Regents of the University of California

On Artifact and Identity at the Niger-Benue Confluence

Author(s): John Picton
Source: African Arts, Vol. 24, No. 3, Special Issue: Memorial to Arnold Rubin, Part II (Jul.,
1991), pp. 34-49+93-94
Published by: UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3336922
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 On Artifact and Identity
at the
Niger-Benue Confluence
diate and more relevant than whatever
it is we think we mean by the use of an
"ethnic" label.3 Indeed, this paper is
about the continuing need to stop think-
ing that such terms inevitably signify
the boundaries of categorically distinct
populations. We must learn instead to
understand how individual people,
households, and communities build
their identities with one another, and
understand the place of artifacts in that
PHOTO: RICHARD OSUAGWU
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JOHN PICTON
process. Time and time again, when we
find the same kinds of artifacts in use
among neighboring populations of dis-
tinct language, political affiliation, or
whatever, we habitually note that here
is something that has crossed an ethnic
border. But surely, if the distribution of
a particular kind of artifact is not con-
strained by the boundaries of language
or political affiliation, then it is more
precise to note that such boundaries do
2. ET IN ARCADIA EGO. LEFT TO RIGHT:
ANDREW OGEMBE, MARGARET PICTON,
SUSAN CONNELL (LATER PICTON), ARNOLD RUBIN,
JOHN PICTON, RICHARD OSUAGWU, WHO
ORGANIZED AND TOOK THE PHOTOGRAPH.
LAGOS, JANUARY 1, 1970.
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Et in arcadia ego
The photograph in Figure 2 was
taken on New Year's Day, 1970, in
Lagos. Arnold Rubin is among a
group of people who had come to
know him, to like him, and to love
him. He had arrived in Nigeria to set
up a further period of field research
in the Benue valley; his family
would soon be joining him. The
others in the photograph are, left to
right: Andrew Ogembe, my field
assistant, now also, sadly, no longer
living; Margaret Picton, my mother;
Susan Connell, later my wife, whose
work in Akoko-Edo provides much of
the data summarized here; and
Richard Osuagwu, who organized
and took the photograph, and who
looked after us all.
Before Arnold arrived I had
studied his contribution to the Lagos
Museum archive (often referred to
these days as the Kenneth Murray
archive, because he, of course, started
it). During his time in my Lagos
apartment, we talked for hours and
hours, comparing research
experiences and sorting out the
future of African-art studies. Arnold
went on to do something about it,
whereas I continued thinking about
those conversations: indeed,
although William Fagg taught me to
look at African sculpture, it was
Arnold who taught me to think about
it. Twenty-seven years later, Arnold
arranged for me to teach at UCLA
in the 1987 fall quarter. The
conversations resumed, and the Ebira
papers I have written since then are
the result.
35
 PHOTOS: SUSAN PICTON

This paper is about a region of

Nigeria west and south of the con-
fluence of the Niger and Benue rivers,
some 80 kilometers from east to west
and some 120 kilometers from north to
south (Figs. 3, 4). Its population includes
the most northeasterly of Yoruba-speak-
ing groups and, to their south, diverse
communities of people, many grouped
into the administrative unit now called
Akoko-Edo Local Government Area,
who speak several mutually unintelligi-
ble Edo-related languages. The diversi-
ties of language notwithstanding, these
communities each have a social struc-
ture based upon lineages crosscut by
age grades leading to the taking of titles.
The social and cultural details, of
course, may vary considerably, but this
variability subsists within that common
pattern nevertheless.1 However, at some
point in the past, Ebira people moved
into the territory between these Edo and
Yoruba communities, speaking a lan-
guage related to neither and bringing a
lineage-based social order otherwise
lacking the distinctive features of their
neighbors.2 Then, throughout the whole
region one finds Uneme smiths, a dis-
tinct Edo-speaking group, largely en-
dogamous due to their depressed status.
Finally, one must take into account the
Nupe marauders who overran much of
the area in the late nineteenth century,
soon followed by British marauders in
the early twentieth.
Whatever the differences of language
and of social order, however, the pres-
ence of relationships through trade,
intermarriage, and oral tradition pro-
vides for a sense of identity between
diverse communities that is more imme-

LEFTAND ABOVE: 1. AGE-GRADE MASK CALLED DAUDU,

CARVED IN 1968 BY GARUBA OBIRO AND TWO ASSISTANTS.
WOOD, OIL-BASED PAINT. TWENTY YEARS AFTER
KENNETH MURRAY'S VISIT, THE IMAGE OF THE EUROPEAN
HAS BEEN REPLACED BY THAT OF A NIGERIAN SOLDIER.
SEE ALSO FIGURE 7.
OGBE, AKOKO-EDO, 1969.

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 NIGERIA

NIGERIA
5? 10?
15? ............ .................................................. .......................................

* KWARA STA TE *-.Lokoja

Kabba ..' ..
Sokoto - -- o,
.......- ', ,,*a,, Igbirra i
?I "%. . .-
?,* , ' '.division
Kano Maiduguri l

Zaria Oboroke :

Kaduna ? Okene ..:.

O N D O . -' %- *Oe * Eganyi ::2
10;, 9 ------------- STATE * a
Imoga Ogori Ajaokuta *O >
\ AREA UNDER DISCUSSION
Jebba
/ Yola Ekpedo * ;Ososo:
I

llorin * ,
I Ikpeshi? Oja .::
Ogbe 0 Adamode :
Oyo Ado Ekiti okoja
Ibadan? Ife : Makurdi '" * ',, ,J: B E N U E
Lagos
mAbeokuta kerre Ekiti Idah
I-,
X I

.... Igara ? S TATE

ga *Okpela ..O STA TE
*Ikao .Akoko-Edo :
: nBe nin nitsha Otuo * division

................ :: :........ Aba Port-Ha.court , ..../ BENDEL STATE i,,da

5 ? ...........
......................... .....-..ib;
......................... ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ : .'alabar
*Auchi !
..........................

Kilometers
. . .. . . . .. .. . . . .. .. . . . . . .. . . . . . .. .. . . .

..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... .....

