African Pottery Roulettes Past and Present: Techniques, Identification and Distribution

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ISBN 978-1-84217-968-0

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      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 African pottery roulettes past and present : techniques, identification and distribution / edited by A.

Haour ... [et al.].

    p. cm.

i  Includes bibliographical references.

i  ISBN 978-1-84217-968-0 (pbk.)

i  1. Pottery, African—Technique. 2. Pottery, African--Identification. 3. Artists’ tools—Africa. 4.

Pottery—Africa--. Marks. I. Haour, Anne.

i  NK4173.A35 2010

i  738.3096--dc22

2010029150

Font cover: Talata Seyfou Magazi, a Hausa Gobirawa potter from the village

of Dan Kasari (southwestern Niger), decorates a water jar with a carved ear

of Blepharis linariifolia. (March 2007, © O. Gosselain).

Back cover: A large storage jar is decorated by Karama Ake, Nafona,

Burkina Faso, 1996. Photo by A. Livingstone Smith

Printed in Great Britain by

Hobbs the Printers, Southampton

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

Maps

Introduction

Aims and content

Roulettes as markers of individual and social style

Identifying and classifying African roulettes: previous studies

Fibre roulettes beyond Africa

Outline of the book

Directions for the future

Objectifs

Les roulettes, témoins du style individuel et social

L’identification et la classification des roulettes : études antérieures

Les roulettes hors du continent africain

Structure du livre

Directions pour le futur

References

SECTION 1 Modern roulettes in sub-Saharan Africa

Introduction: classification and nomenclature of African roulettes

Principles of classification

Materials

Manipulations

Material – manipulation systems

Objective and references

Choise of ethnographic referents

Popular classifications

Scientific classification

Simple roulettes (Table 1.1.)

Simple cord roulettes

Twisted cord roulettes

Braided cord roulettes

Knotted cord roulettes

Simple strip roulettes

Folded strip roulettes

Knotted strip roulettes

Roulettes on a core (Table 1.2)

Roulettes on a continuous core

Cord wrapped on a continous core

Braided cords on a continuous core

Braided strips on a continuous core

Roulettes on an independent core

Roulettes on a single independent core

Roulettes on multiple independent cores

Roulettes consisting of modified materials

Carved wooden or bone cylinders

Inflorescences and fruits

Specification and distribution

Unmodified objects

Shells

Manufactured objects

SECTION 1 Roulettes modernes d’afrique sub-sahariennne

Introduction: classification et nomenclature des roulettes africaines

Principes de classification

Matériaux

Manipulations

Système matériau – manipulation

Objectif et références

Choix de référents ethnographiques

Classifications populaires

Classification scientifique

Roulettes simples (Table 1.1.)

Roulettes simples en cordelette

Cordelettes torsadées

Cordelettes tressées

Cordelettes nouées

Roulettes simples en fibres plates

Fibres plates pliées

Fibres plates nouées

Roulettes sur âme (Table 1.2.)

Roulettes sur âme continue

Cordelettes enroulées sur âme continue

Cordelettes tressées sur âme continue

Fibres plates tressées sur âme continue

Roulettes sur âme indépendante

Roulettes sur âme indépendante simple

Roulettes sur âme indépendante multiple

Roulettes constituées de matériaux modifiés

Cylindres taillés en bois ou en os

Inflorescences et fruits

Spécification et distribution

Roulettes constituées de matériaux non-modifiés

Coquillages

Objets récupérés

References

SECTION 2 A method of identification for rolled impressed decorations

Introduction

General principles and practical aspects

General principles: identification of the tools and the actions

Practical aspects

The identification process

Analysing ethnographic tools and their impressions: some examples

Discussion and conclusions

SECTION 2 Méthode d’identification des décors roulés

Introduction

Principes généraux et aspects pratiques

Principes généraux, identification des outils et des gestes

Aspects pratiques

Procédure d’identification

Analyse d’outils ethnographiques et de leurs empreintes: quelques exemples

Discussion et conclusions

References

SECTION 3

Introductory note: how archaeologists work

Twisted cord roulette / Roulette de cordelette torsadée

Appearance of the archaeological material

Description of the tool

Variants on twisted cord roulettes

Knotted twisted cord roulette

Looped twisted cord roulette

Terminology and distribution

Sources of confusion

Selected archaeological instances

Cord-wrapped roulette / Roulette de cordelette enroulée

Appearance of the archaeological material

Description of the tool

Unmodified central core

Split stick core

Multiple stick core

Terminology and distribution

Selected archaeological instances

Sources of confusion

Braided cord roulette (simple and composite) / Roulette de cordelette tressée (simple et composite)

