African Art and Architecture

B

Ethiopia

There were close ties between the culture of the south of the Arabian Peninsula and communities on the coast of northern Ethiopia from which the kingdom of Āksum arose during the 1st century ad. Disc-and-crescent symbols thought to be related to the Moon goddess are found on the crests of monumental stone stelae from the pre-Christian period. These stelae, some of which stand 21 m (almost 70 ft) high, reproduce in stone the form of Aksumite wood- and stone-framed buildings. The Axumite king Ezana was converted to Christianity in the 4th century ad, while the religion and its tradition of monasticism were spread among the people over the next two centuries following the missionary activity associated with the Nine Saints from Syria. Perhaps the most remarkable manifestation of Ethiopian Christianity is the series of 11 churches carved out of the rock at Lalibela. Attributed to the 12th-century monarch of the same name, they are conceived as a symbolic recreation of the holy city of Jerusalem.

Very little is known about the art of the first millennium of Ethiopian Christianity, but from about the 13th century onward a complex history of stylistic and iconographic development may be traced through successive phases of icon and mural painting and liturgical manuscripts. Processional crosses and elaborate regalia are also important objects of religious art. Other art forms include weaving and the production of magic scrolls combining protective texts and religious/cosmographic imagery. Within the borders of the modern state of Ethiopia there are also numerous other peoples with long-established artistic traditions, including woodcarving, of which the best known are the grave figures of the Konso, and a wide range of textiles.

C

The Arab Influence

Since ancient times East Africa has been linked to the maritime trade of the Indian Ocean. By around ad 800 a series of interconnected coastal communities had been established at centres such as Mogadishu, Lamu, (since 2001 a UNESCO World Heritage Site), Mombasa, and the islands of Zanzibar and the Comoros. From Lamu southward the interaction of settled Arab traders with the local Bantu-speaking populations resulted in the development of a distinctive Swahili language and culture. Mosques and merchants’ houses were built from local materials—mangrove poles and carved blocks of coral. Elaborately carved doors adorned the plain white façades of houses, while interior rooms had banks of moulded plasterwork niches. Around some of the older mosques are numerous tombs cut from blocks of coral, with tall octagonal or cylindrical pillars, some of which are inset with imported ceramic plates. It is likely that this represents a degree of continuity with pre-Islamic funerary practice. The imagery on carved doors, which reached their greatest complexity in Omani-ruled Zanzibar in the 19th century, included Koranic inscriptions, Indian-derived lotus motifs, date palm motifs, and depictions of fish, as well as a variety of leaf and scroll designs.

D

Pastoralists and Farmers

The Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania are the best known of a large number of pastoralist peoples, most of whom combine a semi-nomadic lifestyle with some reliance on settled farming villages. Others include the Somali, the Dinka and Nuer of southern Sudan, and the Turkana and Iraqw of Tanzania. Poetry is often said to be the primary art form of the northern Somali nomads, but the visual arts are represented by finely carved wooden headrests, basketry, and a variety of decorated wooden vessels. The Turkana are also notable for their headrests and wooden drinking vessels as well as their beadwork.

European glass beads, imported for centuries along the eastern coast of Africa, are a major component in elaborate systems of body art among people such as the Maasai, Turkana, Samburu, and Pokot. In combination with aspects of dress, hairstyle, jewellery, and sometimes body paints, particular combinations of beadwork may serve both to distinguish Turkana from Samburu and, more significantly, to mark differences in sex, age, and status within each group. Male dress and hairstyles may mark progress from uninitiated youth, to warrior, to elder, in addition to specific successes in war or hunting. Women’s styles may indicate stages of initiation, marriage, number and status of children, or widowhood. These are not, however, sets of static signs, but rather a shared understanding of the role of dress and ornament that allowed for changing local fashions, innovations in colour combinations, and variation in the supply of beads. In some cases local farming women, such as the Okiek in Kenya, have been shown to have imitated the designs of the Maasai, while reinterpreting, or in Maasai terms misinterpreting, the details of their colour combinations.

As this last example indicates, clear boundaries do not always lie between the art of pastoral peoples and that of their settled farming neighbours. Most of the farming communities of East Africa are Bantu-speakers who moved into the region early in the 1st millennium ad. Many of the ethnic identities now asserted are relatively recent products of change during the colonial period or the disruption caused by trading caravans in the 19th century. There are relatively few long-established courts to sustain local oral histories. Both movements of peoples and movements of prestige artefacts such as carvings make unravelling the art histories of particular localities problematic.

