IDNO

N.102362.MF

Description

Four Tallensi women plastering the walls of a round adobe hut. A large number of pots, containers, and piles of earth? surround the hut and women. A dog stands on the top of hut watching on; and trees are in the background.

Place

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

Cultural Affliation

Tallensi

Named Person

Photographer

Fortes, Meyer

Collector / Expedition

Fortes, Meyer

Date

?January 1934

Collection Name

Fortes Collection

Source

Drucker-Brown, Susan

Format

Film Negative Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

N.1022349.MF - N.102559.MF were found in the negative album “II” now numbered C557/.

Context: Fortes describes the architecture of a Tallensi homestead, “ The homesteads are solidly constructed of pile (puddled mud, tan), and they are built to last. Erecting the circular walls tier by tier, plastering them, roofing the rooms, stamping the floors, adding the small contrivances and the decorations that increase the comfort and attraction of a homestead, are all the tasks requiring considerable skill, care and cooperation...The conventional division of labour involves both sexes equally in the building of a homestead. Building and thatching is men’s work; plastering, drawing the crude lines and geometrical designs that decorate the walls, and stamping the floors into smooth, hard surfaces are all women’s work. According to its size and the number of workers available, from the commencement to the final touches, it takes from three weeks to two months of intermittent but often strenuous labour build a homestead. This falls chiefly on all its future occupants. All the members of the family, including the children, lend a hand. But co-members of the owner’s clan, especially of his own local segment and their wives, as well as kinsmen, affines, and friends, lend their services too, and this involves considerable expenditure of foodstuffs to reward them. (Fortes, 1949, p. 48) [Alicia Fentiman, 23/4/2008].

Context: “The Tallensi House: Tallensi house are noticeably more carefully constructed, better enclosed, more decorated and tidier than those of the Mamprusi people. They contain more elaborately built structures for resting, for storing grain, and for housing animals. Outside walls are painted; both colour and design identify lineages. Tallensi houses are built of earth, and the granary (buur) which belongs to a household head dominates the centre of the compound. Among the Tallensi namoos the gateway is the focus of a prohibition which separates a father and his grown-up first born son. The two should not meet one another passing through the gateway. The granary is a similar focus of prohibition. A first-born son is never allowed to look into his fathers granary while his father is alive. During his father’s funeral the first born son is ritually taken to see the inside of his father’s granary while his father is alive. During his father’s funeral the first-born son is ritually taken to see the inside of his father’s granary, an act which, by reversing the custom observed throughout their lives. The gate and the granary are thus conceptually linked.” (Drucker-Brown, 2001)

Bibliographical Reference: Drucker-Brown, S. 2001, ‘House and Hierarchy: Politics and Domestic Space in Northern Ghana,’ The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 7, No. 4., pp. 669-685.

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. [Alicia Fentiman, 21/6/2008]