are distinctive of particular localities, and yet others exhibit continuity well be-yond the region under discussion. There may be no obvious fit between the dis-tributions of certain artifacts, languages,

or social institutions. For example, Ebira masquerades have been widely copied by surrounding non-Ebira communities.4 It seems that we still know all too little about the process whereby a sense of identity is mediated and con- structed by and with and within artifacts. This is an urgent and potentially highly productive area of field engage- ment, likely to reveal significant point- ers to the formulation of interpretive models for the writing of history.

The identification as Yoruba of the most northeasterly of Yoruba-speaking communities is based at least as much upon linguistic analysis as on broader cultural continuities, for the importance of a specifically "Yoruba" identity is in itself a phenomenon emerging within or following upon, and as a consequence is a phenomenon of, the colonial period. This is not to say that "Yoruba" is a colonial invention-far from it-but the precolonial bases of what has emerged as a specific Yoruba ethnic identity are still far from clear. These communities form a series of "mini-states" (Obayemi 1976: 201-9; the map he gives is particularly clear) known as Iyagba, Ikiri, Abinu, Oworo, Igbede, and Ijumu (including Owe). During the colonial period these were grouped together around the administrative base of Kabba. To the west, Iyagba and Ijumu march with the Igbomina, Opin, Ekiti, and Akoko regions. To the north, Iyagba, Ikiri, and Oworo march with Nupe-speaking peoples. To the east this area is bounded by the confluence and the lower Niger. To the south, Ijumu (in particular, Ogidi and Owe) and Abinu once evidently marched with a variety of Edo-speaking peoples, until these latter were pushed to the south by Ebira. The boundary between the lands of Owe and Ososo, the most northerly of Akoko-Edo settlements, once passed through the middle of what is now Okene market, Okene being the administrative center for Ebira established by the colonial regime.

People calling themselves anebira (i.e., people of ebira, a word that refers to the outward manifestation of a beneficent destiny) have come to occupy a very roughly triangular area of some 64 kilometers coming inland from the lower Niger by some 64 kilometers at the riverain eastern side. To the southwest of Ebira is Akoko-Edo, a modern administrative grouping of a number of communities whose inhabitants speak some half-dozen mutually unintelligible languages, as Susan Picton found, mostly

7. AGE-GRADE MASKS IN AKOKO-EDO. ON THE MASK AT LEFT. CALLED DAUDU, THE

EUROPEAN SITS ASTRIDE A HORSE, ON THE RIGHT, HIDDEN BEHIND THE SHIELD ON THE MASK CALLED SIEKI. HE SURMOUNTS A LEOPARD

(SEE PICTON1990 FOR A DISCUSSION OF THE IMAGERY). OGBE, AKOKO-EDO, 1947.

Edo-related, but including some unclassified languages. (Indeed, without Susan this paper could not have been written.) To the southeast of Ebira is the area known as Etsako, also Edo-speaking. The riverain eastern border is occupied on both sides of the Niger proceeding downstream from Lokoja first by Basa- ngge communities and then Igala. To the east, along the Benue valley, the Basa- ngge area marches alongside Basa- kwomu (i.e., "true" Basa); communities known as Basa-ngge are in fact Nupe, in which language the name apparently means, "We are not Basa" (Gunn & Conant 1960:72, n. 1). Fishermen from almost everywhere also seem to be here.

I remember a negotiation between fishermen whose first language was Urhobo and a district head whose first language was Ebira, for rights to fish where the inhabitants' first language was Igala.

The languages of the confluence area (see Hansford, Bendor-Samuel & Stanford 1976; Fig. 5) are currently regarded as Niger-Congo languages and classified as Kwa languages, with the following four exceptions: Basa-kwomu, the "true" Basa, placed within the Western Plateau group of Benue-Congo; and three unclassified languages4gori-Magongo, Ukaan, and Akpes. The Kwa languages are classified as follows: the Yoruba group (including

PHOTO KENNETH MURRAY

PHOTO S W N PICTON

8. WOODEN DOOR. AKUKU, AKOKO-€DO, 1968

9. WOODEN DOOR. OJA-OKE. OKULOSHO. AKOKO-EDO, 1966.

eleven Akoko languages and Igala), eight North-Central Edo and four North-West Edo languages, Ebira, and Nupe (including Basa-ngge).5

Each of the paragraphs that follow, regarding Okpameri-Okulosho, Ososo and Ebira, and Uneme exemplifies a particular problem, question, and dimension of that sense of identity-its creation, expression, representation, affirmation, maintenance, subversion, and so on- that cannot be grasped simply in terms of language, social institution, or political affiliation. Although these latter factors must also be considered as part of the matter of identity, each is capable of providing for alternative and perhaps conflicting dimensions of it.

Okpameri and Okulosho. Susan Picton found that the language I have listed as Okpameri is spoken in an area compris- ing some twenty-three villages (Fig. 6) . Some of these are relatively recent settlements beside the main road with an aboriginal village still maintained on the original hilltop site, as in the case of Ogbe-Oke and Ogbe-Sale (whose suffix- es derive from the Yoruba words for hill/upper and lower; this in itself rep- resents the use of standard Yoruba as a medium of education). However, the inhabitants of Ogbe regard themselves as quite distinct from the rest of the world, even though they recognize historical and linguistic affinities with Ogugu to their north and Semorika to their south; the inhabitants of Ogugu regard themselves as part of Okpameri,

while those of Ogbe and Semorika do not. Indeed, Okpameri is said to be a made-up term (meaning "We are one") not in use much before the middle of the present century. Before that, while people recognized that they spoke a common language, there was evidently no sense of a need to assert a named common identity. On the other hand, Makeke, Oja, Dagbala, and Ojirami at the eastern side of the Okpameri-speaking area did regard themselves as in some sense a unity, but they called themselves Oku- losho, not Okpameri. Then, Onumu, situ- ated between Ojirami and Semorika, regarded themselves as akin to Oku- losho, but not part of it, and certainly separate from Semorika, Ogbe, Ogugu, and Okpameri. The sophistication of

these categories cannot be ignored. Indeed, they need further investigation, for in themselves they represent a history as yet to be written.

Standing in contrast to these repre- sentations of identity and difference is the network of markets. For example, the pottery-making center of this area is the Okulosho village of q a , whose potters carry their wares for sale at local markets, including nearby Ososo, and Igara twenty-four kilometers to the southwest. Susan Picton noted that the potters would stay the night at Enwan, the village adjacent to Igara, in order to arrive at the market at the crack of dawn. Neither Ososo nor Igara nor Enwan is Okpameri or Okulosho. Oja pottery evidently mediates at least one

dimension of the economy of the area, with Oja pots and potters embodying and representing a "community" between diverse settlements, differences of language notwithstanding. However, I am not at all certain how far to the north Oja pottery is distributed. Certainly the markets within the Ebira-speaking area are dominated by pots and potters from the western Ebira community of Obo- roke. These two pottery-making centers are clearly separate technical traditions employing very different methods of manufacture. Oja pots are built up in rings and fired rapidly (see Susan Picton's photographs in Fagg & Picton 19701, whereas at Oboroke the clay is pulled rather than built up and is then fired over a longer time.

Ososo and Ebira. Ososo, in the northeast of the Akoko-Edo region, is a small town with its own language. The satel- lite village of Egbetua with which it shared a common identity, history, and language is now largely deserted, its inhabitants having moved to Ososo. I have already referred to the tradition that Ebira people pushed Ososo and Owe apart as they began to settle in their present location, establishing their rights in a series of feuds. However, one Ebira lineage, the "children of Ehebe," is well known in Ebira for its long-standing relationships of trade and intermarriage with Ososo. Ehebe is regarded as the Ebira ancestor who made peace with Ososo after a series of feuds. In Ososo, however, the "children of Ehebe" are regarded as an Ososo lineage, the descendants of those who stayed behind when most Ososo people moved south to leave room for Ebira settlement. There is no way of resolving this ex- planatory hiatus. My presenting one party with the history provided by the other produced such great annoyance and dispute that no purpose was served, other than to make me realize that the sense of common identity was maintained precisely because no one attempt- ed to resolve the alternative traditions.

The consequences of these histories are threefold. First, there are people in Ebira and in Ososo who are related through marriage; and I do not mean Ebira "children of Ehebe" marrying Ososo "children of Ehebe," for these descent lines are exogamous. Rather, the fact of common descent as a result of intermarriage is a function of the tradition of contact between otherwise distinct communities. That tradition is realized by means of trade at each other's markets, which, together with visits at times of family celebrations because of existing marital bonds, provides the context and the possibility for the marriage between people of one community and people belonging to other lineages in the other. All this is

-- 10. WOO

facilitated by the oral tradition of Ehebe- Ososo familiarity, whatever its present interpretation on either side. Each of these elements supports and encourages the others, thereby enabling and creating a sense of identity and community between communities otherwise distinct.

The second consequence is that there are Ebira people (i.e., men and women born and bred as anebira) who for reasons of marriage, trade, friendship, or perhaps as directed by an oracle, have chosen, as adults, to live at Ososo, and vice versa. Third, there are second-generation (or third-generation and beyond) Ebira people born and bred at Ososo. Although they are participants in the rites and grades of transition from child to elder that are distinctive to Ososo, and are also inevitable participants in the likewise distinctive dual system of inheritance and descent, patrilineal and matrilineal, yet they retain a sense of identity as Ebira. A second-generation Ebira is, of course, only "Ebira" in those circumstances wherein this definition is needed. For most of the time, participa- tion in the life of Ososo is such that "ethnic" definition is irrelevant. However, one medium and justification for main- taining an Ebira identity might be the continuing series of rights and obliga- tions in regard to people and lineages in Ebiraland, recognized as applying to a second-generation Ebira person, Ososo domicile notwithstanding. A further consequence of Ebira-Ososo community derived from that Ebira sense of identity signified by masquerade. Some fifty years ago Ebira masquerading was indeed established in Ososo. It was so popular that it came to provide a major structuring basis of the Ososo calendar, until a couple of years ago when it was abolished. The extreme violence that

DEN DOOR. , (ISHUA?) ONDO STATE, 1964.

