IDNO

N.102213.MF

Description

This image is annotated as “Returning from our sacrifice of a sheep at Samoo. Collected to drink pito & share meat”. In the background, there is a group of Tallensi men (wearing cloth or animal skin tied in the toga-style) seated on the ground outside the compound and drinking pito (guinea corn beer) from a calabash. To the right, there is a thatched adobe hut. In the foreground, Sonia Fortes is seated on the ground; she is wearing khaki shorts and top.

Place

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

Cultural Affliation

Tallensi

Named Person

Sonia Fortes

Photographer

?Fortes, Meyer

Collector / Expedition

Fortes, Meyer

Date

?November 1934

Collection Name

Fortes Collection

Source

Drucker-Brown, Susan

Format

Glass Negative Halfplate

Primary Documentation

Other Information

N.102213.MF - P.102242.MF were kept in the box now numbered C555/.

Context: “Houses: Flying over inhabited parts of north eastern Ghana, the traveller looks down at a series of circular reddish-brown patterns, almost like the yeast that women dry on the floors of their compounds in the process of making beer from millet. The pattern are ‘compounds’, in which most of the rural population and many of the urban population live. In most rural areas these compounds are the only architecture. They are built in variations of a common pattern, in a similar manner, using mud, made with water and earth containing clay. Although, there is some use of brick made with mud and straw, or of cement block (particularly in government buildings), most walls are built up like the sides of enormous pots and most rooms are still roofed with thatch. Over the past thirty years metal roofing has begun to replace thatch. Where this happens, circular rooms are giving way to rectangular shapes. The changes, from thatch to metal roof and from circular to rectangular walls, are a matter of individual choice and circumstance. Metal roofing is expensive and provides none of the insulation against heat and cold that comes with thatch. However, the great benefit of metal, and the reason given me by those who have changed to metal roofing, is that metal is fireproof and requires less maintenance. On the other hand, the rectilinear walls appropriate for metal roofing are, as Prussin explains (1969: 114), physically weaker than circular walls when mud is the building material. It should be emphasised here, however, though changes in roofing and the shape of rooms are occurring throughout northern Ghana, people have retained the distinctive relationships between open and walled spaces, and the adornments or lack of ornament and the places where these occur, all of which characterise different ethnic groups in the region. The continuity of architectural styles is impressive. Throughout the north, some aspects of architectural detail may reflect an owner’s personal taste or financial circumstance, but the presence or absence of perimeter walls, the shape and placement of granaries, the colour and finish of exterior and interior walls, as well as the traditional styles of roofing thatch, are all assertions of clan and lineage history. Thus, architectural styles correspond to the now disappearing, customary facial scars that accompanied the linguistic and cultural differences once called ‘tribal’. Some types of houses are strikingly beautiful, others are equally strikingly untidy. Most importantly, however, a knowledgeable visitor can tell the residents’ ethnic group by the traditional roofing of rooms and the style of a compound entrance. Thus, throughout northern Ghana the external aspect of a house asserts a political identity. The comparison presented here explores the manner in which values associated with that identity may be reflected and reinforced.” (Drucker-Brown, S., ‘House and Hierarchy: Politics and Domestic Space in Northern Ghana,’ The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 7, No. 4., pp. 669 - 685.). [ED 10/12/2007]
Context: “On leaving South Africa two major goals beckoned. One was the desire to “make my mark on London.” The other was to marry Sonia Donen. Meyer had met Sonia by 1926, probably through her younger brother a the university in Cape Town. She was a few years his elder and in 1926 her family had only recently arrived in South Africa from Russia where she had been a Young Komsomol member and had had a Soviet upbringing. Like Nathan Fortes, her father had escaped Russia to avoid the draft but he had left behind a wife and four children. Separated by World War I and the Russian revolution, the family lost touch with him for nine years, during which time they were kept alive by Sonia’s mother, who fed the family by moving from farm to farm with a knitting machine, making woolens for the farmers. After the revolution Sonia’s elder sister, then 21, left Russia to trace her father, finding him in South Africa where the family were finally reunited.
In the late 1930s Sonia accompanied Meyer to the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast (Northern Ghana) (see figure 2). Her early experience of survival in harsh living conditions may have given her the confidence needed to submit to the perils of anthropological fieldwork and to embark on what might well have seemed an imprudent marriage. On the other hand, the letter Myer wrote to Sonia Donen between 1926 and 1928 (Fortes 1926 - 28) reveal an exceedingly determined young man. Obstacles to their marriage, such as his youth, his extreme poverty, the vast distance between them, and her deep attachment to her family, pale beside his immense conviction that they must marry. The torrent of persuasion in his letters is so overwhelming that one is hardly amazed when a year after his departure, Sonia did indeed make the journey to England to join him.
The letters from London show his enthusiasm for the intellectual life around him, and his amazement at the densely populated, tube-transported city. He was observant and shrewd.”

Bibliographical Reference: Drucker-Brown, S. 1989. ‘Notes toward a Biography of Meyer Fortes’, American Ethnologist, Vol. 16, No. 2 (May, 1989), pp. 375 - 385.).

Bibliographical Reference: 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).

Bibliographical Reference: Fortes, Meyer, 1987. Religion, Morality and the Person: Essays on Tallensi Religion (London: Oxford University Press).

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Jocelyne Dudding, 15/8/2007]
This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Elisabeth Deane 25/3/2008] [Alicia Fentiman, 3/6/2008]