Description (Labels & Markings)
Luggage tag (University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge) attached with string reads: '?Charm | 69 / [?] /Sierra Leone.'
in second hand and circled: '135'
stamped with: '4 Feb'y 1915'
Event Date
Author: Katrina Dring

Description (Labels & Markings)
Thomas (SL) label attached with string reads: '69 / Charm / Timne (Sanda).'
Event Date
Author: Katrina Dring

Context (Amendments / updates)
Part of the E 1916.146 (AR 1916.198) N.W. Thomas Ethnological Collection, Sierra Leone. Collected for the museum in 1914. This collection now bears Z numbers. Z 14434 - Z 14587 and Z 20479


Event Date
Author: maa

Description (Physical description)
Charm
Event Date
Author: maa

Description (Physical description)
Object is a cloth wraped bundle containing heavy objects, with a cloth strap, to which are attached 4 strings of blue and white beads, 1 string of red and white beads, and 1 string of regularly shaped blue beads. [?R.Hand]
Event Date 9/2001
Author: Katrina Dring

Context (Analysis)
Used by Poro Society, red cloth is typical of this type of charm. These charms invoke punishing spirits to ward of wrong-doers. [Information provided by Isatu Smith, Monuments and Relics Commission, Sierra Leone; 10/08/2018]

Event Date 10/8/2018
Author: Katrina Dring

Description (Physical description)
Charm consisting of a tightly wrapped, heavy bundle with long fabric handle. The bundle seems to contain multiple heavy objects, possibly stones, and the fabric is very worn with frayed edges. There is a red fibre attached along the upper edge of the bundle, partially obscured by the bundle fabric. The handle has a knot tied in it and several strings of glass beads attached: blue, clear, red, red striped and blue striped. There is evidence of insect debris.
Event Date 7/8/2018
Author: Katrina Dring

Context (Amendments / updates)
Record updated as part of the Museum Affordances project 2018-2020

Event Date 7/8/2018
Author: Katrina Dring

Loan (Exhibition)
Brunei Gallery, SOAS, London, 14/10/2020 to 19/12/2020, [Re:]Entanglements
Event Date 14/10/2020
Author: Katrina Dring

Loan (Analysis)
Department of Conservation, UCL Institute of Archaeology, 31-4 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0TY , 27/02/2020 to 30/06/2020, Museum Affordances Project
Event Date 27/2/2020
Author: Katrina Dring

Conservation (Remedial)
CON.2020.4367 | Remedial
Event Date 9/3/2020
Author: Kirstie French

Context (Display)
On display in [Re:]Entanglements: Colonial collections in decolonial times, LKS Gallery, MAA, 22 June 2021 – 20 April 2022.

Display text noted:

'Potent Things

Cloth covered bundles, a few sticks tied together, medicines concealed in hardened clay. These charms do not look spectacular, but they are among the most potent artefacts collected by Northcote Thomas and his assistants during the 1914-15 anthropological survey of Sierra Leone.

Such charms have the power to protect people and their property from malevolent forces, including witchcraft, which might bring sickness, crop failure and other calamities.

The need to protect oneself from misfortune is still very much part of life in rural Sierra Leone, and it is not unusual to see protective charms set up around farms and houses.

In Mamaka, central Sierra Leone, we were introduced to Mohammed Kamara, a herbalist. He recognised a type of charm called kantha from one of Thomas’s photographs and agreed to let us film him making one.
Rather than bring it back to the museum, we asked that the kantha be given to a local farmer. We hope it protected his land from harm.'

Event Date 22/6/2021
Author: rachel hand