11 DETAIL SHOWING FIGURES THAT EMBELLISH A WOODEN BOWL COLLECTED BY KENNETH MURRAY

AT SEMORIKA, AKOKO-EDO. IN 1947.

PHOTO JOHN PICTON

had come to characterize Ebira festivals provided the justification for their pro- scription, and this in turn provided the context for Ososo Christians to achieve the abolition of masquerading with the additional justification that it was not an aboriginal component of Ososo life. Rather than denying the point that I am trying to establish, however, this shows the complexities of these histories. It remains to be seen whether masquerading will be re-established in either place.

Uneme (Ileme), the smiths. Scattered throughout the region under discussion are villages and households of smiths who regard themselves, and are so regarded by everyone else, as different. Their language, traditions of origin, prac- tical skills, and depressed status constitute their difference from those other people among whom they live. In Edo oral tradition their ancestors were ex- pelled from the Benin kingdom, an event that is taken as defining that ill esteem from which they have suffered ever since.6 The present king of Benin has in fact rescinded their ancient banishment, but whether this will improve their status is hard to imagine. For the moment, to be born into an Uneme household is still to inherit a despised status.

In Akoko-Edo, Susan Picton found that there are five distinct Uneme villages: Ekpedo to the north between Okpameri and Ogori; Uneme-Osu to the east between Okulosho and Etsako; and Uneme-Nekhua, Uneme-Akpama, and Aiyetoro, to the south of Okpameri and Okulosho. Uneme households are also

13. DETAIL OF A STOOL PRESUMED TO BE OF AKOKO-ED0 ORIGIN. IT SHOWS THE MARRIAGEABLE

VIRGIN. AN IMAGE CHARACTERISTIC OF AKOKO-EDO. THE STOOL IS KEPT BY THE DESCENDANTS OF OMADIVI.

THE FIRST "NATIVE AUTHORITY APPOINTED BY THE COLONIAL GOVERNMENT AT OKENEBA. OMADlVl HELD

THAT POSITION FROM 1903 UNTIL HIS DEATH IN 1917. OKENEBA. EBIRA. 1967.

12 AUDU OVANERO CARVES A STOOL FOR A WOMAN TO USE AT HOME. AHANECI, EBIRA. 1971

PHOTO JOHN PICTON

found in other Akoko-Edo communities, such as Ososo and in the towns and villages of Ebira, and in many of the villages of the Kabba area. Uneme smiths migrated from Ekpedo throughout Ebira and beyond, probably during the previous century, attaching themselves to well-to-do Ebira patrons in the villages in which they settled. This patron-client relationship still exists; an Ebira household elder will still refer to a descendant of the smith who had been the client of his ancestor as "my smith with the continuing expectation of service, whatever the present relative wealth of the two households.

By the 1960s there was no recollection by the smiths of the procedure for smelt- ing iron other than that they had once done it: their raw material was industrial scrap. All manner of tools were produced. The most important by far was the hoe blade, essential for subsistence farming and serving also to define and embody, together with masquerade, essential notions of Ebira masculinity.7 Uneme smiths also have a technique of brass plating iron,8 and they evidently were, and continue to be, responsible for much, though not all, of the woodcarving throughout this area. Around Kabba, it would appear that brassworkers were freeborn natives, whereas ironwork was left to Uneme smiths (Krapf-Askari 1966).

- PHOTO JOHN PICTON

Throughout Ebira, no freeborn man would touch any kind of metalworking, and there was simply no tradition of Ebira metallurgy or any remembrance of a past tradition. In Ososo it was reckoned there had once been local smiths, but that with the presence of the Uneme, these had long since disappeared. On the other hand, throughout the region it was clear that freeborn local men as well as smiths engaged in wood sculpture: in Ebira it seemed as if this was a practice copied by the freeborn from the smiths. The point here is that whereas metalworking is the proper occupation of Uneme smiths, woodworking was a more occasional pas- time, without the status attached to the Uneme that would discourage the Ebira would-be carver--and why pay a smith if you can do it yourself! The presence of Uneme smiths, with their added involve- ment in woodwork, thus provides another dimension of unity to the entire region, more wide ranging than the distribution of Oje pottery, although it is a unity standing in ironic contrast to their status as locally perceived. The further irony is that, given the relative durability of the smiths' equipment, in a future archaeo- logical context this misapprehension would be reinforced.

I now return to the question of the presence of masquerades in the Akoko-Edo town of Ososo that sing in Ebira language, dress in the manner of masquerades in Ebira, and appear in a cycle of performances like that in Ebira towns and villages. I found myself presented in 1982 with three explanations. First, Ebira people living at Ososo brought their masquerades to Ososo, as indeed they have done in other Akoko-Edo villages. Second, Ososo people who had visited

Ebira at festival times and admired what they saw were responsible. Third, a particular master smith was the source. In Ebira, smiths can be commissioned to carve masks and hired to perform in masquerades, but they cannot own masks or masquerades, or indeed anything that falls within the category of is'ohiku ("things of ancestors"). One smith of my acquaintance, for example, was fined for acquiring a pair of agidibo, the cylindrical log-bells (often incorrectly referred to as slit-gongs or slit-drums), and they were confiscated from him. Agidibo are beaten at every major celebration in Ebira and are regarded as the first item among the "things of ancestors" to be acquired by the head of a new household. The restrictions placed upon smiths in Ososo would not have been the same as in Ebira and could not have included a restriction on the ownership of masks and masquerades, these not yet being part of the cycle of performances at Ososo. The smith would have been able to do what he could not have done in Ebira: own his own masquerades, rather than merely be hired to carve other people's masks and perform other people's masquerades. By doing so perhaps he hoped to improve the poor esteem of all smiths.

It turned out, of course, that it was impossible to resolve these contradic- tions. Such was the popularity of Ebira masquerade that everyone wanted to claim its inception as his ancestors' or his lineage's own. Once again, the attempt on my part to resolve the question of historical veracity was dangerously pro- vocative. The problem is essentially insoluble. In practice, people united in the enjoyment of masquerade without the need to ask, let alone resolve, such questions. The recent abolition of masquerading is all the more curious given this attachment and popularity.

Some of the other artifacts that are characteristic of the area discussed in this paper, such as the staffs and stools proper to elders and titled men, are widely distributed throughout much of the region to the immediate southwest of the Niger-Benue confluence, irrespective of the radically different ways in which that authority is defined and legitimated, and irrespective, likewise, of the distribution of languages or the histories of common identity such as those discussed in the last few paragraphs. By this I mean that the shape, size, material, and conventions in ornament and figurative imagery have certain things in :om- mon wherever they are found in this area, and that this distribution itself pre- supposes another kind of history embodied in the artifacts themselves. Other kinds of artifacts, like certain masks, are distinctive of particular localities or have less widespread distribution patterns. Certain other masks and mas-

14 STOOL OF A DECEASED ELDER IN ADOGO. MANUFACTURED LOCALLY IN EBIRA ABOUT 1920 60cm

. THE RED FEATHER (ATTACHED TO THE PIPE OF THE FIGURE ON THE LEFT). FROM THE WING OF THE VIOLET PLANTAIN EATER. IS A SACRIFICE THE FIGURE AT THE FRONT OF THE STOOL AS PHOTOGRAPHED IS POSSIBLY A HIGHLY SCHEMATIZED INTERPRETATION OF THE AKOKO-ED0 VIRGIN THE FIGURES OF PIPE-SMOKING MEN ARE a EMBLEMATIC OF THE AUTHORITY OF ELDERS ADOGO EBIRA, 1966

querades provide for an eastward continuity, and yet other artifacts, like textiles, a westward continuity. These distribution patterns suggest that the functional relationships and emblematic status of artifacts as contexts of ideas and practices, and as participants within (other) contexts of ideas and practices, must be regarded as specific to particular loca- tions and people, historically and geo- graphically. This specificity is where one has to begin if one is to write a history of art that touches upon the real lives of real people. In summarizing the distribution patterns, therefore, this paper is no more than the preface to such a history.

The dominant precolonial textile technology of the confluence area is within that tradition with a westward, or Yoruba, distribution in which women weave as a habitual domestic pursuit using an upright single-heddle loom with locally spun cotton yam, brown as well as white, and sometimes indigo dyed (Picton & Mack 1989:67-83). It is a

tradition that cannot yet be defined in I "ethnic" terms. Okene, established as

the modern administrative center for Ebira, has become known during the present century as a source of decorative weaving using rayon, machine-spun cotton, lurex, and industrially produced dyes, with Okene market serving as the

, , , . focus for the distribution of Ebira textiles to other parts of Nigeria. The distinctive technical feature of these cloths,

, in addition to the range of yarns and colors, is the use of supplementary-weft- float patterns, often over a design ground of warp stripes. It is evident from the patterns themselves that the design sources are multiple, though the detailed history of these developments remains to be investigated.

