African Art and Architecture

V

Rock Art

The Sahara and large areas of southern Africa are two major regions in Africa where substantial amounts of rock art are found, though they occur also extensively in East Africa and less frequently in West Africa as well. Although dating rock paintings and engravings is extremely difficult, it is clear that they are the oldest African art form to have survived, with some Saharan examples thought to date from at least 4000 bc, while radiocarbon dates as early as 24,000 bc have come from one site in Namibia. Simple engravings of cross-hatched lines on a piece of ochre and of roughly parallel lines on a bone have been excavated from Blombos Cave in South Africa. They date from between 75,000 and 100,000 years ago. They appear to be the earliest attempts at decoration anywhere in the world and perhaps mark the beginning of art.

Much of the area now covered by the Sahara was significantly more fertile in the past and supported wildlife such as elephants, lions, buffalo, ostriches, and antelopes, as well as a human population who depicted aspects of their lifestyle in rock art. The main groups of Saharan art are engravings in the Atlas and Fezzan regions, and both engravings and a wealth of paintings in Tassili. A combination of stylistic analysis, consideration of overlaps between images of various styles, and external data such as known dates for the introduction of domestic animals and of certain weapons has been used to divide the engravings into four major periods. The earliest engravings depict in a detailed and naturalistic style predominantly wild animals, such as elephants, rhinoceros, giraffes, and the now extinct buffalo Bubalus antiquus. Men are shown armed with throwing-sticks, bows, and clubs, but not spears. This is now known as the Bubaline period and is thought broadly to correspond to a hunting lifestyle. The following period, known as the Cattle period, is marked by smaller engravings up to 1.20 m (4 ft) in length, in which men with cattle are predominant, although wild animals are still depicted as well. The earliest art from the Horse period, probably dating from the 1st millennium bc, depicts men driving horse-drawn chariots, while later there is a shift to images of men on horseback. Spears and small round shields are the main weapons of this period. In the Camel period, dating from the beginning of the Christian era and continuing into the 20th century, the engravings depict many wild animals still found in the Sahara, as well as men with camels. The images become increasingly schematic. Weapons shown include swords and, in later images, firearms. Although details of this scheme continue to be modified the broad outline is accepted by most authorities. It is important to note, however, that archaeology in the Sahara region is still very limited and that it is not yet possible to associate securely these stylistic periods with known groups of peoples, or to establish much else about how they lived.

In southern Africa, by contrast, scholars have the benefit of more clearly established links between the art and the lifestyle of surviving hunter-gatherer peoples in the area, such as the San and the !Kung. Drawing on ethnographic research among these peoples and on late 19th-century accounts of the now-extinct southern San, they have reinterpreted what were previously seen as naive depictions of hunting magic as complex images based on shamanistic trance dances. Not all scholars, however, accept this interpretation.

Both rock painting and engraving are widespread in South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, and examples are also known in Tanzania and Uganda. Excavations at the Apollo 11 Cave in the Huns mountains of Namibia have uncovered drawings of a feline, an antelope, and what may be a giraffe, on broken slabs of rock in a stratum that has been securely dated to between 23,500 and 25,500 bc.

Although this site is far earlier than most in southern Africa (which seem to date from the last 2,000 or so years), it has been argued that there is sufficient continuity in style and subject matter to indicate a continuity of tradition. The paintings and engravings made by the San and other hunter-gatherer groups are seen as a record of their rich spiritual life, being metaphorical depictions of trance states, of hallucinatory visions, and of animals such as elands that had complex and multiple symbolic resonances, and images that blend the shamans with the animal potency that they are tapping through their dances.

VI

West Africa

West Africa is the home of many of the sculptural traditions for which African art has become internationally known: the most prominent are the carvings of the Baga of Guinea, the Baule and Senufo of Côte d’Ivoire, the Mende of Sierra Leone, the Dogon and Bamana (Bambara) of Mali, the Fon of the Benin Republic, and the Yoruba and Igbo of Nigeria. It is also an area notable for an extensive range of other art forms, from architecture to weaving.

