IDNO

N.102650.MF

Description

“Carrying water for house building.”

Four Tallensi women wearing girdles and two boys (one wearing shorts) standing in the foreground in a line and carrying water on their heads in gourd pots. In the background, there appear to be seven? women? walking in a line, also carrying water on their heads in gourd pots. [AF 13/6/2008]

Place

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

Cultural Affliation

Tallensi

Named Person

Photographer

Fortes, Meyer

Collector / Expedition

Fortes, Meyer

Date

December 1934

Collection Name

Fortes Collection

Source

Drucker-Brown, Susan

Format

Film Negative Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

N.102560.MF - N.102652.MF were kept in the negative album “IV” now numbered C558/.

Publication: Similar image published in Fortes, M., 1945. Dynamics of Clanship Among the Tallensi. (London: Oxford University Press), Plate IX, with the caption: “(b) Women at a waterhole in the early rainy season. This waterhole serves homesteads within a radius of over a quarter of a mile.” [ED 26/2/2008]

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: “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 in common, also emphasises the identification of father and son. The gate and the granary are thus conceptually linked.” (Drucker-Brown, 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.). [ED 30/11/2007]

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. [Elisabeth Deane 25/2/2008]