However distinctive Ebira weaving might seem to be, especially when viewed in markets and with traders far away from home, it is nevertheless a

, very local development within a more widespread handspun tradition already

PHOTO JOHN WTON

PHOTO JOHN PICTON

16 STOOL OF A DECEASED ELDER. BY AN UNKNOWN CARVER WHOSE WORK IS

WIDESPREAD IN IJUMU AND ABlNU VILLAGES ADAVI-EBA, EBIRA, 1966.

15. STOOL OF A DECEASED ELDER. CARVED BY THE LATE IRACl OF OBOROKE. IRACI'S WORK WAS CLEARLY POPULAR. AS HIS HAND WAS VISIBLE IN THE STOOLS OF ELDERS IN SEVERAL EBIRA COMMUNITIES. THE COWRIES ARE A SACRIFICE ONE OF THE DECEASED'S SONS IS SITING ON THE STOOL OZIOKUTU. EBIRA, 1969.

18. FIGURE KNOWN AS OMOTO. WOOD PATINATED WITH BLOOD. 63.5crn.

ALTHOUGH IT SEEMS TO SHOW AN AKOKO-ED0 BRIDE PRESENTING AN OFFERING TO HER

FATHER-IN-LAW, THE FIGURE IS CLEARLY MALE. EITHER WAY, THE IMAGE HAS NO PRECEDENT

IN EBIRA, HENCE MY ATTRIBUTION TO AN AKOKO-ED0 SCULPTURAL SOURCE.

IT IS AMONG THE REGALIA OF THE OZUMl TITLE, OZlOGU LINEAGE.

OKENE. EBIRA. 1966.

17. DETAIL OF THE STOOL OF OKINO. A LINEAGE ELDER AT OKENEBA, EBIRA. IT SHOWS A MALE FIGURE WEARING ORNAMENTS THAT. IN AKOKO-EDO. WOULD INDICATE HIS AGE-GRADE STATUS. (THE INSTITUTION OF AGE GRADES IS ABSENT IN EBIRA.) 1967.

in existence prior to the advent of Ebira people. In any case it is only one of several such local developments: weft-float patterns, for example, are also employed by many Akoko-Edo weavers, and by Owo weavers as well. Once again, the detailed histories remain to be discov- ered. If one such textile is labeled Yoruba and another Ebira, this cannot in itself be taken as presupposing anything of significance beyond the presumption that one was collected in a place where people speak Yoruba and the other in a place where people speak Ebira. No matter how different they may seem, both are products, or local realizations, of the same technical tradition, which at the present state of knowledge can only be located and considered in terms of the geographical distribution of the given technology. An ethnic label might be appropriate if it is demonstrably the case that people somehow identify themselves with that variant within the overall tradition (or are so identified by others, as could, of course, be the case for Ebira).

The latest development in the textile history of this part of Nigeria that I

3 JOHN PICTON

know of, on the basis of my brief visit in May 1990, concerns the arrival in Obo- roke, a western Ebira town, of Mrs. C. A. Bamisaye from the Yoruba town of Igogo near Otun-Ekiti in the mid-1980s. Mrs. Bamisaye brought with her the nar- row-strip, horizontal, double-heddle textile tradition that one thinks of as characteristic of the professional male weavers in central Yoruba urban centers such as Ilorin, Iseyin, and Oyo. Mrs. Bamisaye now has several Ebira girls as

her apprentices, and it would appear that this novel technology is proving to be very popular at Oboroke; young women have expressed a desire to establish themselves as weavers in this rather than the single-heddle tradition.

It is also tempting to assume some kind of formal continuity between the eastern Yoruba sculptural traditions of Ekiti and Opin-in particular the large- scale epa and aguru masks-and the sometimes two-meter-high age-grade masks located in a few Akoko-Edo communities. However, the ritual status of eastern Yoruba helmet masks as imonle, or material embodiments of metaphysical energy, is clearly very different from the display context in Akoko-Edo. Moreover, the apparently sporadic distribution pattern of helmet masks with monumental superstructures is not at all comparable to the distributions of single-heddle weaving technology or of the emblems of age and authority. In other words, if there is continuity it remains to be established by field investigation.

The appearance of masq;erades as part of the celebration marking the passage from one grade to the next in a system of age stratification seems to be widespread among the various northern Edo groups (though not Ososo, for example). Moreover, the members of one grade in particular have the respon- sibilities of masked performance under the guidance of those in the grade above. How much of this is also true of the various surrounding Yoruba-speaking communities is not yet established. In the Opin village of Osi-Ilorin, I found, in addition to the status of Opin sculptures as imonle, that although the young men of one particular grade were responsible for carrying aguru and epa masks, the performances were not part of age-grade celebrations as such. The complete absence of age grades, and the very different placing of masquerades in Ebira culture has already been noted (Picton 1988a, 1989). This absence of an age-grade context of performance is equally the case in regard to masquerades of Ebira derivation in the Kabba and Akoko-Edo areas, as far as I know.

The basis of most northern Edo masked costuming seems to be a twisted netted fiber mask hung with lengths of split fiber, or sometimes palm fronds, but with the arms and legs of the wearer left free and visible. The intention, as far as the performer is concerned, does not seem to be the denial of human agency in the manifestation of metaphysical enti-

19. THE OHlNDASl OF EZlAVl LINEAGE HOLDS THE STAFF CHARACTERISTIC OF AN ELDER OR TITLED MAN. HE WEARS THE BREEDING PLUMES OFTHE STANDARD-WINGED NIGHTJAR. A SIGN OF LlMlNAL AND ANCESTRAL STATUS. OHlNDASl IS THE PREMIER TITLE IN EBIRA AND IS INHERITED AMONG FOUR LINEAGES. OKENGWE. EBIRA. 1966.

ties, but rather the hiding away of the individual as part of the process of his removal from one social category to another. The contrast with Ebira and Ebira-derived masquerading is striking, for there the denial of human agency is an essential component of the presentation of ancestral and related identities. When my close friend, the late Ebira sculptor and performer iKarimu Ihiovi, took me with him to visit friends at the Okpameri village of Imoga in the northern Edo area during an age-grade celebration he was shocked by the masquerades for this very reason. To make matters worse, one performer in a procession of young men had a wooden mask that he was actually putting on as he danced along, in full view of everyone.

The basic mask form is subject to various and variable forms of elaboration and display both within a village and from one village to another (e.g., Borgatti 1976, 1982; Susan Picton in Picton & Mack 1989:168). Moreover, in no more than five or six northern Edo villages there are, in addition to these fiber con- structions, wooden helmet masks. When worn, some of these produce masked figures of about three meters in height. The documented cases are as follows: Ogbe (Kenneth C. Murray in 1947, Susan Picton in 1968-69, 1982), Ugboshi-Sale

(Susan & John Picton in 19691, Ojirami (Susan Picton in 1968), Ghotuo (Otuo) and Ikao (Susan Picton in 1968-69, Jean Borgatti in 1972-73), Ikpeshi (John Picton in 1964). In addition, Jean Borgatti has identified a headdress collected at Okpe as part of this tradition (1982:46). It is, furthermore, worth remembering that Ogbe is Okpameri-speaking, though denying Okpameri identity; Ugboshi is Okpameri; Ojirami is Okulosho; Okpe is one of four or five villages speaking their own North-West Edo language; and all of these are within the Akoko-Edo Local Government Area (Fig. 6). Ikpeshi is located in the Akoko area of Ondo State, just to the west of the Osse River that provides the boundary with Bendel State. The language is probably the North-West Edo language of Ishua (I was not aware of all these complications at the time), unless there is some historical connection with the North-Central Edo community of Ikpeshi in Akoko- Edo. Ikao is Ghotuo-speaking (i.e., in the North-Central language group), in the Owan Division. In other words, these masks are found in villages spread among four distinct languages, but apparently not in the sometimes greater number of those other villages speaking these languages. There is, evidently, a curious historical problem here.

LEFT 20. THE MASK OF AN EKUECICI, OF CHARACTERISTIC EASTERN EBIRA FORM ADAMODE. EBIRA. 1969.

RIGHT 21. AN EKUECICI AT THE FEAST OF ECANE THE PERFORMER WEARS A MASK CARVED BY THE LATE AMODU IHlOVl OF OPOPOCO AND A COSTUME OF MALE BURIAL CLOTH. OBOROKE. EBIRA. 1968.

In any case, quite apart from the variety of fiber masks, we cannot necessarily assume that we are dealing with a single sculptural tradition, as Borgatti's published illustrations and discussion indeed make clear (1982:36-51; and, likewise, Murray's and Susan Picton's unpublished photographs in the Lagos Museum). There are helmet masks with superstructure (at Ogbe, Ugboshi, Ghotuo, Ikao, Ikpeshi) and without superstructure (not seen at Ikpeshi, but I probably did not see the complete set), and wooden head- pieces with fiber masks (at Ghotuo, Ikao, Okpe). Moreover, the Ogbe masks are carved with a sculptural naturalism (Figs. 1, 7) which, though naive in execution, provides a clear contrast with the schematic forms characteristic of Ghotuo and Ikao. These masks are still being made; at any rate, in 1982 the carvers of Ogbe told me they had already started work on the set required for the next set of performances. It will be recalled that new masks are commissioned for each

festival, the previous set having been dis- carded in the forest, as noted by William Fagg, R. E. Bradbury, Philip Allison, and Susan Picton in their field notes and as published by Borgatti (1982; for further data on Ogbe see Picton 1990).