0 100 200 ... . ..... KILOMETERS .
0 15 30

3. THE NIGER-BENUE CONFLUENCE AREA, NIGERIA. 4. ADMINISTRATIVE BOUNDARIES IN THE CONFLUENCE AREA, 1970.

Ebira
Ebira
UNCLASSIFIED illllll
Itll I I ; I ..... IIUNC ''I D
Kiwakur I I . I S I Ue
i|aIr Sal U|| Imoga ..?e. . iOgori
aoa Sa E r E e

/. - '"- R I t '?;
Ft--..p o- ,- D Oja-Oke
^ I ?.jaja Sa ra-Sle
U gboLankpese .... Ososo

Ugbo shi- Sale

Es ...... . ." OgiSe kalE

-,Ikeran-KEY
. k Xer l .EkDraO// * Egbigere 1

.. .....
Okp j ; i . " Okpela
AuhiOchie
Segbe- Ogbe Sale"
Oloma Ojirami-Oke

Ijaja Sala ga

.......Okpela

Segbe- ...
....hi

_ "I
H Ebira-Etuno

5. LANGUAGES AT THE NIGER-BENUE CONFLUENCE 6. LANGUAGE DISTRIBUTION IN AKOKO-EDO, 1970.

(AFTER HANSFORD, BENDOR-SAMUEL & STANFORD 1976). RESEARCH BY SUSAN PICTON.

not exist for that artifact, and perhaps ethnic or "tribal" labels, and of the need understood as no more than a slipshod
for the institutions of its manufacture, to understand the sense of identity from representation of the complexities of
use, and distribution. People live simul- within, rather than continually impos- individual and social identity.
taneously within several dimensions of ing it from without, constitute part of The artifact traditions of the region
relationships, and the boundaries exist- my contribution to that long-running include textiles, pottery, sculpture, met-
ing in one dimension will not and need and still essentially unresolved debate alwork, and masquerade. Some are com-
not necessarily coincide with the bound- about relationships between aesthetic mon to the entire area, others are
aries within another. Moreover, the categories and social categories (e.g., distinctive of particular localities, and
boundaries and identities signified by or Bravmann 1973, Kasfir 1984, Vansina yet others exhibit continuity well be-
embodied within one set of artifacts can 1984). The continued use of words such yond the region under discussion. There
be denied by others. Recognition and as Yoruba and Ebira in this paper is a may be no obvious fit between the dis-
discussion of the frequent irrelevance of convenient shorthand, but should be tributions of certain artifacts, languages,

36

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or social institutions. For example, Ebira Edo-related, but including some unclas- I remember a negotiation between fish-
masquerades have been widely copied sified languages. (Indeed, without Susan ermen whose first language was
by surrounding non-Ebira commu- this paper could not have been written.) Urhobo and a district head whose first
nities.4 It seems that we still know all To the southeast of Ebira is the area language was Ebira, for rights to fish
too little about the process whereby a known as Etsako, also Edo-speaking. where the inhabitants' first language
sense of identity is mediated and con- The riverain eastern border is occupied was Igala.
structed by and with and within arti- on both sides of the Niger proceeding The languages of the confluence area
facts. This is an urgent and potentially downstream from Lokoja first by Basa- (see Hansford, Bendor-Samuel & Stanford
highly productive area of field engage- ngge communities and then Igala. To the 1976; Fig. 5) are currently regarded as
ment, likely to reveal significant point- east, along the Benue valley, the Basa- Niger-Congo languages and classified as
ers to the formulation of interpretive ngge area marches alongside Basa- Kwa languages, with the following four
models for the writing of history. kwomu (i.e., "true" Basa); communities exceptions: Basa-kwomu, the "true" Basa,
The identification as Yoruba of the known as Basa-ngge are in fact Nupe, in placed within the Western Plateau group
most northeasterly of Yoruba-speaking which language the name apparently of Benue-Congo; and three unclassified
communities is based at least as much means, "We are not Basa" (Gunn & languages-Ogori-Magongo, Ukaan, and
upon linguistic analysis as on broader Conant 1960:72, n. 1). Fishermen from Akpes. The Kwa languages are classified
cultural continuities, for the importance almost everywhere also seem to be here. as follows: the Yoruba group (including
of a specifically "Yoruba" identity is in
itself a phenomenon emerging within or
following upon, and as a consequence is
a phenomenon of, the colonial period.
This is not to say that "Yoruba" is a colo-
nial invention-far from it-but the pre-
colonial bases of what has emerged as a
specific Yoruba ethnic identity are still
far from clear. These communities form
a series of "mini-states" (Obayemi 1976:
201-9; the map he gives is particularly
clear) known as Iyagba, Ikiri, Abinu,
Oworo, Igbede, and Ijumu (including
Owe). During the colonial period these
were grouped together around the
administrative base of Kabba. To the
west, Iyagba and Ijumu march with the
Igbomina, Opin, Ekiti, and Akoko
regions. To the north, Iyagba, Ikiri, and
Oworo march with Nupe-speaking peo-
ples. To the east this area is bounded by
the confluence and the lower Niger. To
the south, Ijumu (in particular, Ogidi
and Owe) and Abinu once evidently
marched with a variety of Edo-speaking
peoples, until these latter were pushed
to the south by Ebira. The boundary
between the lands of Owe and Ososo,
the most northerly of Akoko-Edo settle-
ments, once passed through the middle
of what is now Okene market, Okene
being the administrative center for Ebira
established by the colonial regime.
People calling themselves anebira (i.e.,
people of ebira, a word that refers to the
outward manifestation of a beneficent
destiny) have come to occupy a very
roughly triangular area of some 64 kilo-
meters coming inland from the lower
Niger by some 64 kilometers at the
riverain eastern side. To the southwest of
Ebira is Akoko-Edo, a modern adminis-
trative grouping of a number of commu-
nities whose inhabitants speak some
half-dozen mutually unintelligible lan-
guages, as Susan Picton found, mostly

7. AGE-GRADE MASKS IN AKOKO-EDO.

ON THE MASK AT LEFT, CALLED DAUDU, THE
EUROPEAN SITS ASTRIDE A HORSE; ON THE RIGHT,
HIDDEN BEHIND THE SHIELD ON THE MASK
CALLED SIEKI, HE SURMOUNTS A LEOPARD
(SEE PICTON1990 FOR A DISCUSSION OF THE IMAGERY).
OGBE, AKOKO-EDO, 1947.