Appearance of the archaeological material

Description of the tool

Three- or four-cord braid: simple and composite

Doubled four-cord braid: simple and composite

Eight-cord braid: simple and composite

Twelve-cord braid: composite

Terminology and distribution

Selected archaeological instances

Sources of confusion

Folded strip roulette / Roulette de fibre plate pliée

Appearance of the archaeological material

Description of the tool

Terminology and distribution

Selected archaeological instances

Sources of confusion

Knotted strip roulette / Roulette de fibre plate nouée

Appearance of the archaeological material

Description of the tool

Terminology and distribution

Selected archaeological instances

Sources of confusion

Braided strip roulette / Roulette de fibre plate tressée

Appearance of the archaeological material

Description of the tool

Terminology and distribution

Selected archaeological instances

Sources of confusion

References

Glossary

Preface and Acknowledgements

This book issues from the sustained collaboration, over a period of nearly three years, of eleven researchers on three continents, under the title Making a good impression: pottery of the Sahara-Sahel borderlands. Neither the book, nor the meetings that enabled its development, could have been achieved without the practical and financial assistance of a range of institutions. We thank the Leverhulme Trust for their grant to Anne Haour of an Academic Collaboration International Network (F/00 204/AI), which funded the two workshops of the research group (in Oxford/London in April 2008, and in Dakar in December 2008), eight studentships, and the salary of Katie Manning as a part-time Network Facilitator. The Sainsbury Research Unit helped meet the cost of publication of the present volume; for this, we thank in particular its Director, Steven Hooper. The patience of Clare Litt, Val Lamb and Tara Evans at Oxbow saw the manuscript to the end.

We are grateful to the museums which made available to our inquisitive examination their collections of roulettes: the Pitt Rivers Museum (and in particular Jeremy Coote, Zena McGreevy, Elin Bornemann and Siân Mundell), the British Museum (and in particular Julie Hudson), and the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (in particular Ndèye Sokhna Guèye). The possibility of making impressions of some of the holdings at the British Museum and at the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire were very valuable in furthering our understanding. Our hosts at the two workshops, Jeremy Coote, Julie Hudson and Ndèye Sokhna Guèye, enabled the proceedings to run exceptionally smoothly, and we wish too to thank the Institute of Archaeology (University of Oxford), the Musée d’Art Africain of Dakar, and the Chairs of the Dakar sessions: Hamady Bocoum, Mustapha Sall, and Ibrahima Thiaw. We thank Annabelle Gallin, of the Céramique Africaine Imprimée network, for joining us in Oxford to make a valuable presentation of that group’s closely-related work.

Eight studentships were awarded on a competitive basis within the research project’s lifetime. The Oxford meeting was joined by Franziska Barth (then University of Cologne), Bryn James (then University of Manchester), and Ross Thomas (then University of Southampton). The Dakar meeting was joined by Clement Bakinde (Ahmadu Bello University Zaria), Abas Iddrisu (University of Ghana-Legon), Malik Saako (University of Ghana-Legon), Sara Togo (Université de Bamako) and Mammadou Cissé (Rice University). Their enthusiasm gave renewed vigour to discussions, and we hope they will find continued involvement with issues of ceramic analysis in the future.

We thank Joseph Daniels for drawing Maps 1–3 and for his patience in making numerous adjustments to them.

The authors of the Introduction wish to thank Ceri Ashley (University College London), George Lau (Sainsbury Research Unit), Anne Mayor (University of Geneva) and Stephanie Wynne-Jones (University of Bristol) for comments on the English text. The translation into French by Anne Haour was much improved by Olivier Gosselain, Ndèye Sokhna Guèye, Daouda Keita, Anne Mayor and Robert Vernet.