Some half-dozen door panels embellished by relief carving have been noted at Semorika, Akuku (Fig. 8), and Oja- Oke (Fig. 9) (all Okpameri or Okulosho); at Ikpeshi (Fig. 10) (perhaps Ishua); at Ukpila (Etsako); and at Okene (Ebira); by Murray, Allison, and Susan and John Picton, at various times from 1947 to 1969. Full details are in the photographic archive in the National Museum, Lagos. Once again, it would be tempting to place these alongside eastern Yoruba Ekiti and Opin door panels. However, they all have more in common with the schematic Edo tradition as documented by Ulli Beier at Agbor (1963) and by Allison at Uromi, Ishan (Lagos Museum archive). The subject matter of the relief sculpture also supports this proposition. The door at Oja is certainly the most spectacular, in terms of both size and skill in execution. The Ikpeshi example is, by contrast, the most crudely schematic, as indeed were their age- grade masks. (This is intended not as a judgment of local value in regard to aesthetic merit, but rather a judgment in terms of my perception of the level of skill realized.)

I use the term schematic, together with the implied contrast with naturalistic, on the basis of E. H. Gombrich (1960) and Peter J. Ucko (197719 as a descrip- tion of by far the majority of essentially small-scale carved wooden objects found throughout the region. I refer in particular to the staffs and stools for elders and titled chiefs. I would also include within this category the face masks characteristic of Ebira, found wherever Ebira-style masquerades have been taken up. Then, here and there, one also finds artifacts of more restricted distribution, sometimes unique to one or two places, but making use of more widely distributed elements and conventions of image and motif. A rectangular dish embellished with figure carving collected by Murray at Semorika (Fig. 11) is a case in point. I am not, of course, suggesting that only one form of schematization exists: on the contrary, throughout the confluence area one sees a range of schematic options, each perhaps the work of a single carver.

The most ubiquitous type of artifact in this region, however, is the small domestic stool (Fig. 12). Every adult woman has her own, and there will be several more in any household. These may be no more than 15-25 centimeters

22. DETAIL OF A STAFF FOR AN ELDER OR TITLED MAN. OGBE. AKOKO-EDO. 1947.

in height (though smaller stools are sometimes carved for little children) as compared to 40 centimeters and more for elders' stools. Domestic stools can be considered as providing a basic repository and source of design. Sometimes they may be no more than rectangular or cylindrical blocks of wood, though more often than not they are carved either with a central and often ringed pillar between upper and lower discs, or with three or four legs at the circumference of upper and lower disc. Some elders' stools are simply bigger versions of these domestic forms, without figurative embellishment.

One of the most frequent composi- tional elements found on the large stools for elders and titled chiefs, in Akoko-Edo and throughout much of the area covered by this paper, is the figure of a woman, arms bedecked with bracelets and raised above her head. Borgatti (1971) provides the explanation of this image by her use of a Northcote Thomas picture of a northern Edo girl dressed for the celebrations of her coming of age and subse- quent availability for marriage: her arms are indeed bedecked with bracelets and raised above her head in a gesture of display and as a means of relieving the sheer weight of her ornamentation. Her neck and legs might well be similarly adorned. The distribution of the image is thus more widespread than the coming- of-age celebrations in which it originates. For example, it is found on many stools in Ebira (see Borgatti 1982: fig. 26 for one of my photographs of such a stool; also Fig. 13). Some of them must have come into Ebira as a consequence of raiding or trading expeditions in the nineteenth century and perhaps earlier. These would

. 4

PWTO KENNETH MURRAY

have been the work of northern Edo sculptors, though some are the work of locally domiciled smiths, also of Edo origin; and some are the work of Ebira sculp tors (Figs. 14, 15) and of an unidentified sculptor or sculptors in Ijumu and Abinu villages (Fig. 16) taking the Edo image as among the relevant "schemata of tradition" (Gombrich 1960:319). Moreover, the arm adorned with a series of bracelets could be another source, together with the domestic stool, of the ringed motifs that are so common an element of all staffs and stools throughout the area, but I have no proof of any of this.

In Ebira there is no grand celebration of a girl's coming of age, so that while the image of the woman with upraised arms is an acceptable embellishment of stools (otherwise why should it be so widespread?), it cannot ever have had the same significance, historical or emblematic, as in Akoko-Edo. Indeed, the generic term for the sculpted human figure in Ebira, whether freestanding or part of a stool, is onyonokumi, which in fact describes one who is paralyzed, lame, or unable to talk. Its acceptability clearly, therefore, does not depend upon its overt subject matter within Ebira culture, but upon its ornamental value. It has aesthetic meaning as advertising, containing and representing something of the esteem and the wealth of the elder or chief, together with his household. The main formal sculptural property of such a stool is its larger size, but the fig- ural embellishment enhances its capacity to stand for that elder or titled man and his wealth, and his household. Moreover, in the past, when at his death much of that wealth would have been consumed and destroyed in the cycle of celebrations of his achievements, one of the few remaining memorials, in addition to that primary memorial in his descendants, would be his stool. Evi- dently the representational capacity and content of this image cannot be the same in Ebira as in Akoko-Edo, whatever the historical source of its subject matter and its iconic conventions.

Occasionally the figure with upraised ringed arms on a stool is male (Fig. 17), and there is an Akoko-Edo ceremonial prototype for this also. For example, Susan Picton's photograph of the leader of an age set at Oja during the celebrations marking their passage from one grade to the next (Picton & Mack 1989:172) shows him wearing, among other things, an array of ivory bracelets. As before, this would be an acceptable image on a stool for an Ebira elder for reasons of embellishment and display, but, in the absence of formal age grades, not as an icon of status. The same consideration applies to the remarkable figure of a man (despite the appearance of breasts, it is definitely male) holding a bowl and known as omoto (Fig. 18), part of the

regalia of the Ozumi, a title held by the "children of Ogu," a lineage at Okene.

The staff of an elder or titled man is another type of sculpted artifact found throughout the confluence area. It has an iron ferrule at the base and an ornamental top, and for most of its length the staff is typically carved with a repeated, apparently nonfigurative motif, though my comments above on the possible derivation of the ringed motif should be noted (Figs. 19,22-24). However, on one staff, made by an unidentified sculptor, a pair of carved rings forms the stool for a seated figure at the top (Fig. 25). This image of a seated figure, in addition to the ringed-am motif, reinforces the sug- gestion that the stool might be repository, source, and recipient of these schemata of tradition. The tops of these staffs are often nonfigurative, though many have the shape of the human head. Other images also make their appearance, in particular the human figure, usually female (throughout the region), but sometimes male. One also finds the occasional figure on horseback, for example at Okene, though its place of carving is not known, as well as masked perform- ers of the kind found in the area around Kabba (Fig. 26).

One further carved wooden artifact remains to be considered, and in some ways it is the most problematical of all. I refer, of course, to the face mask characteristic of Ebira and Ebira-derived masquerades. In the Ebira language these masquerades are known generi- cally as ekuecici (eku=masquerade, here qualified by ecici, a word usually translated into English as "rubbish," i.e., the loose stones, sticks, leaves, and household and other detritus scattered over the ground). The term eku refers primarily to that domain of human existence to which in Ebira tradition one passes at death. Whatever that domain is, and wherever it is, it is not the paradise of Islam, nor is it the beatific vision of Christianity, even though it is often quite erroneously translated by English- speaking Ebira people as "heaven." Eku also extends to metaphysical and material manifestations of that domain, and in particular to those we call masquerade. The essential core of the dramatis personae is provided by the ekuoba, a shroud-like appearance that provides for the re-embodiment, within the costume, of deceased lineage and household elders.10 At the first manifestation as ekuoba, the ancestor will be accompa- nied by his mask-servant, the ekuecici, whose role is to clear his path of any rubbish that might cause him to stum- ble. Apart from ancestral commemora- tions, ekuecici appear as generic messengers of the domain of the dead at the mid-year feast of Ecane, "The Feast of Women" (ece=wine, festival; anee=women). The name of this feast

d ' 23 STAFFS AND STOOLS BELONGING TO THE ASIEMA A LINEAGE TITLE HOLDER THE STOOL IN THE MIDDLE GROUND HAS A STEM OF BARK SEWN WITH FIBER TO FORM A CYLINDRICAL BOX THE UPPER DISC PROVIDES THE LID THlS HAS NO PARTICULAR RITUAL PURPOSE OR SIGNIFICANCE OZURI. EBIRA, 1967

24 DETAIL OF A STAFF BELONGING TO THE ASIEMA

.A "i NO INFORMATION WAS FORTHCOMING TO

EXPLAIN THE SOURCE OF THlS EXTRAORDINARY

PHOTO X)HN PICTON

and the status of ekuecici each serve to define the lesser status of the other.

The wooden mask, opo, and the cloth hood, omurumuru, are alternative pieces of headgear for ekuecici, though some have both. From one point of view, the contextual placing of the mask is contin- gent upon the placing of masquerade in general within Ebira life and of this Species within the dramatis personae of masquerade (see Picton 1989, forthcoming). The shape of the wooden mask, however, must have a very different historical placing, if only because of the fact that, as I have noted above, a good deal of woodcarving in Ebira is in fact the work of smiths. Moreover, the fact that Ebira masks typically are blackened is likened to the dirt of the smith at work forging iron.