37

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 while those of Ogbe and Semorika do
not. Indeed, Okpameri is said to be a
made-up term (meaning "We are one")
not in use much before the middle of the
present century. Before that, while people
recognized that they spoke a common
language, there was evidently no sense of
a need to assert a named common identi-
ty. On the other hand, Makeke, Oja,
Dagbala, and Ojirami at the eastern side
of the Okpameri-speaking area did
regard themselves as in some sense a
unity, but they called themselves Oku-
losho, not Okpameri. Then, Onumu, situ-
ated between Ojirami and Semorika,
regarded themselves as akin to Oku-
losho, but not part of it, and certainly
separate from Semorika, Ogbe, Ogugu,
and Okpameri. The sophistication of
these categories cannot be ignored.
Indeed, they need further investigation,
for in themselves they represent a history
as yet to be written.
Standing in contrast to these repre-
sentations of identity and difference is
the network of markets. For example,
the pottery-making center of this area is
the Okulosho village of Oja, whose pot-
ters carry their wares for sale at local
markets, including nearby Ososo, and
Igara twenty-four kilometers to the
southwest. Susan Picton noted that the
potters would stay the night at Enwan,
the village adjacent to Igara, in order to
arrive at the market at the crack of
dawn. Neither Ososo nor Igara nor
Enwan is Okpameri or Okulosho. Oja
pottery evidently mediates at least one

8. WOODEN DOOR.
AKUKU, AKOKO-EDO, 1968.

9. WOODEN DOOR.
OJA-OKE, OKULOSHO, AKOKO-EDO, 1966.

eleven Akoko languages and Igala), eight

North-Central Edo and four North-West
Edo languages, Ebira, and Nupe (includ-
ing Basa-ngge).5
Each of the paragraphs that follow,
regarding Okpameri-Okulosho, Ososo
and Ebira, and Uneme exemplifies a par-
ticular problem, question, and dimension
of that sense of identity-its creation,
expression, representation, affirmation,
maintenance, subversion, and so on-
that cannot be grasped simply in terms of
language, social institution, or political
affiliation. Although these latter factors
must also be considered as part of the
matter of identity, each is capable of pro-
viding for alternative and perhaps con-
flicting dimensions of it.

Okpameri and Okulosho. Susan Picton

found that the language I have listed as
Okpameri is spoken in an area compris-
ing some twenty-three villages (Fig. 6).
Some of these are relatively recent settle-
ments beside the main road with an
aboriginal village still maintained on the
original hilltop site, as in the case of
Ogbe-Oke and Ogbe-Sale (whose suffix-
es derive from the Yoruba words for
hill/upper and lower; this in itself rep-
resents the use of standard Yoruba as a
medium of education). However, the
inhabitants of Ogbe regard themselves
as quite distinct from the rest of the
world, even though they recognize his-
torical and linguistic affinities with
Ogugu to their north and Semorika to
their south; the inhabitants of Ogugu
regard themselves as part of Okpameri,