Members of the Making a Good Impression research group in Oxford, April 2008. From left to right. Top row: Robert Vernet, Anne Haour, Olivier Gosselain. Middle row: Kevin MacDonald, Katie Manning, Anne Mayor, Susan McIntosh. Bottom row: Alexandre Livingstone Smith, Ndèye Sokhna Guèye, Franziska Barth, Ross Thomas, Annabelle Gallin and Noemie Arazi.

In Section 1, we showcase ethnographic material from museum collections. We thank the Trustees of the British Museum for permission to use the images here reproduced as Figures 1.13, 1.16 and 1.18, as well as the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Tervuren, Belgium)/Université Libre de Bruxelles, the Université de Genève, and the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (Dakar, Senegal) for other images. In addition, we wish to thank Mustapha Sall (Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar) for supplying Figure 1.7, Olivier Langlois (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique – Centre d’Études Préhistoire, Antiquité, Moyen Âge – UMR 6130) for supplying Figure 1.29, and CL Zvonock for taking some of the photographs. We are also grateful to Anna Craven (independent researcher), Patti Langton (independent researcher), and Barbara Frank (The State University of New York at Stony Brook) for sharing photographs and information on potters and potting tools in West Africa. Finally, we thank Rebecca Miller for making the first translation of the text from French into English.

The author of Section 2 is grateful to the Royal Museum for Central Africa, the Université Libre de Bruxelles, and the Leverhulme Trust for their practical support. He would like to thank Anne Haour and Katie Manning for organising the workshops which led to the present volume and for their infinite patience during the editorial process; and Antoine Leblon for his help with impressions, Anne Mayor for comments on an earlier version of the text in French, and Anne Haour for translating it into English.

For Section 3, we are grateful to Andrew Reid (University College London), Malik Saako (University of Ghana-Legon), Annette Schmidt (Volkenkunde Museum, Leiden) and Carlos Magnavita (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt) for supplying additional images and information, not all of which could be accommodated in the final volume. Richard Doyle contributed valuable experimental data on strip roulettes.

The project has benefited from being based within the convivial intellectual ferment of the School of World Art Studies and Museology at the University of East Anglia, and the Sainsbury Research Unit within it; we gained in particular from ongoing discussions on African ceramics with Joanne Clarke and John Mack.

Throughout the volume, we have endeavoured to keep terminology consistent. For the location of the countries, sites and areas discussed, please see Maps 1 to 3.

Maps

Map 1. Africa

Map 2. West Africa

Map 3. Central Mali

Introduction

Olivier Gosselain, Anne Haour, Kevin MacDonald and Katie Manning

Aims and Content

This volume is concerned with the decoration of African pottery via the impression of objects, known as roulettes, onto the surface of pots before firing. The sheer number of objects that can serve as roulettes, and the various manners in which they can be impressed (rolled, rocked, impressed singly or pivoted), belie the apparent simplicity of the technique. Indeed, because of variation in type and mode of use for roulettes, these tools can justifiably be considered the epitome of technical diversity. Roulettes have been associated with pottery assemblages of the continent for millennia, and today comprise a range of objects, from twisted pieces of cord to carved wooden cylinders; from fish bones to hair curlers; from folded sections of palm fibre to bicycle springs. At the onset of the twentieth century, and for much of the following decades, rouletting tools were used within the African continent across an area about the size of the United States. This was a peak in what could stand as the biggest ‘success story’ in the history of pottery decoration in Africa (Gosselain 2000; Livingstone Smith 2007). Nowadays, rouletting tools continue be used in most of this area, but we are also witnessing their progressive decline, not simply because pottery vessels are increasingly replaced by metal and plastic containers, but because of a loss of popularity against new decorative fashions, such as painted motifs. Yet, if what we are concerned about within this book is an historical technical tradition in pottery decoration, it is above all an ongoing tradition. This point is crucial, since it confers upon the African continent a unique role for the study of roulettes. In most other areas of the world where rouletting was practised in the past, there exist no contemporary parallels. African examples therefore provide a link between past and present. They also allow us to explore questions relating to the social context of the making and use of rouletting tools, and help us test new hypotheses about material culture, whilst at the same time covering a huge part of Africa’s past.