Shortly before Ecane the box containing mask and costume will be opened and the contents inspected. If, as sometimes happens, termites have entered in and eaten the mask, another must be carved in time for the coming performance. In those circumstances someone might well volunteer to try his hand. Instead of paying a smith to carve it, he can buy an adze at market and take it to his farm out of the way of women. Many Ebira masks are indeed single attempts. Sometimes the mask turns out sufficiently well that others may ask the carver to try his hand at a mask for them also. This way a man might carve half a dozen masks, until he reaches such an age that he can no longer take commissions of this kind, the age at which one is expected to be the patron of younger men, not their client. This was how Amodu Ihiovi of Opopoco became a carver (Picton & Mack 1989:6; see Willett 1971: pl. 207 for an example of his work). Other men, perhaps in analogous circumstances, teach

CONCEPTUALIZATION OF THE HUMAN HEAD. OZURI, EBIRA, 1967.

themselves to carve flutes, mortars, stools, and agidibo. Another friend, Momo Simpa of Oboroke, made masks and flutes. He also once carved me a cigarette holder (though I do not smoke). Amodu's son iKarimu carved masks, and once he made a staff. He and his brother Jimo also carved agidibo. Audu Ovenero of Ahaneci carved mortars, agidibo, and stools.

The major concern when making a mask was that it should fit comfortably over the face: its outer form seemed of secondary concern. Nevertheless, in accepting a commission to carve a mask, iKarimu Ihiovi would always ask his patron whether it should be like this or that existing and well-known mask." When I asked him what kind of face he thought he was carving when working on a mask, his reply was very straight- forward: "It is the face of eku."

On the other hand, the intention to replicate an existing artifact, no matter how exact or inexact the end product might turn out to be, could be expected to promote the development of a character-

26. STAFF FOR AN ELDER OR TITLED MAN. PHOTOGRAPHED AT A BASA-NGGE VILLAGE NEAR

AJAOKUTA BUT SURMOUNTED BY A FIGURE OF A MASQUERADER THAT IS CHARACTERISTIC OF,

AND PRESUMABLY WAS CARVED AT, AN ABlNU OR OWE-IJUMU VILLAGE. 1967.

25. DETAIL OF A STAFF BELONGING TO THE ASIEMA. A LINEAGE TITLEHOLDER AN IDENTICAL STAFF WAS SEEN ELSEWHERE IN EBIRA. ALTHOUGH LOCAL OPINION SUGGESTED A BASA-NGGE SOURCE. THIS DOES NOT SEEM LIKELY. OZURI. EBIRA. 1967.

istic range of alternative schematizations. Thus, some masks are a combination of flat planes and angles (Figs. 20, 21). Others are almost featureless, almost faceless, having just two holes to see through (Fig. 31); and it can be argued that the eyeholes are only coincidentally part of the external sculptural form, for they serve primarily to enable the wearer to see and are placed accordingly, from within. There are masks some- where between these extremes, and there are others so inept--seeming to be so uncertain in the realization of a clear shape as to suggest lack of skill on the part of the sculptor-that it is hard to place them. Still others are so obscured by sacrificial accumulation that it is impossible to know what they originally looked like (Fig. 27). Similarly, decorative embellishment, such as abrus seeds and pieces of mirror, can obscure the original shape more or less completely.

Much of the commentary on Ebira wooden masks would also be true of the masks carved for Ebiiaderived masquerades in northern Edo and Ijurnu villages (Figs. 28/30; see also Borgatti 1976: figs. 2,

10,12). In all cases we are, of course, talk- ing of Ebira institutions that have been borrowed, in whole or in part, and with certain connotations of masculinity and ancestral authority retained even though incorporated into otherwise very different ritual and metaphysical orders. For example, at Ososo (Figs. 29, 30) the at- traction, so I was told, was that women respected these masquerades; but the new-year and mid-year festival structure had been taken into the calendar, apparently without the ancestral embodiment within ekuoba that provides justification for all other aspects of performance in Ebira. The eclectic putting together of a satisfying set of festivals and performances has already been described by Borgatti elsewhere in northern Edo (1976) and seems to have been widespread in this area, perhaps as a re- sponse to the experience of Nupe and then British conquest. Conversely, Ebira people are eclectic in their choice and use of masks and masquerade costuming, points I have already made elsewhere (Picton 1990).

An Ebira history of art would be written in terms of a coming together of masking traditions with an eastward distribution and a technology, shared with their immediate neighbors north and south, with in part (e.g., textiles) a westward distribution; and this technology came to be served by the ironworking skills of Edo-speaking smiths originating to the south. For many villages of the

Yoruba to the northeast, Akoko-Edo, and Etsako, local histories of art would include these same elements, among others, but arranged in a different order. The Ebira presence is the source of certain kinds of masquerades in this region, while at the same time Ebira people have largely taken on the surrounding technology. In those northern Edo villages that have Ebira-derived masquerades, these coexist side by side with the preexisting local masquerades that are a celebratory feature of the system of age stratification, except at Ososo where pre-Ebira masquerades disappeared without a trace.

A final comment on the possibility of a mediating role for the smiths in the distribution of the smaller-scale works now seems appropriate. The huge Akoko-Edo age-grade masks are definitely the work of local (i.e., non-smith) carvers, as indeed are probably the majority of the smaller-scale works in Akoko-Edo. As Uneme smiths moved northward, supplying the equipment for local sculptors and apparently supplant- ing local smiths, they must have realized that in taking to wood sculpture themselves they would enhance their useful- ness, in particular supplying stools and staffs. They would have drawn upon

1 their own existing skills in the carving of wooden hafts and hilts for the mounting of hoe and knife blades, thereby intrg ducing a further level of schematization. As they moved through Ebira toward Kabba they would have supplied both ironwork and wood sculpture, using their new skills as sculptors to supply face masks to Ebira and Yoruba patrons. In their turn, a few local people, having observed the smiths, took to sculpture, perhaps because they wanted to avoid having to commission a smith. Yet ironi- cally, the work of smiths provided the model to be copied>z

A note on certain "exotic" artifacts is also appropriate. In 1966, in a village of the eastern Ebira district of Eganyi, I pur- chased a mask for the Lagos Museum (see Willett 1971: pl. 205) that was unex-

OPPOSITE PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT

27. MASK OF AN EKUECICI. WOOD. MAGICAL MEDICINE. ABlNU AND EBIRA CLOTH. THE WOOD OF

THE MASK IS COMPLETELY OBSCURED BY SACRIFICIAL MATTER. INOZIOOMI. EBIRA. 1969.

28. A PERFORMER WEARS A MASK CARVED BY A SMITH.

GBELEKO. OWE-IJUMU. YORUBA. 1964.

29. MASK OF AN EBIRA-STYLE MASQUERADE. (BEING A WOMAN. SUSAN PICTON WAS

NOT ALLOWED TO SEE IT.) OSOSO, AKOKOEDO. 1969.

30. MASK OF AN EBIRA-STYLE MASQUERADE. (AGAIN. SUSAN PICTON WAS !i

NOT ALLOWED TO SEE IT.)

31. MASK OF AN EKUEClCl CALLED OCUVOVAGU. .-THE ARM OF THE PAYAS MONKEY:, WOOD. MAGICAL MEDICINE. ABINU, EBIRA, AND OTHER TEXTILES. IT SEEMS REDUCED TO THE BARE ESSENTIALS NECESSARY FOR THE PURPOSE. OKENEBA. EBIRA. 1966

daughter had continued Kaka's work as a sculptor. This remains to be followed up. The metropolitan Igala style is not pan-Igala, of course, as Roy Sieber de- monstrated so many years ago (1961): beyond the metropolitan area there is another range of schematic styles, each probably the work of no more than a single carver. Umale, living near Dekina and identified by Susan Picton, provides us with one of the very few of these hands to which we can put a name (Fig. 33). Also under the rubric of the "exotic" I would also place those masks in some Etsako communities whose characteristic shapes and colors seem to have much in common with northern Igbo masking traditions, and about which Borgatti has already written (1976,1979).

A tension runs through this paper between the need to avoid ethnic labels and, paradoxically, the need to use them.

32. MASK FOR A PERFORMANCE IN CELEBRATION OF AN ISLAMIC FEAST.

BASA-NGGE, 1967.

pected in terms of its subject matter and embellishment. I was told it was the work of an anivasa carver called Okaka. The word anivasa means "inhabitant of Basa," but the Basa referred to here are the so-called Basa-ngge ("We are not Basa"); that is, they are the Nupe people who settled in the northwest of the Igala kingdom as early as 1840, not the "true" Basa (Basa-kwomu) further along the Benue. The greater number of Basa-ngge communities are to the east of the lower Niger, although there are riverain Basa- ngge villages along the west bank also. Masked performances are part of the cycle of Muslim fasts and feasts. The masks themselves present various forms of wild animals, and the manner of their cawing reminds me of the metropolitan Igala style of wood sculpture. Susan Picton worked in several Basa-ngge, nonmetropolitan Igala, and Basa-kwomu villages to the east of the Niger in 1969, when I also visited some of the riverain communities on both sides of the river, Basa-ngge and Igala (Fig. 32), where the Russians have since built a steelworks. Susan was told, quite independently of my Eganyi information, of a Basa-ngge sculptor called Kaka. Apparently Kaka was the one and only Basa-ngge sculptor. Susan was also told that at his death his

Questions about the historical and social placing of artifacts can only be answered in terms of particular local events given the very complexity of the categories. This complexity could be explained as a function of the confluence historically as a meeting point, but such an explanation would be a mistake, not simply because it might be a misconstruction of confluence history and society, but perhaps because the certainties and relative simplicities that seem to obtain elsewhere are also misconstructed. In my paper on Ekpeye masks and masking (Picton 1988b), I noted that the Niger Delta seemed to be an area in which individual artifacts, cults, motifs, and the like -and even the names of such things, irrespective of whether two things with the same name in two different places looked at all like each other-had unique and individual distribution networks, which

