IDNO

P.39242.ROS

Description

Full-length profile view of a Bagesu man, wearing a goat-skin? in the traditional manner, standing in front of white screen, attached to an elephant grass? fence. [ED 5/11/2007]

Place

E Africa; Uganda; eastern Uganda; Eastern District; Mount Elgon

Cultural Affliation

Bagesu

Named Person

Photographer

?Roscoe, John R.

Collector / Expedition

Roscoe, John R. [Mackie Ethnological Expedition, Uganda, 1919 - 1920]

Date

1919 - 1920

Collection Name

Roscoe Collection

Source

Format

Print Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

This print was found in an envelope marked C130/95/ by the cataloguer. The envelope was kept in box marked C130/ by the cataloguer. Previously stored in Large Wooden Drawer VI in Photo Archive Room.

Photograph taken on Rev. John Roscoe’s Mackie Ethnological Expedition to Central Africa, June 1919 to November 1920. See Roscoe.J. 1921.

Glass negative for this print likely to have been originally housed in ‘Box 10 Elgon’ (C32/9/).

Publication: Similar image published in Roscoe, J., 1924. The Bagesu and other tribes of the Uganda Protectorate: The Third Part of the Report of the Mackie Ethnological Expedition to Central Africa. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.) p.4, Plate III, with the caption: “Old man of the Bagesu tribe”. [ED 5/11/2007]

Clothing: “The clothing of the people was never intended either for warmth or covering. Before initiation a boy went naked, but when his initiation was complete, he was entitled to wear the dress of a full-grown man, which consisted of a skin, usually a goat-skin. Two of the legs were joined with string about a foot long. The skin was put under the right arm and the string passed over the head on to the left shoulder, so that the left side was completely exposed, though the skin covered the right side and reached halfway down the thighs. If a man refused to undergo the ceremony of initiation, he was not allowed to wear this skin, to marry, or to sit in the council of men.” (Roscoe, J., 1924. The Bagesu and other tribes of the Uganda Protectorate: The Third Part of the Report of the Mackie Ethnological Expedition to Central Africa. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.), p. 5). [ED 5/11/2007]

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Elisabeth Deane 5/11/2007]