This volume, which aims to improve the recognition and identification of impressed pottery, with a particular focus on West Africa, comes at a key point in African ceramic studies. This field of research has a long and distinguished scholarly history, which has drawn in anthropologists, ethnographers, art historians, museum curators and archaeologists. It has been marked both by painstaking description and by broadranging theoretical debates. Among the debates, perhaps none have been livelier than those surrounding issues of material style, of which we provide a short synthesis below. The time is now ripe to bring together different approaches to stylistic behaviour. In recent decades, attributes of technical style rather than decorative style have formed a focus of anthropological and ethnoarchaeological enquiry in Africa: for instance, the question of shaping techniques. The incomplete nature of archaeological datasets often means, however, that such technical attributes may be lost, leaving decoration as one of the only representations of stylistic information. The recognition that decoration is also a ‘technical behaviour’ amongst others, and the appreciation that visual aspects of style do not necessarily transmit deliberate information, allow us to return with a fresh perspective to the implications of rolled impressions. Moreover, recent ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological work has made available data on the vast temporal and geographic distributions of pottery attributes, such as forming techniques, substantially improving our knowledge of the evolution of potting traditions in Africa (‘Mission Archéologique et Ethnoarchéologique Suisse en Afrique de l’Ouest (MAESAO)’ – Gallay and Huysecom 1991; Gallay et al. 1996, 1998; Mayor in press; Mayor et al. 2005; ‘Projet Céramiques et Sociétés’ – Gosselain et al. 1996; Gosselain 2000, 2001; Livingstone Smith 2007; ‘Mandara Archaeological Project’ – David and MacEachern 1988; David and Sterner 1989; David 1998). Building on such work, a resurgence of interest in the distribution of decorative techniques is under way. However, such an undertaking demands a detailed understanding of the nature and usage of pottery decoration tools.

In archaeological terms, the construction of ceramic typologies continues to act as a cornerstone for research across Africa. Such fundamental work is, in fact, a crucial priority for this vast area of land, where many regions are still virtual terra incognita and where archaeological sites are most visible through the myriad potsherds scattered over their surface. Indeed, people in the Sahara were among the earliest potters in the world, around 10 000 to 8 000 years ago, but strangely, even in the case of these earliest African ceramics, the identification of the actual implements used for decoration has only rarely been a priority of ceramics research. This is particularly problematic for cord-wrapped roulette impressions, and two very divergent models exist for their first appearance: such roulettes may either

be amongst the first cord-based decorative techniques used on the continent, or merely part of a flowering of cord-based roulettes centred on the Middle Niger Basin from the third millennium BC onwards (Livingstone Smith 2007).

The reason for this impasse may be found in differences of analytical practice among researchers. We cannot share the opinion of Isabelle Caneva, who writes:

…we do not think it is a good strategy to describe decorations through the examination of the instruments used to make them… we think that it is hardly possible to reconstruct (or even to imagine) the entire range of tools which might have been used (Caneva 1983, 166).

While there are strong exceptions to this trend (see, for example, Keding 1997), many publications from the Nile Valley have tended to scrutinise decorative ‘patterns’ rather than to reconstruct the tools which created them. We are still left with the indiscriminate usage of awkward terms such as ‘wavy-line’ and ‘dotted-wavy line’, motifs which could be made using a type of roulette just as well as a stylus or comb; in other words, these terms remain fossiles directeurs of ambiguous definition (Mohammed Ali and Khabir 2003; Manning 2009). Crucially, a reliance on such fossiles directeurs is no longer appropriate, for in some regions at least, ratios of different pottery decoration types seem to constitute a more important chronological indicator than does their presence or absence. Plainly, in these conditions, it is necessary not just to analyse as large an assemblage as possible, but also to use classificatory schemes which are adequately descriptive, systematic, and clear to other researchers. In such schemes, a reliance on decorative ‘patterns’ is not viable: only a reconstruction of the tool that was used to produce those patterns can provide a clear picture of the characteristics of, and variability within, particular decorative types.

But for any coherent picture of the past to be apprehended, it is necessary not just for new regional pottery sequences to be developed, but also for these schemes to employ a common, readily transferable terminology and classificatory framework. Such standardisation is a sine qua non for any meaningful inter-regional comparisons between ceramic assemblages. At present, the archaeological coverage of Africa, patchy at its best, has been constructed by a diverse and multinational set of researchers, generating an assortment of methodological approaches and discordant terminologies for characterising regional ceramic assemblages. As the pace of archaeological enquiry into the West African past quickens, it is imperative that firm foundations are set, and that they can be shared across regional, linguistic and scholarly boundaries. Extreme rigour is required, and this volume hopes to provide a widely usable framework for the archaeological description of roulette-impressed pottery.