PHOTO JOHN PCTON

indicated a capacity for parts of a complex of practices to be moved about apparently as readily as complete assem- blages. In the absence of detailed knowledge of the histories of local people and communities, this must sound as if it is an entirely random process; obviously that would be an absurd conclusion, as if artifacts had a life without people. (On the other hand, the reverse of that proposition, that the lives of people are dependent upon artifacts, is a basic point of fact.) The situation in the confluence seems to be like that in the Niger Delta, and it is a case about which I can be more specific. In this paper there are examples in which individuals and communities have moved from one place to another. There are also examples of artifacts, techniques, artists, rites, motifs, and institutions (and names, though I have not cited examples here) being moved from one place to another. I con- clude that all this is emblematic of a widespread, perhaps virtually universal, absence of the simplicities we seem to have yearned for and, perhaps unwit- tingly, have invented. In other words, areas such as the confluence force us to consider the multidimensionality of human life not as a situation peculiar to the confluence, but as a general reality of people and the things they make and acquire and use and think with.13

I have used the term "social" to describe the institutional bases of what people do (e.g., the structure of authority, rights to land). I am aware that I have used "community" in a manner that is ambiguous, referring not just to the discrete settlement such as the village or the town, but also to that sense of identity that develops when people live and work together. This feeling will exist of course by virtue of the institutional traditions of particular places (titles, cults, etc.), but there are always other and sometimes novel structures-the mar- ketplace, the church, the mosque, the school-as well as those informal situa- tions in which alternative senses of community will develop. Some people may wonder at my inclusion of so much detail about language and community earlier in this paper, but I frankly do not understand how anyone could claim to understand the continuities and disjunctions in art without also understanding these as existing among other continuities and disjunctions. The manner in which people are brought together in one dimension of their lives will not necessarily coincide with the pattern of unity and disjunction in others. In this sense, particular boundaries will be cre- ated, maintained, embodied, subverted, and signified within and because of each particular dimension. These boundaries may or may not coincide, and there is no "law," beyond the consequences of particular histories, that insists that they

must coincide. The result is (and we all know that this is true: the proposition is not restricted to the areas under discussion) that two people or groups of people can feel at one with one another when considering their relationship from one point of view, yet at odds when considering it from another. The question of identity thus becomes a complex process of negotiation through these multiple dimensions, with a result that is only very exceptionally unified.

The place of artifacts in this negotiation of identity is inevitable, but no less complex for all that. Precisely how do people create identity and community-and difference-by means and by virtue of artifacts? These are not new questions, of course, as they have been discussed in different ways by Ian Hodder (1982) and John Mack (1982). Several further examples have been given above. Quite apart from the social irony of the historical significances of the smiths, there are the potters of Oja and Oboroke, and there are masquerades. The stratification embodied in particular sets of age-grade masks is a case in point. Ebira masquerades certainly provide for more than one sense of unity and community and disjunction. There is the identification of particular households, sometimes lineages, with particular masquerades; there is the community of those who have enjoyed the healing power of particular masks; there is the fact that for the great festivals at which masked performances provide the focus of public entertainment, men will en-

33. MIRROR FRAME BY UMALE, IDENTIFIED BY SUSAN PICTON AS A SCULPTOR FROM THE DEKINA AREA OF NONMETROPOLITAN IGALA. IT WAS COLLECTED BY PHILIP ALLISON IN 1962 FOR THE NATIONAL MUSEUM IN LAGOS. 1969.

deavor to return home, whether from the farm, the cocoa plantations of Yor- ubaland, or the cities; there is the catego- rization by gender; and there is that sense of Ebira identity that exists as a function of the derivation of Ebira masquerades by many surrounding communities without any denial of their source.

The discussion is not, therefore, about open or closed frontiers, or about borderlands where there is a stylistic mix or confusion, but about "the limitations of labels" (Visonh 1987) given the proposition that the boundaries mani- fest in one dimension may be absent in another. A trans-"ethnic" distribution should not be explained as the tran- scending of a boundary but rather as the absence of a boundary, and as the absence of a coincidence of boundaries between the multiple dimensions of social life. Whatever we might mean by "ethnic" identity, it "may not be a solid and certain property" (Mack 1982:121); it cannot be taken for granted either as a certain property of individuals or communities, or even as something that exists at all. The very proposition of eth- nicity as a characteristic of the peoples of Asia and Africa is an imposition as much as it is an oversimplification. The reality is likely to be very complex, as much for a British Islander or an American as for someone from Ogbe or Oboroke. For any individual person or community, the sense of identity can remain a fluid and sophisticated property, and dependent upon the circumstances in which an identity needs to be identified (Mack 1982:121).

I can have no argument with the person who wishes to call himself or herself Ebira, or Yoruba, or Okpameri, or Okulo- sho, or Akoko-Edo, or Nigerian, or whatever; but I would then ask questions about the social, historical, and artistic circumstances in which an identity of that kind, as no more than one of several possible species of identity, comes to have an overriding significance. On the other hand, it has also to be recognized that the idea of being "Yoruba," or "Eng- lish," or "American," has a force and a value that is quite independent of the content taken to be subsumed under the terms themselves, and in that sense their continued use may be justified. If, however, we find these words little more than a convenient shorthand, as a conve- nience packaging, then we should remember that sooner or later we are expected to remove the contents and throw the packages away14

Notes, page 93

--I

selection, by Susan Vogel, of the pieces to be included in the book and the accompanying show; the photographs by Jerry Thompson, including his choice of angles and lighting; and the "lessons" on how to see that preface and accompany the pictures. The authors' perspective is unabashedly reactionary: . .

"Formal analysis is an old-fashioned enter- prise," declares Vogel in the foreword. In recent years, labels have been expected to provide an ethnographic context for African works, although iften, as in the case of most o f the pieces in this exhibition (see review, p. 82), very little is known about them besides what we can tell by looking.

Vogel accepts the fashionable contention that Westerners privilege the visual sense over all others, but she shares none o f the feeling one encounters in postmodernist cir- cles that this cultural proclivity is something we should feel guilty about. In her introductory essay, somewhat aggressively titled "Primer," Vogel says that when we find the echo of our own private experiences of well- being, mortality, sex, fear, or humor in African sculptures, we should remember that "these emotions do not come from real contact with the art, but rather from contact with our own inner l i fe . An experience o f the sculpture itself must begin with a clear visual reading o f its sculptural form" ( p . 75). In ~ f r i c a , t h e making o f a work, or even its mere existence, might be more important than its appearance. Though masks and cer-tain other theatrical works were intended to create a visual effect, the audience did not seek "the purely visual contact that we in the West associate with looking at art" (p. 79).

Well, that's the theory of the Western art experience, but an ethnographically percep- tive account o f our galleries and museums would surely report that more goes into that experience than disembodied looking. There may not be, as in Africa, the music, recitation, and movement to which Vogel refers, but there are surely, as in Africa, "belief, anticipa- tion and understanding," guided by the appearance and atmosphere of the building, by the catalogue in our hand, and by the curatorial voice in our ear (p. 80).

In his introductory essay, "Some Thoughts on Looking at African Sculpture," Thompson repeats the theme o f the book. "Looking at the face of an African figure apart from the rest o f it is probably not very African. For that matter, just looking at, not touching, feeding, conversing with, or otherwise living with these figures is not very African" (p . 63). Nevertheless, he says, for viewers concerned only with looking, the face may be a strategic area. Thompson stresses not only the active role o f both the human eye and the camera in creating images, but also the importance o f multiple photographic views to a full understanding o f a three- dimensional piece. Dramatic black-and- white photographs, most of them closeups, illustrate and fully support his contentions. In the exhibition itself, eyepieces were provided to encourage viewers-to adopt specific perspectives. Thompson ends on a romantic

note, claiming that whereas Westerners are interested in the particular and the personal, African art seems to concern itself with "the nature of things" (p. 72). After some dubi- ous references to the alleged conservatism o f African culture, he recommends that viewers approach African art humbly, rec- ognizing in it centuries o f celebration o f mysteries that we do not understand. Our "exuberant and subtle refinement o f visual skill" will nonetheless give us access to African sculpture (p. 72).

Vogel dwells on what she calls active inner volume, or an apparent concentration of energy ready to burst outward, as the out- standing characteristic o f African sculpture. Her metaphors amplifying this concept draw variously on thermodynamics, electricity, and sex. The African artist may well give separate sculptural treatment to the several segments o f a figure, rather than unifying them, as would be more usual in Europe; thus, in the well-known Grebo masks, the eyes become discrete units virtually independent o f the face to which they belong. Africans, Vogel says, are not interested in surface textures, except when thick encrusta- tions of blood and dirt may be respected as signs o f great age and power. African sculptors disconcert us with imaginative leaps from realism to geometrical abstraction, from volume to shallow engraving. Although African sculpture is said to be symmetrical, its asymmetry is often its exciting feature. "Traditional African artists tend to create symmetrical designs, but deliberately avoid symmetry in their execution; their works mock symmetry to create interest" (p. 79).

Is all this asymmetry intentional? Vogel is so frank about the viewer's-particularly her own-contribution to the aesthetic experience that she calls into question some of her own assertions about African artistic inten- tions. On the other hand, the most convinc- ing evidence for her contentions about dynamic volume was provided by the exhibition itself, in which one was astonished to discover how small some o f the seemingly massive sculptural forms shown in the photographs actually are.

