africa art

Welcome to the first day of our virtual zoom classroom

31 March 2020

Ancient Mali: Archaeology and the Inland Niger Delta Terracottas

Aerial photo of the town of Jenne during the rainy season

Satellite photo of the Inland Niger Delta

Sources of Information for reconstructing the history of this region:

• Arabic and European Accounts: very limited before the 19th century

• Oral traditions passed down from generation to generation. These provide some context and flavor with kernels of truth woven in. Local oral traditions in

Jenne identified Jenne-jeno as the ancestral home of its peoples

• Terracotta sculptures that began appearing on the art market as early as the 1970s, but little information about

their use or function (without archaeology)

• Archaeological Investigations: Excavations by the McIntoshes in 1977 and 1981 at the site of Jenne-jeno and

neighboring site of Hambarketolo (remember the map quiz?)

INLAND NIGER DELTA

Jenne-jeno 250 BC - 1400 AD

Mali archaeological site

12-17th century AD Mali

terracotta sculptures

thermoluminescence carbon 14

stratigraphy terracotta

Roderick and Susan McIntosh

Wagadu

The Inland Niger Delta is the name given to the region in central Mali where the great Niger river floods annually, making it an agriculturally rich region in the midst of the Sahel. Just outside the present- day city of Jenne lies the archaeological site of Jenne-jeno, which was a multi-ethnic urban center well

before the arrival of Islam and trade across the Sahara, inhabited by 250 BC.

Aerial photo of the site of Jenne-jeno during the rainy season

(doesn’t look like much, right?) on surface: ceramic pottery fragments and

funerary urns, evidence of house foundations, and evidence of a city wall

Aerial photo of the present day town of Jenne with Jenne-jeno in the background

Methods of dating (None of them super accurate, need corroboration) 1) stratigraphy, essentially a sequence of layers that provide a relative chronology (see below) 2) radio-carbon dating of organic materials, especially wood and charcoal based on rate of decay

+/- years 3) thermoluminescence (google it) the minerals in clay store energy, and when clay is fired, the

firing “cleans” the slate and the process of storing energy renews, thus possible to approximate the date an object was fired within a range of (hundreds) of years.

Phase I: 250 BC-300 CE

circular house of bent poles and reed mats suggests possible seasonal habitation

with semi-nomadic people (herders and fishermen?) returning to the site every year.

Example of a temporary nomadic structure set up on the edge of Timbuktu that is similar to what the earliest Jenne-

jeno houses may have looked like

Phase II: 300 - 800 CE included evidence of stacked mud

circular house foundations, indicates that people lived here year-round

Note: The McIntoshes second excavation in 1981 was funded in part by National Geographic. They sent a couple of photographers to see what the McIntoshes were doing, but the archaeological site

was pretty boring, so they brought this family out from Jenne to “stage” the early house. The problem is that lighting these fires in the excavation pit destroyed the scientific value of this site,

because the fires would compromise any carbon-14 or thermoluminescence testing.

Phase II: 300 - 800 CE Massive city wall constructed from sun-dried mud

bricks, had to have been a major public works project. People probably needed protection from

flooding, not conflict from outside

Phase II burial urns: Large ceramic pots in which they buried

their dead

In 2011, I visited the archaeologist Mamadou Cisse (remember him from Caravans of Gold?) when he was excavating a site just outside the

town of Jenne on the opposite side from of Jenne-jeno. They discovered this intact funerary

urn. We were there to see them pull it from the ground. See video posted on BlackBoard.

Phase III: 800-1000 AD

This time period was the height of occupation at the site with as many as 20,000 inhabitants, with both round

and rectangular houses, and a blacksmith workshop active during

this time period.

After 1000, the city declined and was abandoned completely by 1400, when the present day town of Jenne began

to be occupied.

Another National Geographic photo: They decided to pay the herders to run a herd of cattle up the hill and across the site so that they would have a more interesting photo!

Phase I 250 BC-300 CE imported stone beads

pottery sherds iron and iron slags

earliest domesticated rice fired clay figurines: possibly toys

Phase II 300 -800 CE more to lives than just subsistence, evidence

of social stratification and diversity iron working at the site

copper ornaments (copper from the Sahara) gold earring (gold from southern gold mines) fancy footed bowls and decorative pottery

Phase III 800 - 1000 CE even more variety of goods, possibly as many as 20,000 inhabitants = URBAN center with

satellite communities (Hambarketolo) glass bead necklace from North Africa

terra cotta statuettes

Phase I: more than 100,000 pottery sherds similar to pottery from

the Sahara several centuries earlier,

suggests that the first inhabitants came from

the north

The crew stayed in the town of Jenne (The Great Mosque is in the background). They went to excavate early in the morning,

and in the afternoons they sorted and washed pottery.

The black bit in the middle is iron slag, the refuse from smelting iron ore: evidence of iron working at the site, not just imported objects, but no know local sources of iron ore, so means trade

contacts and specialized craftsmanship.

Reclining figure excavated in 1981 along with a head that does not match the body, note amulets, lots of

jewelry and a knife strapped to the arm

Phase IV: 1000-1400 CE gradual decline in population, abandoned

by 1400 CE

The terracotta statues and fragments the McIntoshes excavated were all from this

last phase. The “Jenne terracottas” represent a significant early sculptural tradition, but here's the problem: More

than a thousand of these terracottas are in museums and private collections in Europe and the US, but only a few of them (maybe 10!) came from proper legal excavations.