38

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dimension of the economy of the area,
with Oja pots and potters embodying
and representing a "community" be-
tween diverse settlements, differences of
language notwithstanding. However, I
am not at all certain how far to the north
Oja pottery is distributed. Certainly the
markets within the Ebira-speaking area
are dominated by pots and potters from
the western Ebira community of Obo-
roke. These two pottery-making centers
are clearly separate technical traditions
employing very different methods of
manufacture. Oja pots are built up in
rings and fired rapidly (see Susan
Picton's photographs in Fagg & Picton
1970), whereas at Oboroke the clay is
pulled rather than built up and is then
fired over a longer time.
Ososo and Ebira. Ososo, in the north-
east of the Akoko-Edo region, is a small
town with its own language. The satel-
lite village of Egbetua with which it
shared a common identity, history, and
language is now largely deserted, its
inhabitants having moved to Ososo. I
have already referred to the tradition
that Ebira people pushed Ososo and
Owe apart as they began to settle in
their present location, establishing their
rights in a series of feuds. However, one
Ebira lineage, the "children of Ehebe," is
well known in Ebira for its long-stand-
ing relationships of trade and intermar-
riage with Ososo. Ehebe is regarded as
the Ebira ancestor who made peace with
Ososo after a series of feuds. In Ososo,
however, the "children of Ehebe" are
regarded as an Ososo lineage, the
descendants of those who stayed behind
when most Ososo people moved south
to leave room for Ebira settlement.
There is no way of resolving this ex-
planatory hiatus. My presenting one
party with the history provided by the
other produced such great annoyance
and dispute that no purpose was served,
other than to make me realize that the
sense of common identity was main-
tained precisely because no one attempt-
ed to resolve the alternative traditions.
The consequences of these histories
are threefold. First, there are people in
Ebira and in Ososo who are related
through marriage; and I do not mean
Ebira "children of Ehebe" marrying
Ososo "children of Ehebe," for these
descent lines are exogamous. Rather, the
fact of common descent as a result of
intermarriage is a function of the tradi-
tion of contact between otherwise dis-
tinct communities. That tradition is
realized by means of trade at each
other's markets, which, together with
visits at times of family celebrations
because of existing marital bonds, pro-
vides the context and the possibility for
the marriage between people of one
community and people belonging to
other lineages in the other. All this is
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(
10. WOODEN DOOR.
IKPESHI, (ISHUA?) ONDO STATE, 1964.
facilitated by the oral tradition of Ehebe-
Ososo familiarity, whatever its present
interpretation on either side. Each of
these elements supports and encourages
the others, thereby enabling and creating
a sense of identity and community
between communities otherwise distinct.
The second consequence is that there
are Ebira people (i.e., men and women
born and bred as anebira) who for rea-
sons of marriage, trade, friendship, or
perhaps as directed by an oracle, have
chosen, as adults, to live at Ososo, and
vice versa. Third, there are second-gen-
eration (or third-generation and beyond)
Ebira people born and bred at Ososo.
Although they are participants in the
rites and grades of transition from child
to elder that are distinctive to Ososo,
and are also inevitable participants in
the likewise distinctive dual system of
inheritance and descent, patrilineal and
matrilineal, yet they retain a sense of
identity as Ebira. A second-generation
Ebira is, of course, only "Ebira" in those
circumstances wherein this definition is
needed. For most of the time, participa-
tion in the life of Ososo is such that "eth-
nic" definition is irrelevant. However,
one medium and justification for main-
taining an Ebira identity might be the
continuing series of rights and obliga-
tions in regard to people and lineages in
Ebiraland, recognized as applying to a
second-generation Ebira person, Ososo
domicile notwithstanding. A further
consequence of Ebira-Ososo community
derived from that Ebira sense of identity
signified by masquerade. Some fifty
years ago Ebira masquerading was
indeed established in Ososo. It was so
popular that it came to provide a major
structuring basis of the Ososo calendar,
until a couple of years ago when it was
abolished. The extreme violence that
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11. DETAIL SHOWING FIGURES
THAT EMBELLISH A WOODEN BOWL
COLLECTED BY KENNETH MURRAY
AT SEMORIKA, AKOKO-EDO, IN 1947.
had come to characterize Ebira festivals
provided the justification for their pro-
scription, and this in turn provided the
context for Ososo Christians to achieve
the abolition of masquerading with the
additional justification that it was not an
aboriginal component of Ososo life.
Rather than denying the point that I am
trying to establish, however, this shows
the complexities of these histories. It
remains to be seen whether masquerad-
ing will be re-established in either place.
Uneme (Ileme), the smiths. Scattered
throughout the region under discussion
are villages and households of smiths
who regard themselves, and are so
regarded by everyone else, as different.
Their language, traditions of origin, prac-
tical skills, and depressed status consti-
tute their difference from those other
people among whom they live. In Edo
oral tradition their ancestors were ex-
pelled from the Benin kingdom, an event
that is taken as defining that ill esteem
from which they have suffered ever
since.6 The present king of Benin has in
fact rescinded their ancient banishment,
but whether this will improve their status
is hard to imagine. For the moment, to be
born into an Uneme household is still to
inherit a despised status.
In Akoko-Edo, Susan Picton found
that there are five distinct Uneme vil-
lages: Ekpedo to the north between
Okpameri and Ogori; Uneme-Osu to the
east between Okulosho and Etsako; and
Uneme-Nekhua, Uneme-Akpama, and
Aiyetoro, to the south of Okpameri and
Okulosho. Uneme households are also
39
 13. DETAIL OF A STOOL PRESUMED TO BE OF
AKOKO-EDO ORIGIN. IT SHOWS THE MARRIAGEABLE
VIRGIN, AN IMAGE CHARACTERISTIC OF AKOKO-EDO.
THE STOOL IS KEPT BY THE DESCENDANTS OF OMADIVI,
THE FIRST "NATIVE AUTHORITY" APPOINTED BY THE