A

Nok

Among the oldest surviving art of West Africa are a number of distinct traditions of sculpture in terracotta. Sculptures that have been uncovered, mostly accidentally in the course of mining or farming, across a wide expanse of central Nigeria, are grouped together under the name “Nok”. However, since there are regional stylistic variations and a date range that stretches from the 5th century bc to the 5th century ad, it is likely that more than one culture was involved in their production. The sculptures are mostly fragments of human and animal figures built up by the coil method of pottery-making, and some seem sometimes to have been attached to pots. The human figures range in size from about 10 cm (4 in) to over 120 cm (4 ft), and have elaborate hairstyles, wear jewellery, and in some cases appear to be dressed in cloth wrappers.

B

Mali and Niger

Other equally spectacular terracotta sculptures have been uncovered on a large burial site at Bura in the Niger Republic (dated to between the 3rd and the 11th centuries ad), and at ancient Jenne (c. 13th century ad) in Mali. At Bura a large burial site has yielded hundreds of heads and full-length figures attached to funerary jars, as well as the fragmentary remains of a large horse and rider. The sculptures from Jenne include equestrian images, and standing and seated figures of both men and women, many with elaborate jewellery and scarification marks. Since the vast majority of these were unearthed in the course of unauthorized digging, little is known about their context or original use. The region of the present-day state of Mali and the south of Mauritania was governed by a succession of large empires. The kingdom of Ghana, whose capital was at Kumbi Saleh (Koumbi Saleh) in Mauritania, was mentioned in the 8th century ad by the Arab geographer Al-Fazari, while the wealth of Mali became known to both Europe and the Arab world with legends of the vast sums of gold spent by King Mansa Musa on his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324. Archaeological investigation of these cultures is now in progress, although much evidence has already been lost. Jenne is also known today for its immense mud-built Friday Mosque. Built in 1906-1907, it is the third of a series of grand mosques dating from the 13th century, and one of the most impressive achievements of African architecture.

Although Islam has been a constant presence in Mali for many centuries, many of the local peoples outside the towns have resisted conversion, at least until very recently. The Dogon who live along the Bandiagara escarpment are known for their elaborate cycle of masquerades performed over many years. Their figurative sculpture in wood and metal has been interpreted in terms of a complex symbolic cosmography and Creation myth, though growing doubts exist about the authenticity of this evidence. (Marcel Griaule, regarded as a pioneer in ethnological fieldwork and who focused particularly on the Dogon of Mali, was paying for information and much of it was seemingly invented to satisfy his enquiries.) A number of older figures in a similar style, together with fragments of textiles and other objects dating from the 11th century, have been found in burial caves above Dogon villages and are attributed by some scholars to a people known as the Tellem. The Bamana live in the countryside around the Malian capital Bamako. Among their numerous art forms are large wooden sculptures, mostly of women, used in the initiation and annual ceremonies of associations called Jo and Gwan. Elegant carved wooden antelope headdresses, called chi wara, were used in dances by associations that honoured the strongest farmers. The Bamana are also noted for their bogolanfini cloth, made by a unique method in which patterns are outlined in a dark mud dye on locally woven narrow-strip cloth.

C

Akan

The Akan-speaking peoples of Ghana also made terracotta sculpture, using small clay human images to represent the deceased and his or her retainers in the funeral rites of important men and women. The system of organizing the production of court regalia for the Asante king, the Asantehene, through a series of villages of specialist craftsmen around the capital, was replicated on a smaller scale by lesser chiefs throughout the Asante Empire in the 19th century. Certain regalia, however, could only be obtained with royal approval at the capital, Kumasi, and the distribution of court art was an important element in the maintenance of central power. The key symbol of royal and chiefly authority at all levels was the stool, of which there was an extensive range of forms. The Golden Stool is believed to have been brought down from heaven to the 17th-century Asantehene, Osei Tutu, who established the new kingdom. Both cast-gold jewellery, and gold-foil-wrapped wooden carvings are important court regalia, as are fine silk kente cloths originally woven with thread unravelled from imported European fabrics. Their Twi language is rich in proverbs, which form a major source of inspiration for the imagery of aspects of Asante art, such as the small cast brass weights used for weighing gold dust, and the images that topped the staffs of court officials.

Other Akan peoples include the Fanti, known for the appliqué cloth flags and painted cement posuban shrines used by men’s societies called asafo. In Côte d’Ivoire the Baule are rare among Akan peoples in staging masquerades, and are also notable for the small wooden images made to represent other-world spirit lovers.