IDNO

P.7263.ACH1

Description

On Catalogue Card: "Girl. The tortoise shells are used as spoons, the little white things under them are knives made from the rib of a giraffe and used for cutting melons such as makapane and tsama. Kikao Pan (c. 150 m. in the Kalahari des.)" [typed text, circa 1935]

Place

S Africa; Botswana; Kalahari Desert; Kikao Pan

Cultural Affliation

San [historically Bushmen]

Named Person

Photographer

Mogg, Joseph William [Archdeacon]

Collector / Expedition

Mogg, Joseph William (Archdeacon)

Date

circa 1915 - 1937

Collection Name

Mounted Haddon Collection

Source

Clarke, Louis Colville Gray

Format

Print Black & White Mounted

Primary Documentation

Other Information

Source: Annual Report of the Faculty Board of Archaeology and Anthropology on the Museum of Archaeology and of Ethnology and its Library, 1937: “Mr. Clarke [L.C.G] has continued to shew his interest in the photographs and through his kindness an interesting series of Bushmen, photographed by Mr. J. W. Mogg, has been acquired........” page 2.

Photographer: MOGG, Joseph William (Director of the Kuruman Mission 1915-1928) Director of the Kuruman Mission until his departure to be the Archdeacon of Kimberley. Served the Diocese of Kimberley and Kuruman in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, from 1915 to 1945. [Source: Historical Papers, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/docs/CPSAGuide.pdf, JD 1/16/2013]

Publication: Image published in ' Poking holes in things: a view from the museum' by Chris Wingfield'. In 'Beads in Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa' and captioned: "Figure 4. Young woman adorned with beads and tortoise shells. Photograph taken at Kikao Pan, now in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Botswana, by J.W. Mogg around 1935 (Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge: MAA P.7263.ACH1)."
Related text notes: "During fieldwork at Kaudwane on the edge of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana during 2022, I showed photographs made at Kikao Pan in the Central Kalahari during the 1930s by J.W. Mogg (the person who donated the stolen beaded necklace to the British Museum) to contemporary descendants. One of the women with whom I was working immediately recognised that one photograph (Figure 4) showed a young woman during a significant point of her early adult life — ≠gi g//e — a stage she would have occupied in the two years following menarche. Enclosed in a leather wrap with tortoise shells attached, her neck encircled by beads with metal earrings hanging from her ears and sporting an elaborate haircut, her visual appearance was noticeably different to that of her companions. For Graeber (1996, 2001), her appearance might be regarded as exerting a form of power on potential suitors, inducing them to treat her in the way she has already been treated by the relatives and family members who likely provided her with these adornments. In Kalahari foraging societies of the period, potential suitors would have been expected to demonstrate their own capacity for productive ‘action’ by hunting animals the meat and skins of which they would have presented to the girl and her relatives." [JD 21/10/2024]