COLONIAL GOVERNMENT AT OKENEBA. OMADIVI HELD
THAT POSITION FROM 1903 UNTIL HIS DEATH IN 1917.
OKENEBA, EBIRA, 1967.
12. AUDU OVANERO CARVES A STOOL
FOR A WOMAN TO USE AT HOME.
AHANECI, EBIRA, 1971.
PHOTO
PHOTO: JOHNJOHN
found in other Akoko-Edo communities,
such as Ososo and in the towns and vil-
lages of Ebira, and in many of the vil-
lages of the Kabba area. Uneme smiths
migrated from Ekpedo throughout Ebira
and beyond, probably during the previ-
ous century, attaching themselves to
well-to-do Ebira patrons in the villages
in which they settled. This patron-client
relationship still exists; an Ebira house-
hold elder will still refer to a descendant
of the smith who had been the client of
his ancestor as "my smith" with the con-
tinuing expectation of service, whatever
the present relative wealth of the two
households.
By the 1960s there was no recollection
by the smiths of the procedure for smelt-
ing iron other than that they had once
done it: their raw material was industrial
scrap. All manner of tools were produced.
The most important by far was the hoe
blade, essential for subsistence farming
and serving also to define and embody,
together with masquerade, essential
notions of Ebira masculinity.7 Uneme
smiths also have a technique of brass
plating iron,8 and they evidently were,
and continue to be, responsible for much,
though not all, of the woodcarving
throughout this area. Around Kabba, it
would appear that brassworkers were
freeborn natives, whereas ironwork was
left to Uneme smiths (Krapf-Askari 1966).
40
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7 '^
PICTON PICTON
Throughout Ebira, no freeborn man
would touch any kind of metalworking,
and there was simply no tradition of
Ebira metallurgy or any remembrance of
a past tradition. In Ososo it was reckoned
there had once been local smiths, but that
with the presence of the Uneme, these
had long since disappeared. On the other
hand, throughout the region it was clear
that freeborn local men as well as smiths
engaged in wood sculpture: in Ebira it
seemed as if this was a practice copied by
the freeborn from the smiths. The point
here is that whereas metalworking is the
proper occupation of Uneme smiths,
woodworking was a more occasional pas-
time, without the status attached to the
Uneme that would discourage the Ebira
would-be carver-and why pay a smith if
you can do it yourself! The presence of
Uneme smiths, with their added involve-
ment in woodwork, thus provides anoth-
er dimension of unity to the entire region,
more wide ranging than the distribution
of Oje pottery, although it is a unity
standing in ironic contrast to their status
as locally perceived. The further irony is
that, given the relative durability of the
smiths' equipment, in a future archaeo-
logical context this misapprehension
would be reinforced.
I now return to the question of the pres-
ence of masquerades in the Akoko-Edo
town of Ososo that sing in Ebira lan-
guage, dress in the manner of masquer-
ades in Ebira, and appear in a cycle of
performances like that in Ebira towns
and villages. I found myself presented in
1982 with three explanations. First, Ebira
people living at Ososo brought their
masquerades to Ososo, as indeed they
have done in other Akoko-Edo villages.
Second, Ososo people who had visited
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Ebira at festival times and admired what
they saw were responsible. Third, a par-
ticular master smith was the source. In
Ebira, smiths can be commissioned to
carve masks and hired to perform in
masquerades, but they cannot own
masks or masquerades, or indeed any-
thing that falls within the category of
is'ohiku ("things of ancestors"). One
smith of my acquaintance, for example,
was fined for acquiring a pair of agidibo,
the cylindrical log-bells (often incorrectly
referred to as slit-gongs or slit-drums),
and they were confiscated from him.
Agidibo are beaten at every major cele-
bration in Ebira and are regarded as the
first item among the "things of ances-
tors" to be acquired by the head of a new
household. The restrictions placed upon
smiths in Ososo would not have been
the same as in Ebira and could not have
included a restriction on the ownership
of masks and masquerades, these not yet
being part of the cycle of performances
at Ososo. The smith would have been
able to do what he could not have done
in Ebira: own his own masquerades,
rather than merely be hired to carve
other people's masks and perform other
people's masquerades. By doing so per-
haps he hoped to improve the poor
esteem of all smiths.
It turned out, of course, that it was
impossible to resolve these contradic-
tions. Such was the popularity of Ebira
masquerade that everyone wanted to
claim its inception as his ancestors' or his
lineage's own. Once again, the attempt
on my part to resolve the question of his-
torical veracity was dangerously pro-
vocative. The problem is essentially
insoluble. In practice, people united in
the enjoyment of masquerade without
the need to ask, let alone resolve, such
questions. The recent abolition of mas-
querading is all the more curious given
this attachment and popularity.
Some of the other artifacts that are
characteristic of the area discussed in
this paper, such as the staffs and stools
proper to elders and titled men, are
widely distributed throughout much of
the region to the immediate southwest of
the Niger-Benue confluence, irrespective
of the radically different ways in which
that authority is defined and legitimated,
and irrespective, likewise, of the distri-
bution of languages or the histories of
common identity such as those dis-
cussed in the last few paragraphs. By
this I mean that the shape, size, material,
and conventions in ornament and figura-
tive imagery have certain things in com-
mon wherever they are found in this
area, and that this distribution itself pre-
supposes another kind of history
embodied in the artifacts themselves.
Other kinds of artifacts, like certain
masks, are distinctive of particular locali-
ties or have less widespread distribution
patterns. Certain other masks and mas-
 14. STOOL OF A DECEASED ELDER IN ADOGO,
MANUFACTURED LOCALLY IN EBIRA ABOUT 1920. 60cm.
THE RED FEATHER (ATTACHED TO THE PIPE OF THE FIGURE
ON THE LEFT), FROM THE WING OF THE VIOLET PLANTAIN
EATER, IS A SACRIFICE. THE FIGURE AT THE FRONT
OF THE STOOL AS PHOTOGRAPHED IS POSSIBLY A HIGHLY
SCHEMATIZED INTERPRETATION OF THE AKOKO-EDO
VIRGIN. THE FIGURES OF PIPE-SMOKING MEN ARE
EMBLEMATIC OF THE AUTHORITY OF ELDERS.
ADOGO, EBIRA, 1966.