With the exception of the reclining figure, the pieces found by the McIntoshes are not fabulous works of art, but they are important because their excavations provide the only information we have about the use or

function or context of these terracottas. The vast majority of these sculptures in museum and private collections were probably plundered or

looted from archaeological sites by local people hoping to earn a few bucks when they sell it to a middleman. They are smuggled out and sold privately

for a lot more money.

This piece sold in 2019 for more than $400,000.

It had been in a European collection since the 1960s, and thus before there were laws in place that specifically

protected this tradition. It is suggested that this piece may represent Sogolan, the

mother of the so-called Lion King Sundiata, founder of the empire of Mali according to

oral traditions. https://www.sothebys.com/

en/auctions/ecatalogue/2019/ coll-riviere-pf1928/lot.

51.html

Looters know to dig where one can see

house foundations on the surface

8 statues/fragments excavated by the McIntoshes found in four different contexts:

1) figure with head and crossed arms placed in round structure with several ceramic pots and a round object with snakes deliberately collapsed

2) two headless figures (below, male and female) found eroding out of the surface next to a house foundation under the floor

3) male / female pair, with figure fragments in a niche in a house wall occupied by iron workers associated with sandstone mortars, iron rods, pots with snakes perhaps a rain making altar

4) reclining headless figure with head found in a refuse pit

Possible functions:

1) as representations of ancestors that might have been placed on altars within the home. Most depict human forms (male and female

pairs, mother and child, etc.) And some seem to be in positions of prayer. So, maybe this is

a reasonable explanation. But there are others that represent bizarre diseased figures and some animal forms, so these ones don’t fit

this explanation. 2) as spiritual offerings, such as the one places

inside a structure that was intentionally collapsed, or the male and female pair found embedded in the mud wall of a house. In fact, there is an oral tradition collected from old

men in Jenne concerning offerings of statuettes and grain as symbolic re-enactment of legend of Tampama, a young virgin said to

have been buried alive in the walls of Jenne to insure that the city walls would stand against

the floods. 3) Other … as you will see in the following

slides, there are other subjects for which there is no archaeological explanation, just

speculation.

Some male and female pairs, figures in positions of prayer or mourning.

Metropolitan Museum of Art Seated Figure 13th century Jenne peoples This haunting figure huddles with its leg hugged to its chest and its head dropped on its knee. It simultaneously suggests the knotted tension of anxiety and the sublime absorption of deep prayer. Created over 700 years ago, in the Inland Niger Delta region of present-day Mali, this elegant work's intense emotional immediacy blurs the boundaries of time and place.

This terracotta sculpture comes from a site called Jenne-jeno, the oldest known city in sub-Saharan Africa. Jenne-jeno flourished in the ninth century A.D., but declined and was abandoned by 1400. Items of cast brass and forged iron, clay vessels, and figures like this one survive. They testify to what scholars contend was a richly varied and highly sophisticated urban society.

A few controlled archaeological digs provide only the vaguest outlines of the original significance of the art of this time and region. Recovered terracotta figures are frequently quite detailed. They include jewelry, clothing, and body ornaments such as the parallel columns of bumps and circles on the back of this work. Sometimes they cover the entire body and seem to represent the pustules of some dreadful illness.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/314362

Another type of figure are these equestrian warriors, however none of these have been found archaeologically,

so we don’t know if they were displayed in groups, or represented individual ancestors. We do know that the

Empire of Mali boasted a large and effective cavalry.

Motherhood theme: Childbirth and (happy) mother and child, but then we have an emaciated pregnant woman (disturbing,

no?) and even more disturbing: A woman giving birth to a snake (lovely) with snakes

coming out of her ears (yikes).

Lots of snakes … Possible a reference to oral traditions about the Great Snake of Wagadu (the local Soninke name for what we call the

Empire of Ghana). The legend is that the Great Snake provided the empire with gold in return for the sacrifice of a beautiful

virgin every year. But one year the lover of the young woman

selected took a sword and beheaded the snake, and the

head rolled south and did not stop until it reached the edge of the forests (where the gold

is still being mined today). Ghana entered a seven year

period of drought and famine, its gold reserves were depleted,

and the empire fell.

I could give you a creative writing assignment about these two pieces.

What is going on here?

The large female figure has two wiggling “children” on her lap, but one of them

has a beard, and they seem to be pinching her ear with a pair of

blacksmith tongs … yikes.

The group below includes what appears to be a man with a knife sneaking

around a large buffalo/cow with the intent to attack a man minding his own

business and drinking some tea (?)

Finally, this piece represents what appears to be a shrine with two serpents coiled around the

outside and a human arm reaching up the side of the

doorway. A CT scan revealed that the human figure was a

headless pregnant woman (!!!)  and that the shrine

contained contained a bunch of what seems to be other headless

women ... virtual human sacrifice? female seclusion for

other ritual purposes? The Great Snake of Wagadu?

https://noma.org/ct-scans-reveal-mysterious- figures-in-malian-terracotta/

https://www.scantix.com/case-studies/ terracotta-statues/djenne-shrine/