African Material Culture [Paperback]

This volume has much to recommend itproviding fascinating and stimulating insights into many arenas of material culture, many of which still remain only superficially explored in the archaeological literature. Archaeological Review

... a vivid introduction to the topic.... A glimpse into the unique and changing identities in an ever-changing world. Come-All-Ye

Fourteen interdisciplinary essays open new perspectives for understanding African societies and cultures through the contextualized study of objects, treating everything from the production of material objects to the meaning of sticks, masquerades, household tools, clothing, and the television set in the contemporary repertoire of African material culture.

MARY JO ARNOLDI is Curator for African Ethnology in the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.

CHRISTRAUD M. GEARY is Curator of the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives at the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution.

KRIS L. HARDIN is a Research Associate with the Smithsonian Institution.

INTRODUCTION: Efficacy and Objects Kris L. Hardin and MaryJo Arnoldi
PART I: TECHNOLOGY AND THE PRODUCTION OF FORM
1. Technological Style and the Making of Culture: Three Kono Contexts of Production Kris L. Hardin
2. Magical Iron Technology in the Cameroon Grassfields Michael Rowlands and Jean-Pierre Warnier
3. When Nomads Settle: Changing Technologies of Building and Transport and the Production of Architectural Form among the Gabra, the Rendille, and the Somalis Labelle Prussin
4. Ceramics from the Upemba Depression: A Diachronic Study Kanimba Misago
5. Objects and People: Relationships and Transformation in the Culture of the Bambala Kazadi Ntole
PART II: CONSTRUCTING IDENTITIES: PRESENTING SELF AND SOCIETY WITH OBJECTS
6. Sticks, Self, and Society in Booran Oromo: A Symbolic Interpretation Aneesa Kassam and Gemetchu MlÃ?