tradition that cannot yet be defined in

"ethnic" terms. Okene, established as
the modern administrative center for
Ebira, has become known during the
present century as a source of decorative
weaving using rayon, machine-spun
cotton, lurex, and industrially produced
dyes, with Okene market serving as the
focus for the distribution of Ebira tex-
tiles to other parts of Nigeria. The dis-
tinctive technical feature of these cloths,
in addition to the range of yarns and
colors, is the use of supplementary-weft-
float patterns, often over a design
ground of warp stripes. It is evident
from the patterns themselves that the
design sources are multiple, though the
detailed history of these developments
remains to be investigated.
However distinctive Ebira weaving
might seem to be, especially when
viewed in markets and with traders far
away from home, it is nevertheless a
very local development within a more
widespread handspun tradition already

querades provide for an eastward conti-

nuity, and yet other artifacts, like textiles,
a westward continuity. These distribu-
tion patterns suggest that the functional
relationships and emblematic status of
artifacts as contexts of ideas and prac-
tices, and as participants within (other)
contexts of ideas and practices, must be
regarded as specific to particular loca-
tions and people, historically and geo- -?-
graphically. This specificity is where one
has to begin if one is to write a history of t. .
art that touches upon the real lives of
real people. In summarizing the distribu- PHOTO: JOHN PICTON

16. STOOL OF A DECEASED ELDER,

tion patterns, therefore, this paper is no
BY AN UNKNOWN CARVER WHOSE WORK IS
more than the preface to such a history. WIDESPREAD IN IJUMU AND ABINU VILLAGES.
The dominant precolonial textile ADAVI-EBA, EBIRA, 1966.
technology of the confluence area is
within that tradition with a westward,
or Yoruba, distribution in which women 15. STOOL OF A DECEASED ELDER, CARVED BY

weave as a habitual domestic pursuit THE LATE IRACI OF OBOROKE. IRACI'S WORK WAS
CLEARLY POPULAR, AS HIS HAND WAS VISIBLE IN
using an upright single-heddle loom THE STOOLS OF ELDERS IN SEVERAL EBIRA
with locally spun cotton yarn, brown as COMMUNITIES. THE COWRIES ARE A SACRIFICE. ONE
well as white, and sometimes indigo OF THE DECEASED'S SONS IS SITTING ON THE STOOL.

dyed (Picton & Mack 1989:67-83). It is a OZIOKUTU, EBIRA, 1969.

41
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 18. FIGURE KNOWN AS OMOTO.
WOOD PATINATED WITH BLOOD, 63.5cm.
ALTHOUGH IT SEEMS TO SHOW AN AKOKO-EDO
BRIDE PRESENTING AN OFFERING TO HER
FATHER-IN-LAW, THE FIGURE IS CLEARLY MALE.
EITHER WAY, THE IMAGE HAS NO PRECEDENT
IN EBIRA, HENCE MY ATTRIBUTION TO
AN AKOKO-EDO SCULPTURAL SOURCE.
IT IS AMONG THE REGALIA OF
THE OZUMI TITLE, OZIOGU LINEAGE.
OKENE, EBIRA, 1966.
17. DETAIL OF THE STOOL OF OKINO,
A LINEAGE ELDER AT OKENEBA, EBIRA.
IT SHOWS A MALE FIGURE WEARING ORNAMENTS
THAT, IN AKOKO-EDO, WOULD INDICATE HIS
AGE-GRADE STATUS. (THE INSTITUTION OF AGE
GRADES IS ABSENT IN EBIRA.) 1967.
know of, on the basis of my brief visit in
PHOTO: JOHN PICTON
in existence prior to the advent of Ebira
people. In any case it is only one of sev-
eral such local developments: weft-float
patterns, for example, are also employed
by many Akoko-Edo weavers, and by
Owo weavers as well. Once again, the
detailed histories remain to be discov-
ered. If one such textile is labeled
Yoruba and another Ebira, this cannot in
itself be taken as presupposing anything
of significance beyond the presumption
that one was collected in a place where
people speak Yoruba and the other in a
place where people speak Ebira. No
matter how different they may seem,
both are products, or local realizations,
of the same technical tradition, which at
the present state of knowledge can only
be located and considered in terms of
the geographical distribution of the
given technology. An ethnic label might
be appropriate if it is demonstrably the
case that people somehow identify
themselves with that variant within the
overall tradition (or are so identified by
others, as could, of course, be the case
for Ebira).
The latest development in the textile
history of this part of Nigeria that I
42
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May 1990, concerns the arrival in Obo-
roke, a western Ebira town, of Mrs. C. A.
Bamisaye from the Yoruba town of
Igogo near Otun-Ekiti in the mid-1980s.
Mrs. Bamisaye brought with her the nar-
row-strip, horizontal, double-heddle
textile tradition that one thinks of as
characteristic of the professional male
weavers in central Yoruba urban centers
such as Ilorin, Iseyin, and Oyo. Mrs.
Bamisaye now has several Ebira girls as
19. THE OHINDASI OF EZIAVI LINEAGE HOLDS THE STAFF
CHARACTERISTIC OF AN ELDER OR TITLED MAN.
HE WEARS THE BREEDING PLUMES OF THE
STANDARD-WINGED NIGHTJAR, A SIGN OF LIMINAL AND
ANCESTRAL STATUS. OHINDASI IS THE PREMIER TITLE
IN EBIRA AND IS INHERITED AMONG FOUR LINEAGES.
OKENGWE, EBIRA, 1966.
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her apprentices, and it would appear
that this novel technology is proving to
be very popular at Oboroke; young
women have expressed a desire to estab-
lish themselves as weavers in this rather
than the single-heddle tradition.
It is also tempting to assume some
kind of formal continuity between the
eastern Yoruba sculptural traditions of
Ekiti and Opin-in particular the large-
scale epa and aguru masks-and the
sometimes two-meter-high age-grade
masks located in a few Akoko-Edo com-
munities. However, the ritual status of
eastern Yoruba helmet masks as imonle,
or material embodiments of metaphysi-
cal energy, is clearly very different from
the display context in Akoko-Edo.
Moreover, the apparently sporadic dis-
tribution pattern of helmet masks with
monumental superstructures is not at all
comparable to the distributions of sin-
gle-heddle weaving technology or of the
emblems of age and authority. In other
words, if there is continuity it remains to
be established by field investigation.
The appearance of masquerades as
part of the celebration marking the pas-
sage from one grade to the next in a sys-
tem of age stratification seems to be
widespread among the various northern
Edo groups (though not Ososo, for
example). Moreover, the members of
one grade in particular have the respon-
sibilities of masked performance under
the guidance of those in the grade
above. How much of this is also true of
the various surrounding Yoruba-speak-
ing communities is not yet established.
In the Opin village of Osi-Ilorin, I found,
in addition to the status of Opin sculp-
tures as imonle, that although the young
men of one particular grade were
responsible for carrying aguru and epa
masks, the performances were not part
of age-grade celebrations as such. The
complete absence of age grades, and the
very different placing of masquerades in
Ebira culture has already been noted
(Picton 1988a, 1989). This absence of an
age-grade context of performance is
equally the case in regard to masquer-
ades of Ebira derivation in the Kabba
and Akoko-Edo areas, as far as I know.
The basis of most northern Edo
masked costuming seems to be a twisted
netted fiber mask hung with lengths of
split fiber, or sometimes palm fronds, but
with the arms and legs of the wearer left
free and visible. The intention, as far as
the performer is concerned, does not
seem to be the denial of human agency in
the manifestation of metaphysical enti-