However, in addition to arts such as pottery and basketry, a wide range of wood sculptures have been made in the region. Probably the most widely distributed form was the post-shaped funerary sculpture, found in a variety of styles among such apparently unconnected groups as the Konso of Ethiopia, the Bongo of Sudan, the Zaramo of Tanzania, the Giryama of Kenya and their neighbours, and the Vezo, Mahafaly, and Sakalava of Madagascar. In some cases these sculptures were erected on the graves of important people; in others they served as memorials, standing in groups away from the dangerous space of the graveyard itself. Figurative high-backed stools were among numerous prestige carvings made for chiefs and other important individuals in groups such as the Nyamwezi, the Tabwa, and the Jiji, in the vicinity of Lake Tanganyika, as well as a variety of figurative staffs for both chiefs and ritual specialists. Masquerades were associated with male initiation among many peoples, with particularly large repertoires of characters found among the Chewa of Malawi and the Makonde of Tanzania and Mozambique. The rich and varied culture of the island of Madagascar bears a number of traces of the impact of Austronesian peoples among its original inhabitants. In the visual arts these include certain features of their weaving technology, including the use by some groups of back-strap tensioned looms, and of ikat dyeing.

VIII

Central Africa

Central Africa may be defined as the area from Cameroon and the Central African Republic southward to the borders with Namibia and Zambia, taking in Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Angola, and Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Bantu family of languages, spoken by the vast majority of the inhabitants of this region, has been traced back by linguistic historians to an area in the vicinity of the present Nigeria/Cameroon border in c. 3000 bc. This date and those that follow are based on estimates of the amount of recognizable vocabulary the languages have retained from an inferred and unrecorded Proto-Bantu language. In the absence of written documents from the distant past, these are all there is to go on. From perhaps around 2000 bc a gradual expansion of Bantu-speaking peoples southward and eastward began, prompted in part by population increases made possible by the development of agricultural techniques. By around 500 bc, a date confirmed by radiocarbon dating from archaeological excavations, they had spread through the rainforest belt and were expanding into the savannahs south of the River Congo, while to the east cereal-growing Bantu farmers were reaching the great lakes region of eastern Africa. At about this time also, iron-working was developed, providing more efficient weapons and agricultural tools, as well as a new focus for ritual elaboration.

Although centuries of innovation and counter-innovation have led to the development of an almost infinite variety of forms of social organization, from large kingdoms to autonomous lineages, certain organizational concepts and principles attributable to the earliest Bantu communities were still apparent in the colonial period. Among the most important of these was the House, consisting of a leading man, his wives and some other relatives, clients, and friends, which formed the most basic social unit in short-lived patterns of alliance with neighbouring houses. In the course of expansion, Bantu-speakers encountered scattered groups of hunter-gatherer peoples. Many of these were displaced or incorporated, but others survive in complex interdependent relationships with their farming neighbours. Aspects of the ritual practices and artistic forms of some of these earlier populations have been retained in many Bantu cultures.

A

Cameroon Grassfields

The area known as the Cameroon Grassfields is a densely populated region of open savannah in the west of the state of Cameroon. The rich variety of art that developed in the Grassfields was primarily associated with aspects of social and political hierarchy in which the king, or Fon, was at the head of a ranked system of male lineage elders in each of the numerous small independent kingdoms. Secret societies that incorporated all senior men were also important patrons for the arts. The royal palace was the focus of artistic activity and itself an elaborate and extensive structure decorated with carved pillars, and in some cases patterned stone floors. Among the artefacts making up the royal treasury and expressing the wealth and historical memory of the kingdom were: royal ancestral statues; a variety of masks; thrones and stools, often covered with beads; ivory horns; figurative brass and pottery pipes; royal insignia, including fly whisks, jewellery, caps, and staffs; large ceremonial food vessels; resist-patterned indigo-dyed cloths; embroidered and appliquéd gowns; and musical instruments, including carved drums. Some of the more important of these, such as the royal ancestral figures, were closely linked to the regulatory societies based in the palace. The imagery of Grassfields art—human figures, from royal ancestors to palace servants, depicted with animals, such as leopards, elephants, buffalo, and snakes, that were multifaceted symbols of kingship—contributed to its role in constructing and memorializing royal power. Between 1900 and 1920, Njoya, the king of Bamun, developed a script in which he and his courtiers wrote a detailed history of his kingdom and its customs.