Vogel also briefly introduces the two collections, one belonging to Udo Horstmann and the other to an anonymous American businessman who has little use for documen- tation and "never bothers much with anthro- pology" ( p . 127). His collection is highly personal, full o f "powerful, aggressive and demanding pieces" (p. 127). Approximately three-fifths o f all the pieces shown have never been published before.

What then do we see? There are few sur- prises. Though many of the individual pieces are new, the genres represented are mostly familiar. Particularly noteworthy are a conical Kete mask from Zaire, a masterpiece of com- position; two Suku masks that could well be portraits o f men you know; an Ijo mask of a water spirit, with a face like a flat sieve; a Dogon mother and child composed o f "machinelike tubes, rods, and knobs" ( p . 131); a small, ribbed and knobbed Lulua fig-

ure that may have been invented for the for- eign market, since it is not quite like anything else and arrived in the art world lacking the patina of use; and an enigmatic clay figure encrusted with shells and serpents from Djenne in Mali. We are reminded once again o f the astonishing geometries that African sculptors discover in the human face and body. Sometimes African sculptures are said not to be realistic, as Greek sculpture suppos- edly is, but in fact there are many realisms. Thompson's photographs document some sculpted truths about the body that the Greeks never knew.

notes PICTON: Notes, frunl pngv 49

From 1961 to 1970 I was an employee of the Department of A n t ~ q u ~ t ~ e s 1 offer of the Federal Government of N ~ g e r ~ a my thanks to Professor Ekpo Eyo and the N a t ~ o n a l Commission for Museums and Monuments for the oppor- tunity to l ~ v e and work In N~geria and for permlsslon to publish thls m a t e r ~ a l , l n c l u d ~ n g the photographs by Chr~stopher Awe, Kenneth Murray, and Susan Picton I am particularly grateful to Doig Simmonds for preparing the maps I also acknowledge the help of His Highness Alha]~ Sanni Omolori, Ohinoyi of Ehlra: the R~ght Reverend Dr Alex M a k o z ~ , B ~ s h o p of Lokola, and the late Andrew Ogembe, my f~e ld assistant in Ebira W~thout t h e ~ r help none of this would have been possihle. In addition to the N~gerian Government, I also acknowledge the financial assistance of the B r ~ t ~ s h Museum, the British Academp and the School of Oriental and Afr~can Stud~es of the University of London. I thank the late Kenneth Murray, who sent me to Ebira and the confluence, Susan Connell (later P~cton) , whom I sent to work in Akoko-Edo and without whose f~e lddata this paper could not have been wrltten, and the late John Omoluahi, to whom Susan introduced me In Ososo and who was so Important a part of our work In 1982. Then, Jean Borgatti came through London at various times on her way to and from an adjacent part of northern Edo Her work and Ideas have prov~ded constant illumina- tlon I also thank Marla Berns for her comments on the first draft of this paper. I certainly feel better satlsfied w ~ t h it as a result.

I At Ososo In Akoko-Edo, for example, there IS a dual system of descent and ~nher~tance, patrlllneal and matrilineal. Two sets of lineages give people two ways of reckoning relat~onships and access to two sets of land r~ghts, and two sets of t~tle-taking rights Matrllineages and patril~neages cut across one other, presupposing complex networks of loyalt~es, and across these, agaln, 1s the stmcturlng of the age grades creatlng yet further loyalties. Then, as an elder, havlng graduated through the age-grade system, a man can enter the title-tak~ng structure, which provides a ranked sequence of lun~or and senior t~t les , prov~ded there IS a vacant title w~th ln either of his lineages The day-to-day government of Ososo was, and continues to he, through regular (and now minuted) meetlngs of the elders and t~tled men In each ward This pattern, In particular the age- grade stratification as definlng the basis of authoritv, with or w~thout the compl~cat~ons of matrlllneages (and sometimes, as in the Edo klngdom, w~thou t any Ilneages), IS

characterist~c of much of the region immed~ately south of the confluence, east and west of the lower Niger, lncludlng the Yoruha communities around Kahba as well as the Edo- and Igbo-speak~ng areas. In many of these, the taklng of a t~ t l e 1s open to any elder of suff~c~ent means w~thout the restrictions of lineage as at Ososo 2. In Eblra commumtles, however, government was, and to some extent st111 is, by 'id hoc meetlngs of the elders of the clans and lineages represented there Eblra descent groups are strictly patrilineal and determine access to both land and authority, though whether clan, sub-clan, lineage or l~neage segment is the land-holding a u t h o r ~ t y depends on the numer~cal sire of the descent group The land of a small clan ~ 1 1 1be administered as a slngle unit, whereas a lineage segment u ~ ~ t h l n a large clan may well he the effective land-hold- Ing group The lineage is, of course, the group within which descent from a common ancestor is more or less preclse, whereas the clan 1s composed of several l ~ n e a g e s all acknowledging descent from a common ancestor, hut u ~ t h - out knowing the precise 11nk. There 1s no age-grade organization, and the status of elder 1s determ~ned by absolute rather than soc~al age Most clans have at least one t~tle, an

office of ritual duty on behalf of the clan; it confers honor and esteem on the immediate lineage segment chosen to present a candidate for a vacant t ~ t l e Moreover, the tltle is always conferred by the elder upon a man jun~or to h~mself. The ritual s tatus of a titleholder enables h ~ m to act as spokesman for the clan, but always under the authority of the elder. 3 There seems to be no a priuri inhibition on the creating of a sense of Identity hetween peoples Inhabiting differing social orders. 4. As Arnold Rubin noted after an initla1 presentatlon of this paper at the Museum of Cultural Hlstory, UCLA, November 1987, it made little sense in thls reglon to talk of :arc<.,rls. anJ ;onrlnulrlzi ~f ' s t \ 12." b u ~ ra1hc.r oi :are-

r.,rlc- an.{ :onrlnulrlzi 01 rorm 3nc. n ~ ~ c h r add rhz a l ~ ~ general point that continuities of style can exist wlthout continuities of form, and vice versa. The original title of this paper was "On Form and Style at the Niger-Benue Confluence," but I have preferred not to become involved here in unraveling the complex meanings of these words, particularly "form" with its Aristotelian and Platonic reso- nances. In any case "artifact" and "identity" serve, I hope, to clarify the argument presented. I should add, however, that I would not have thought t h ~ s through but for the comments on the first draft by Marla Berns. Having been asked by her to clarify my use of terms such as form, style, and culture, I concluded that I would do better to rewrite the paper not using them at all.

5. The unclassified languages are: i. Ogori-Magongo, unclassified but presumed to be Niger-

Congo, spoken In two v~llages in the south of the area administered from the Eblra town of Okene but which in terms of social institutions are otherw~se better regarded as Akoko-Edo.

ii. Ukaan, also unclass~fied but presumed to be Niger- Congo, spoken with variations of dialect in a group of even smaller villages, some withln the Akoko-Edo area of Bendel State, others in the adjacent area of Ondo State.

ili. Akpes, also unclassif~ed but presumed to be Niger- Congo, spoken in villages (Including Ikeram and Ibaram) in the area adjacent to Ukaan.

The Kwa lnnguages are classified as follou~s I. The Yomba erouo: - ~ u 1

i Yomba (and all ~ t s dialects, mutually intelligible and unintelligible).

11. The Akoko cluster: some eleven laneuaees/dialects. sufficiently remote from Yoruba to need a separate identity, mostly w ~ t h l n the Akoko Division (which indeed also includes eastern Yoruba communities) of Ondo State, bu t also including Ayere in Kabba n:..:-:--V L I I>IVII.

lli, 1 ~ ~ 1 ~ : again sufficiently remote to need separate listing, 11. The Edo group (and here I only list those relevant to this

paper): a. North-Central Edo languages:

i. Etsako (~ roper lv known as Yekhee) . . , ii. Ikpeshl

iii. Otuo (properly known as Ghotuo) iv Uneme (the smiths) v Ate-Okpela

vi. Ososo vii. Sasaru-Enwan-Iawe

viii. Ora N B.: Edo proper, the language of the Benln Kingdom, and Ishan are also classed in this group.

b. North-West Edo languages: i. Okpameri-Okulosho

ii. Okpe-Akuku-etc. iii. Uhami-Ishua-etc. iv Ukue-Ehuen/Ikpenmi-etc.

(Etc, here means that there are other villages, but no common name.)

1II.The Ebira group: Ebira, also incorrectly known by a Yoruba-ized spelling as Igbira, and spoken primarily within the administrative area known as Igbirra Division. Speakers of this language are also found at Igara, the administrative center of Akoko-Edo Division, where it 1s qualified as Ebira-etuno; and north of the confluence, around Koton-Karifi, where its name 1s pronounced Egbira or Egbura. Ebira and Egbira are to all intents and purposes entirely distinct

IV. The Nupe group: including Nupe (itself including Basa- ngge among many other d~alects) and other languages of the middle Niger region

It will be remembered that Basa-kwomu, the "true" Basa, is placed within the Western Plateau group of Benue-Congo languages.