ties, but rather the hiding away of the
individual as part of the process of his
removal from one social category to
another. The contrast with Ebira and
Ebira-derived masquerading is striking,
for there the denial of human agency is an
essential component of the presentation
of ancestral and related identities. When
my close friend, the late Ebira sculptor
and performer iKarimu Ihiovi, took me
with him to visit friends at the Okpameri
village of Imoga in the northern Edo area
during an age-grade celebration he was
shocked by the masquerades for this very
reason. To make matters worse, one per-
former in a procession of young men had
a wooden mask that he was actually
putting on as he danced along, in full
view of everyone.
The basic mask form is subject to var-
ious and variable forms of elaboration
and display both within a village and
from one village to another (e.g., Borgatti
1976, 1982; Susan Picton in Picton &
Mack 1989:168). Moreover, in no more
than five or six northern Edo villages
there are, in addition to these fiber con-
structions, wooden helmet masks. When
worn, some of these produce masked
figures of about three meters in height.
The documented cases are as follows:
Ogbe (Kenneth C. Murray in 1947, Susan
Picton in 1968-69, 1982), Ugboshi-Sale
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I
(Susan & John Picton in 1969), Ojirami
(Susan Picton in 1968), Ghotuo (Otuo)
and Ikao (Susan Picton in 1968-69, Jean
Borgatti in 1972-73), Ikpeshi (John Picton
in 1964). In addition, Jean Borgatti has
identified a headdress collected at Okpe
as part of this tradition (1982:46). It is,
furthermore, worth remembering that
Ogbe is Okpameri-speaking, though
denying Okpameri identity; Ugboshi is
Okpameri; Ojirami is Okulosho; Okpe is
one of four or five villages speaking their
own North-West Edo language; and all
of these are within the Akoko-Edo Local
Government Area (Fig. 6). Ikpeshi is
located in the Akoko area of Ondo State,
just to the west of the Osse River that
provides the boundary with Bendel
State. The language is probably the
North-West Edo language of Ishua (I
was not aware of all these complications
at the time), unless there is some histori-
cal connection with the North-Central
Edo community of Ikpeshi in Akoko-
Edo. Ikao is Ghotuo-speaking (i.e., in the
North-Central language group), in the
Owan Division. In other words, these
masks are found in villages spread
among four distinct languages, but
apparently not in the sometimes greater
number of those other villages speaking
these languages. There is, evidently, a
curious historical problem here.
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LEFT 20. THE MASK OF AN EKUECICI,
OF CHARACTERISTIC EASTERN EBIRA FORM.
ADAMODE, EBIRA, 1969.
RIGHT 21. AN EKUECICI AT THE FEAST OF ECANE.
THE PERFORMER WEARS A MASK CARVED BY
THE LATE AMODU IHIOVI OF OPOPOCO
AND A COSTUME OF MALE BURIAL CLOTH.
OBOROKE, EBIRA, 1968.
In any case, quite apart from the vari-
ety of fiber masks, we cannot necessarily
assume that we are dealing with a single
sculptural tradition, as Borgatti's pub-
lished illustrations and discussion indeed
make clear (1982:36-51; and, likewise,
Murray's and Susan Picton's unpublished
photographs in the Lagos Museum).
There are helmet masks with superstruc-
ture (at Ogbe, Ugboshi, Ghotuo, Ikao,
Ikpeshi) and without superstructure (not
seen at Ikpeshi, but I probably did not see
the complete set), and wooden head-
pieces with fiber masks (at Ghotuo, Ikao,
Okpe). Moreover, the Ogbe masks are
carved with a sculptural naturalism (Figs.
1, 7) which, though naive in execution,
provides a clear contrast with the
schematic forms characteristic of Ghotuo
and Ikao. These masks are still being
made; at any rate, in 1982 the carvers of
Ogbe told me they had already started
work on the set required for the next set
of performances. It will be recalled that
new masks are commissioned for each
43
festival, the previous set having been dis-
carded in the forest, as noted by William
Fagg, R. E. Bradbury, Philip Allison, and
Susan Picton in their field notes and as
published by Borgatti (1982; for further
data on Ogbe see Picton 1990).
Some half-dozen door panels embel-
lished by relief carving have been noted
at Semorika, Akuku (Fig. 8), and Oja-
Oke (Fig. 9) (all Okpameri or Okulosho);
at Ikpeshi (Fig. 10) (perhaps Ishua); at
Ukpila (Etsako); and at Okene (Ebira);
by Murray, Allison, and Susan and John
Picton, at various times from 1947 to
1969. Full details are in the photographic
archive in the National Museum, Lagos.
Once again, it would be tempting to
place these alongside eastern Yoruba
Ekiti and Opin door panels. However,
they all have more in common with the
schematic Edo tradition as documented
by Ulli Beier at Agbor (1963) and by
Allison at Uromi, Ishan (Lagos Museum
archive). The subject matter of the relief
sculpture also supports this proposi-
tion. The door at Oja is certainly the
most spectacular, in terms of both size
and skill in execution. The Ikpeshi ex-
ample is, by contrast, the most crudely
schematic, as indeed were their age-
grade masks. (This is intended not as a
judgment of local value in regard to aes-
thetic merit, but rather a judgment in
terms of my perception of the level of
skill realized.)
I use the term schematic, together
with the implied contrast with naturalis-
tic, on the basis of E. H. Gombrich (1960)
and Peter J. Ucko (1977)9 as a descrip-
tion of by far the majority of essentially
small-scale carved wooden objects
found throughout the region. I refer in
particular to the staffs and stools for
elders and titled chiefs. I would also
include within this category the face
masks characteristic of Ebira, found
wherever Ebira-style masquerades have
been taken up. Then, here and there, one
also finds artifacts of more restricted
distribution, sometimes unique to one
or two places, but making use of more
widely distributed elements and con-
ventions of image and motif. A rectan-
gular dish embellished with figure
carving collected by Murray at Semorika
(Fig. 11) is a case in point. I am not, of
course, suggesting that only one form of
schematization exists: on the contrary,
throughout the confluence area one sees
a range of schematic options, each per-
haps the work of a single carver.
The most ubiquitous type of artifact
in this region, however, is the small
domestic stool (Fig. 12). Every adult
woman has her own, and there will be
several more in any household. These
may be no more than 15-25 centimeters
22. DETAIL OF A STAFF FOR AN ELDER OR TITLED MAN.
OGBE, AKOKO-EDO, 1947.
44
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in height (though smaller stools are
sometimes carved for little children) as
compared to 40 centimeters and more
for elders' stools. Domestic stools can be
considered as providing a basic reposi-
tory and source of design. Sometimes
they may be no more than rectangular
or cylindrical blocks of wood, though
more often than not they are carved
either with a central and often ringed
pillar between upper and lower discs, or
with three or four legs at the circumfer-
ence of upper and lower disc. Some
elders' stools are simply bigger versions
of these domestic forms, without figura-
tive embellishment.
One of the most frequent composi-
tional elements found on the large stools
for elders and titled chiefs, in Akoko-Edo
and throughout much of the area covered
by this paper, is the figure of a woman,
arms bedecked with bracelets and raised
above her head. Borgatti (1971) provides
the explanation of this image by her use
of a Northcote Thomas picture of a
northern Edo girl dressed for the celebra-
tions of her coming of age and subse-
quent availability for marriage: her arms
are indeed bedecked with bracelets and
raised above her head in a gesture of dis-
play and as a means of relieving the
sheer weight of her ornamentation. Her
neck and legs might well be similarly
adorned. The distribution of the image is
thus more widespread than the coming-
of-age celebrations in which it originates.
For example, it is found on many stools
in Ebira (see Borgatti 1982: fig. 26 for one
of my photographs of such a stool; also
Fig. 13). Some of them must have come
into Ebira as a consequence of raiding or
trading expeditions in the nineteenth
century and perhaps earlier. These would
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have been the work of northern Edo
sculptors, though some are the work of
locally domiciled smiths, also of Edo ori-
gin; and some are the work of Ebira sculp-
tors (Figs. 14, 15) and of an unidentified
sculptor or sculptors in Ijumu and Abinu
villages (Fig. 16) taking the Edo image as
among the relevant "schemata of tradi-
tion" (Gombrich 1960:319). Moreover, the
arm adorned with a series of bracelets
could be another source, together with the
domestic stool, of the ringed motifs that
