Art,history, and gender: women and clay in West Africa

Women dominate the production of pottery in Africa, yet few scholars have considered women the likely creators of the figurative ceramic sculpture recovered archaeologically across the savanna. Indeed, the question of who made these highly celebrated ceramics is rarely raised. A close look at the art historical and archaeological literature exposes the gender biases that privilege men's high art over women's low craft, making men the presumed creators of these works. Examples of women's predominance in the production of ritually-destined figurative ceramics in Nigeria alone counters such unsubstantiated assumptions. Through such production women play important roles in the construction of social and cultural meanings. It does make a difference in our reading and writing of history to understand and reconstruct what women make as well as what men make.

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Résumé Les femmes dominent la production d'objets en argile en Afrique, mais peu d'experts ont considéré les femmes comme créatrices probables des sculptures figuratives en céramique découvertes dans des fouilles archéologiques dans toute la savane. De fait, la question de savoir qui fabriquait ces céramiques hautement prisées est rarement soulevée. Une étude plus approfondie de la littérature ayant trait à l'histoire de l'art et à l'archéologie met en évidence les partis pris sexuels qui privilégient l'art élevé des hommes par rapport à l'artisanat vulgaire des femmes, faisant des hommes les créateurs présumés de ces oeuvres. Des exemples de la prédominance des femmes dans la production de figurines rituelles en céramique au Nigéria contredisent ces suppositions non prouvées. Par cette production, les femmes jouent un rôle important dans l'élaboration de notions sociales et culturelles. Comprendre et reconstruire ce que font les femmes, de même que ce que font les hommes, nous fait lire et écrire l'histoire différemment.

     

Possible cases of scalping from pre‐hispanic highland Peru

For years, the pre‐Hispanic Chachapoya of Northern Peru have been described as the ‘Warriors of the Clouds’. A more detailed look at newly excavated osteological samples from the highland site of Kuelap allows us to better examine the types of traumatic injuries among the Chachapoya. This paper describes an individual with evidence of a recent scalp removal including cut marks encircling the vault and a large area of active inflammatory response due to exposure of the outer table. The degree of osseous response and a small area of healing indicate short‐term survival. A second fragmentary skull demonstrates similar features but more advanced healing. The location and patterning of the cut marks are consistent with North American Indian pre‐historic and historic cases of scalping. The skulls of these two individuals provide the first osteological evidence of scalp removal from a pre‐Hispanic South American Andean context, although it is difficult to determine the motivation whether for therapeutic treatment or trophy taking. These cases, along with other evidence of interpersonal violence and cranial trauma, serve to elucidate the possible volatile nature of cultural contact between this region and lowland Amazonian tribes, where scalps and trophy heads were commonly taken in raids. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Black Stars,Red Stars: anti-colonial constellations in Ryszard Kapuściński’s Cold War reportage

In 1963 the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapu?ciński published Black Stars (Czarne gwiazdy), a collection of reportage essays about the decolonization of Ghana and the Belgian Congo. Far from a neutral observer, Kapu?ciński, like other Socialist Bloc correspondents writing about the national independence movements jolting the continent, sought to build anti-imperialist consensus in his home country. Black Stars is thus foremost a literary document of Cold War Soviet foreign policy. But what one also finds in these works of reportage, I contend, are traces of the desire on the part of certain satellite states to secure for themselves the national autonomy supported by the Soviet Union in the decolonizing world. In this article I show how Black Stars chronicles the formation of unorthodox socialist currents within the politics of Second World-Third World solidarity while otherwise in the service of the official Soviet agenda. In doing so I argue that Kapu?ciński's anti-colonial reportage sheds light not only on the relationship of Postcolonial Studies to the Eastern European experience, but on the relationship of Marxist thought to Postcolonial Theory more broadly.