6. At Ososo, if a smlth comes to your house and sits down, you would purify the chair by passing fire over it as soon as he has gone. In the past if an Ososo woman gave birth to twins, they would be given to the smiths to be cared for. In Ebira, no one would willingly marry his daughter to a smith, and no one would want a smith-girl as h ~ s first wife 7. An irony will be noted: women weave cloth, including the cloth for masquerade costuming, while smiths produce the h w , and yet those are the art~facts that more than any other embody the masculinity of the freeborn Eblra male. 8. I a m grateful to Theodore Celenko for pointing this

out to me: he had found the same technique north of the confluence. 9. I do not intend to suggest anything of the artistic process In the use of this word to describe an apparent reduction of complex to simple forms It 1s one thlng for the historian of art to note a diagrammatic likeness, but quite another to suppose that artists, on the basis of what they can see, int'entionally produce an outline representation: (his would Lenore evervthine that we know of sculotural and iconic ,convention Nor does the term refer to quality. While it must be acknowledged that some schematic forms arise from an inept handllng of tools and materials, it is more often the case that ~t IS as possible to achieve excellence with schematization as with naturalism. Nor do I suggest that schematic and naturalistic are hard-and-fast categories: indeed, they are no more than words. Also, I am using the word "schematic" where many people might use the term "abstract" of this material; but this latter term is distinctly unhelpful and indeed confusing for reasons that I intend to deal with in a separate note to African Arts in the future. For the moment it will have to suffice that I make use of "schematic" wlthin three contrasting and certainly very complex pairs of terms: naturalistic/schematic; figura-tive/non-figurative; and representational/non-representa-tional. However, In the absence of local knowledge we cannot know whether something was intended to be figurative or not, representational (whether iconic or non-iconic) or not. 10. The ekuoba belongs, historically, to a mask~ng complex distributed along the Benue valley and found in Jukun, Idoma, and Igala; in parts of northwest Igbo, and also in a number of northern Edo and Ijumu communities (e.g., see Borgatti 1976: fig. 7). Underlying this complex is an eschatological tradition that suggests a common heritage of ideas, deeply structured within the culture history of a wide area of what is now Nigeria, at least from the western borders of the Yoruba-speaking region to the middle Benue valley. Thus, the Idoma language has kuw, to die; okwu, corpse; and ekwu, masquerader. In Yomba the relevant terms are: ku , to die; oku, corpse; but egun, egigun, egungun, eegun, masked figure. In Ebira we have oku, corpse; and eku, masquerade; but su, to die. This verb does not relate to the Yoruba euphemism for death ( s u n , to sleep) but the typographical limitations of African Arts does not allow me to explain why. The Ebira manifestation of this complex is also informed by Ideas about metaphysical agency that find resonance in Nupe and western Yoruba. As I have noted elsewhere (1988a1, the capacity to create life as mothers and to destroy life as witch- es IS, in the Ebira metaphysical tradition, predicated of wom- anhood. In Yoruba and in Nupe the "phrasing" may be different and not apparently located In the domain of the eschatological; and their social institutions are certainly very different Yet the similarities to the ideoloev of Gelede mas- ~~~~-~~~ -~ - ~ ~ -~~ ~ u,

querade and with Nupe ritual will be patent (Drewal & 1983; Nadel 1954)'

11. On this basis I commissioned a serles of masks from iKarimu for the Lagos Museum. I remember discussing them wlth Arnold. Knowing that I was interested in sculpture, iKarimu would sometimes carve other things to impress me with his skill. Here was a man interested in art, whose skills might, in more diverse circumstances, have been enabled in ways that were not open to an Ebira farmer. 12. This historical model is, of course, entlrely my own invention. 13. This argument has several obvious starting points and reinforcements along the way One is my own fieldwork; another is Rene Bravmann's Open Frontiers (1973); and another is Arnold Rubin and a seminar he gave his graduate students at UCLA when I was visiting: he said the messier it all seemed, the more 11kely it was to be true. 14. Except in Gloucester, England, where there is now a museum of packaging. However, in the conflicting identities arising as a result of the horrors of the war with Iraq, a problem that might seem to be a mere function of descriptive accuracy can be seen to have implications of tragic world- wide consequence.

References cited

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Borgatti, J. 1982. "Age Grades, Masquerades, and Leadership among the Northern Edo," African Arts 16, 1: 36-51.

Borgatti, J. 1979. "Dead Mothers of Okpella," African Arts 12, 4: 48-57.

Borgatti, J . 1976. "Okpella Masking Tradit~ons," African Arts 9,4: 24-33.

Borgattl, J. 1971. "The Northern Edo of Southern Nigeria." M A, thesis, UCLA.

Bravmann, R. 1973. Open Frontiers. New York. Drewal, H. J. and M. T. Drewal. 1983. Gelede. Bloomington:

Indiana University Press. Fagg, W. and J. Picton. 1970. The Potter's Ar t in Africa

London. British Museum Gombrich, E. H. 1960. Art and Illusion. London: Phaidon (4th

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Niger Region, Northern Nigeria. London: International African Institute.

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Hodder, I. 1982. Symbols in Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kasfir, S. L. 1984. "One Tribe, One Style? Paradigms in the Historiography of African Art," History in Africa, 11, 1:163-93.

Kra~f-Askari.E. 1966. "Brass Obiects from the Owe Yoruba." d d u (n.s.1, 3, 1: 82-87.

Mack, J . 1982. "Material Culture and Ethnic Identity in Southeastern Sudan." in Culture Historu in the Southern Sudan, by J. Mack & Robertshaur. ~ h m o i r no. 8 of the British Institute in Eastern Africa.

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Picton, J. 1990. "Transformations of the Artifact: John Wayne, Plastic Bags, and the Eye-That-Surpasses-All-Other-Eyes," in Lotte, or the Transformation of the Object, ed. C. Deliss. Graz (Austria): Kunstverein.

Picton, J. 1989. "On Placing Masquerades in Ebira Culture," African Languages 2,1:73-92.

Picton, J. 1988a: "Some Ebira Reflexions on the Energies of Women," African Language and Culture 1, 1:61-76.

Picton, J. 1988b. "Ekpeye Masks and Masking," African Arts 21,246-53.

Picton, .I . and .I. Mack. 1989. African Textiles (2nd ed.). London: British Museum.

Sieber, R. 1961. The Sculpture of Northern Nigeria. New York: Museum of Primitive Art.

Ucko, P. (ed) . 1977. Form i n indigenous A r t . London: Duckworth.

Vansina, J. 1984. Art H i s t o y in Africa. New York: Longman. Visona, M. B. 1987. "The Limitations of Labels," African Arts

20,4:38. Willett, F, 1971. African Art. London: Thames & Hudson.

KENNEDY: Notes, from page 55

The research on which this article is based was conducted in Europe and South Africa in 1977, supported by the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program. I would like to thank the staffs of the Museum fur Volkerkunde in Berlin. the Voortrekker Museum in Pietermaritzburg, and the Natal Museum in Pietermaritz- burg for making their collections available to me for this research. I am erateful to the Natal Museum, and es~eciallv to Dr. Brian StuYckenberg, for institutional support duiing m; stay in South Africa in 1972-73 and 1977. I thank Dr. Roy Sieber for commenting on an earlier draft of this article. 1. The center of the Zulu kingdom was located between the upper reaches of the White and Black Mfolozi rivers in South Africa, and i ts boundar i e s extended from the Pongola River in the north to the Thukela River in the south, between the Drakensberg Mountains and the Indian Ocean. The boundaries changed over time. At the height of his power, Shaka virtually controlled the area between the Thukela and Mzimkhulu rivers, sending military parties against numerous Nguni-speaking peoples living in southern Natal. 2. The king's regiments worked on behalf of the state. The large number of women formally associated with the royal homesteads were of value not only for their labor but also for the cattle recelved when they married, augmenting the national herds. 3. The king's principal residences were dist~nguished from the typical homestead by the enormous central cattle byre, the vast number and large size of the individual structures arranged around it, and the high quality of materials and workmanship. These residences typically measured several kilometers in circumference. Lunguza ka Mpukane stated that "one shouting o n one s ide [of emGungundlovu, Dingane's principal homestead] could not be heard across the other" (Webb & Wrlght 1976, vol. 1:344), and Allen Gardiner calculated that emGungundlovu consisted of more than 1,100 lndlvidual structures (1836:206). 4. The terms copper and brass are often used interchange- ably in English sources, and the Zulu term ithusi generally also refers to either brass or copper. Precise Zulu terms do exist, however: i thusi elimhlophe (white i thus i ) for brass (whlch is an alloy of copper and zinc) and ithusi elibomvu (red ithusij for copper (Doke & Vilakazi 1972:809). Bryant simply defines i thusi as brass, or a thing made of brass (1905666). 5. Also sometimes referred to as isidiya (pl, izidiya). 6. An illustration of a woman wearing thls garment appears in The Kafirs of Natal (Shooter 1857:151). 7. According to Gedhle, ubusengawere not known during the reign of Mpande, Cetshwayo's predecessor (Webb & Wright 1976, vol. 1:148). 8. Alan Smith pointed out that because of the treacherous currents along the Natal coast and the absence of adequate harbors along the coastline, Delagoa Bay was the southem-

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On Artifact and Identity at the Niger-Benue ConfluenceJohn PictonAfrican Arts, Vol. 24, No. 3, Special Issue: Memorial to Arnold Rubin, Part II. (Jul., 1991), pp.34-49+93-94.Stable URL:


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Okpella Masking TraditionsJean M. BorgattiAfrican Arts, Vol. 9, No. 4. (Jul., 1976), pp. 24-33+90-91.Stable URL:

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Age Grades, Masquerades, and Leadership among the Northern EdoJean M. BorgattiAfrican Arts, Vol. 16, No. 1. (Nov., 1982), pp. 36-51+96.Stable URL:

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Dead Mothers of OkpellaJean M. BorgattiAfrican Arts, Vol. 12, No. 4. (Aug., 1979), pp. 48-57+91-92.Stable URL:

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