Table Of ContentOUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 09/11/2015, SPi
MATERIAL EXPLORATIONS
IN AFRICAN ARCHAEOLOGY
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 09/11/2015, SPi
Material Explorations
in African Archaeology
TIMOTHY INSOLL
3
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3
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In memory of John Alexander
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 09/11/2015, SPi
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the following for answering queries and/or providing
references on various subjects: Paul Adderley, Larry Barham, Caro-
line Bithell, Karina Croucher, Laurence Douny, Melanie Giles, Anne
Haour, Bryn James, Chris Knüsel, Murray Last, Peter Mitchell, Ben
Smith, Ray Silverman, Julian Thomas, and Derek Watson. Alexandre
Livingstone-Smith and Patrick Semal are thanked for being helpful in
my attempts to track down human remains from Mangbetu. Cynthia
McGowan is thanked for facilitating access to the British Museum
collections, Rachel Hand to the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology
and Anthropology collections, Elin Bornemann to the Pitt Rivers
Museum collections, and Stephen Welsh to the Manchester Museum
collections.
Stephen Pearson is gratefully acknowledged for allowing the tem-
porary removal of usually non-lending stock for copying purposes
from the University Library, Manchester. Sekou Berte is thanked for
obtaining supplementary information on a Minyanka ‘fetish’/power
object from the N’Golonina Market, Bamako, Mali. I am also most
grateful to Bryn Trevelyan James for completing meticulous research
on the provenance of the healer’s/diviner’s basket in Manchester
Museum. An immense debt of gratitude is also owed Veerle Linseele
(Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) for analyzing the faunal remains it
contains, Peter Gasson (RBG Kew) for analyzing four wood samples
from the basket, and to Henk Beentje and Maria Vorontsova from the
same institution for comments on the fruits and seeds, and grasses
respectively. Miranda Goodby (Potteries Museum, Stoke on Trent) is
also thanked for looking at the ceramics in the basket, as are the staff
at the Manchester Dental Hospital for completing the radiographs of
some of the wrapped objects.
I would also like to thank Rachel MacLean and Ceri Houlbrook for
preparing some of the illustrations, and a Charitable Trust that wishes
to remain anonymous for funding some of the illustration prepar-
ation. Rachel MacLean is further acknowledged for reading and com-
menting on the manuscript, though all errors and omissions remain
my own. For permission to reproduce images I am grateful to Paul
Adderley, Tim Clack, Detlef Gronenborn, Timothy Kendall, Cornelia
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viii Acknowledgements
Kleinitz, Anne Mayor, David Phillipson, Andrew Reid, Ray Silverman,
John Sutton, and Derek Welsby. An acknowledgement is also owed
the late Sylvia K. Sikes whose archive I purchased and some of whose
illustrations are reproduced here.
Tim Clack is also thanked for allowing me to join him on fieldwork
in Ethiopia, as is Gerard Chouin for providing a hospitable environ-
ment in the IFRA guesthouse in Ibadan, Nigeria, where my revised
outline for the book finally came together. I am particularly grateful
to Andrew Reid for generously sharing his unpublished data on the
Walumbe Shrine in Uganda with me. Thanks are also extended to my
friends and colleagues Benjamin Kankpeyeng, Samuel Nkumbaan,
and Malik Saako Mahmud for stimulating conversations in Ghana,
and for inviting me to work on the figurines from their excavations in
Yikpabongo in 2010 and 2011. I am also grateful to the reviewers of
the original proposal for making it more coherent, and to Hilary
O’Shea and Annie Rose at OUP for help with bringing this project
through to publication.
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Contents
List of Illustrations x
List of Tables xiii
1. Introduction: Material Explorations
in African Archaeology 1
2. Bodies and Persons 12
3. The Dead and the Ancestors 78
4. Animals 115
5. Stone 156
6. Earth and Clay 206
7. Shrines 250
8. Landscapes 294
9. Healing, Medicine, and Divination 339
10. Past Material Interrelations? Some Concluding Thoughts 387
References 395
Index 453