Crucially, in our view, a consideration of archaeologically-evidenced pottery roulettes does not, and cannot, make sense without a consideration of modern-day practices of roulette -making and -using. In the definition of any subset of rouletted ware, impression, mode of application and decorative tool involved must be clearly identified or, at least, hypothesised. This book thus integrates ethnographic and archaeological datasets to improve the archaeological recognition of roulette-made impressions.

In summary, the present volume distinguishes itself from existing works through at least two key characteristics:

Only by privileging a consideration of the tool, and by including a good database of images, can we hope to discern the defining characteristics of the various types of impressed decoration: and thus identify any ruptures or continuities between types.

Roulettes as markers of individual and social style

Roulettes, as a cultural item par excellence, cross-cut crucial issues, perhaps most notably the question of style. Approaches to style in material culture studies, and subsequently in archaeology, have been punctuated by significant theoretical and methodological shifts over the decades. Partly because of its durability and persistence through time, as well as the malleability of clay that makes it so amenable to change, pottery has, and continues to be, at the forefront of changing positions. Whilst it is not our intention to add another voice to the ever-growing debate on style in archaeology (for this see such publications as Carr and Nietzel 1995; David and Kramer 2001, 177–183; Hegmon 1998; Gosselain 2002; Martinelli 2005; Haour and Manning in prep.), it is evident that a work advocating an improved scheme of roulette classification must first situate itself within the wider context of theoretical approaches to decorative techniques and stylistic characteristics.

Despite years of interest in material style, it has proved a difficult thing to define, even though most archaeologists probably think they know what they mean by the term (Hegmon 1998, 265). Style has often been referred to as elusive or controversial because of its ambiguous meaning, and prior to the 1960s and 1970s was considered primarily as an extant phenomenon of material culture, associated with ‘non-functional’ aspects, and in particular with decorative attributes. In pursuit of an almost taxonomic approach to material culture, scholars perceived stylistic variability as a means of seemingly self-regulating adaptation to the external environment (see e.g. Clarke 1962, 1967). In this way, ceramic ‘styles’ constituted passive witnesses of ill-defined cultural norms, and were supposed to allow the mapping of past cultural boundaries.

By the mid-1970s, however, archaeology had entered into a new phase of critical reaction to such culture-historical approaches. Archaeologists began to specifically address the relatively dry and acultural form of positivism advocated by scholars such as Clarke (1962, 1967), and began a more sustained dialogue with anthropology in an attempt to understand what exactly material style was, and what it could tell us about social identity. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, for example, a group of papers published by Deetz (1968), Hill (1970, 1972) and Longacre (1964) advocated a form of ‘ceramic sociology’ founded on the idea that the matrilineal organisation of potting traditions in historic and contemporary pueblo societies of the American Southwest had prehistoric antecedents. If it were the case that matrilocality existed in the past, these authors suggested that microtraditions of potting styles would be clustered within matrilineal units, as they perceived them (Deetz 1968, 45). However, the Deetz/Hill/Longacre model was perhaps overly systemic, relying on a complex set of assumptions concerning what characterised ceramic style, how potting traditions were passed on from one producer to another, and what social processes underlay ceramic production. Indeed, a key assumption in their work was that ceramic ‘styles’, which they equated with generalising patterns of descent and the learning process of pottery manufacture, were defined primarily by the decorative stage in manufacture. No critical attempt was made to understand how decorative attributes articulated with ceramic style, or how decorative traits were actually manufactured and perceived within culturally specific contexts.

Thus, whilst ceramic sociology offered a more optimistic view on studies of material culture and social identity, it remained essentially positivist in its outlook. Two influential concepts were, some years later, to radically change archaeological approaches to style. Hegmon (1998, 264) succinctly summarises them as two statements; ‘Style has function’, and ‘Technology has style’.

The first development, emerging out of a growing concern for the human agent in processes of social change (Bourdieu 1977; Giddens 1984; see Dobres 2000 for a detailed discussion), was pioneered by authors such as Wobst (1977), Hodder (1982, 1986) and Sackett