IDNO

N.102170.MF

Description

A group of people involved in communal weeding on a farm. In the right hand side of the photograph is a woman with a small child. In the background are hills and trees.

Physical Condition: Emulsion lifting from glass plate. [JD 2/8/2007]

Place

W Africa; Ghana; Upper East Region [Gold Coast; Northern Territories]

Cultural Affliation

Tallensi

Named Person

Buntuya

Photographer

?Fortes, Meyer

Collector / Expedition

Fortes, Meyer

Date

?July 1934

Collection Name

Fortes Collection

Source

Drucker-Brown, Susan

Format

Glass Negative Halfplate

Primary Documentation

Other Information

N.102167.MF - N.102179.MF were kept in the box now numbered C550/.

Context: Communal farming is discussed by Fortes. “Soon after early millet has been brought in, the elders and others who have had a good crop begin to ‘invite hoemen’ (pooh kpaarip). An elder sends round to the all the compounds of his section (a sub-division of a clan settlement) requesting the young men to come out and weed his farms, compounds or bush, for him on the following day. As no-one would be so ll-mannered or so negligent of a kinsman’s duties as to refuse, some 20 or 30 young men turn out the next day. The one who issued the invitation recompenses them with two meals, flour water (zemkuom) at noon and a lavish cooked meal at night. Thus commences a round of collective weeding, as every farmer who can afford the 20 or 30lb of grain and the meat for feeding them in turn invites his kinsmen and neighbours to come and weed for him.” (Fortes, M. and S. Fortes, 1936, p.256). [Alicia Fentiman, 29/4/2008]

Bibliographical Reference:
Fortes, M. and S. Fortes. 1936. “Food in the Domestic Economy of Tallensi”. Africa, Vol.9, No.2, pp.237-276.

Fortes, Meyer, 1945. Dynamics of Clanship Among the Tallensi (London: Oxford University Press).

Bibliographical Reference: Fortes, Meyer, 1949. The Web of Kinship Among the Tallensi (London: Oxford University Press).

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Jocelyne Dudding, 15/8/2007] [Alicia Fentiman, 23/4/2008].