are so common an element of all staffs and
stools throughout the area, but I have no
proof of any of this.
In Ebira there is no grand celebration
of a girl's coming of age, so that while
the image of the woman with upraised
arms is an acceptable embellishment of
stools (otherwise why should it be so
widespread?), it cannot ever have had
the same significance, historical or
emblematic, as in Akoko-Edo. Indeed,
the generic term for the sculpted human
figure in Ebira, whether freestanding or
part of a stool, is onyonokumi, which in
fact describes one who is paralyzed,
lame, or unable to talk. Its acceptability
clearly, therefore, does not depend upon
its overt subject matter within Ebira cul-
ture, but upon its ornamental value. It
has aesthetic meaning as advertising,
containing and representing something
of the esteem and the wealth of the elder
or chief, together with his household.
The main formal sculptural property of
such a stool is its larger size, but the fig-
ural embellishment enhances its capaci-
ty to stand for that elder or titled man
and his wealth, and his household.
Moreover, in the past, when at his death
much of that wealth would have been
consumed and destroyed in the cycle of
celebrations of his achievements, one of
the few remaining memorials, in addi-
tion to that primary memorial in his
descendants, would be his stool. Evi-
dently the representational capacity and
content of this image cannot be the same
in Ebira as in Akoko-Edo, whatever the
historical source of its subject matter
and its iconic conventions.
Occasionally the figure with upraised
ringed arms on a stool is male (Fig. 17),
and there is an Akoko-Edo ceremonial
prototype for this also. For example,
Susan Picton's photograph of the leader
of an age set at Oja during the celebra-
tions marking their passage from one
grade to the next (Picton & Mack
1989:172) shows him wearing, among
other things, an array of ivory bracelets.
As before, this would be an acceptable
image on a stool for an Ebira elder for rea-
sons of embellishment and display, but, in
the absence of formal age grades, not as
an icon of status. The same consideration
applies to the remarkable figure of a man
(despite the appearance of breasts, it is
definitely male) holding a bowl and
known as omoto (Fig. 18), part of the
regalia of the Ozumi, a title held by the
"children of Ogu," a lineage at Okene.
The staff of an elder or titled man is
another type of sculpted artifact found
throughout the confluence area. It has an
iron ferrule at the base and an ornamen-
tal top, and for most of its length the staff
is typically carved with a repeated,
apparently nonfigurative motif, though
my comments above on the possible
derivation of the ringed motif should be
noted (Figs. 19, 22-24). However, on one
staff, made by an unidentified sculptor, a
pair of carved rings forms the stool for a
seated figure at the top (Fig. 25). This
image of a seated figure, in addition to
the ringed-arm motif, reinforces the sug-
gestion that the stool might be repository,
source, and recipient of these schemata of
tradition. The tops of these staffs are
often nonfigurative, though many have
the shape of the human head. Other
images also make their appearance, in
particular the human figure, usually
female (throughout the region), but
sometimes male. One also finds the occa-
sional figure on horseback, for example
at Okene, though its place of carving is
not known, as well as masked perform-
ers of the kind found in the area around
Kabba (Fig. 26).
One further carved wooden artifact
remains to be considered, and in some
ways it is the most problematical of all.
I refer, of course, to the face mask char-
acteristic of Ebira and Ebira-derived
masquerades. In the Ebira language
these masquerades are known generi-
cally as ekuecici (eku=masquerade, here
qualified by ecici, a word usually trans-
lated into English as "rubbish," i.e., the
loose stones, sticks, leaves, and house-
hold and other detritus scattered over
the ground). The term eku refers primar-
ily to that domain of human existence
to which in Ebira tradition one passes at
death. Whatever that domain is, and
wherever it is, it is not the paradise of
Islam, nor is it the beatific vision of
Christianity, even though it is often
quite erroneously translated by English-
speaking Ebira people as "heaven." Eku
also extends to metaphysical and mate-
rial manifestations of that domain, and
in particular to those we call masquer-
ade. The essential core of the dramatis
personae is provided by the ekuoba, a
shroud-like appearance that provides
for the re-embodiment, within the cos-
tume, of deceased lineage and house-
hold elders.10 At the first manifestation
as ekuoba, the ancestor will be accompa-
nied by his mask-servant, the ekuecici,
whose role is to clear his path of any
rubbish that might cause him to stum-
ble. Apart from ancestral commemora-
tions, ekuecici appear as generic
messengers of the domain of the dead
at the mid-year feast of Ecane, "The
Feast of Women" (ece=wine, festival;
anee=women). The name of this feast
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' 23. STAFFS AND STOOLS BELONGING TO THE
, ' : . 4i ASIEMA, A LINEAGE TITLE HOLDER. THE STOOL
j IN THE MIDDLE GROUND HAS A STEM OF BARK
;3 5, 'I-^^^qCONCEPTUALIZATION OF THE HUMAN HEAD.
PHOTO: JOHN PICTON
and the status of ekuecici each serve to
define the lesser status of the other.
The wooden mask, opo, and the cloth
hood, omurumuru, are alternative pieces
of headgear for ekuecici, though some
have both. From one point of view, the
contextual placing of the mask is contin-
gent upon the placing of masquerade in
general within Ebira life and of this
species within the dramatis personae of
masquerade (see Picton 1989, forthcom-
ing). The shape of the wooden mask,
however, must have a very different his-
torical placing, if only because of the
fact that, as I have noted above, a good
deal of woodcarving in Ebira is in fact
the work of smiths. Moreover, the fact
that Ebira masks typically are blackened
is likened to the dirt of the smith at
work forging iron.
Shortly before Ecane the box contain-
ing mask and costume will be opened
and the contents inspected. If, as some-
times happens, termites have entered in
and eaten the mask, another must be
carved in time for the coming perfor-
mance. In those circumstances someone
might well volunteer to try his hand.
Instead of paying a smith to carve it, he
can buy an adze at market and take it to
his farm out of the way of women. Many
Ebira masks are indeed single attempts.
Sometimes the mask turns out sufficiently
well that others may ask the carver to try
his hand at a mask for them also. This
way a man might carve half a dozen
masks, until he reaches such an age that
he can no longer take commissions of this
kind, the age at which one is expected to
be the patron of younger men, not their
client. This was how Amodu Ihiovi of
Opopoco became a carver (Picton & Mack
1989:6; see Willett 1971: pl. 207 for an
example of his work). Other men, per-
haps in analogous circumstances, teach
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SEWN WITH FIBER TO FORM A CYLINDRICAL BOX;
THE UPPER DISC PROVIDES THE LID. THIS HAS NO
PARTICULAR RITUAL PURPOSE OR SIGNIFICANCE.
OZURI, EBIRA, 1967.
24. DETAIL OF A STAFF BELONGING TO THE ASIEMA.
NO INFORMATION WAS FORTHCOMING TO
EXPLAIN THE SOURCE OF THIS EXTRAORDINARY
OZURI, EBIRA, 1967.
PHOTO: JOHN PICTON
themselves to carve flutes, mortars,
stools, and agidibo. Another friend, Momo
Simpa of Oboroke, made masks and
flutes. He also once carved me a cigarette
holder (though I do not smoke). Amodu's
son iKarimu carved masks, and once he
made a staff. He and his brother Jimo also
carved agidibo. Audu Ovenero of Ahaneci
carved mortars, agidibo, and stools.
The major concern when making a
mask was that it should fit comfortably
over the face: its outer form seemed of
secondary concern. Nevertheless, in
accepting a commission to carve a mask,
iKarimu Ihiovi would always ask his
patron whether it should be like this or
that existing and well-known mask."
When I asked him what kind of face he
thought he was carving when working
on a mask, his reply was very straight-
forward: "It is the face of eku."
On the other hand, the intention to
replicate an existing artifact, no matter
how exact or inexact the end product
might turn out to be, could be expected to
promote the development of a character-
45
 26. STAFF FOR AN ELDER OR TITLED MAN,
PHOTOGRAPHED AT A BASA-NGGE VILLAGE NEAR
AJAOKUTA BUT SURMOUNTED BY A FIGURE OF
A MASQUERADER THAT IS CHARACTERISTIC OF,
AND PRESUMABLY WAS CARVED AT, AN ABINU
OR OWE-IJUMU VILLAGE. 1967.
25. DETAIL OF A STAFF BELONGING TO
THE ASIEMA, A LINEAGE TITLEHOLDER.
AN IDENTICAL STAFF WAS SEEN ELSEWHERE
IN EBIRA. ALTHOUGH LOCAL OPINION
SUGGESTED A BASA-NGGE SOURCE,
THIS DOES NOT SEEM LIKELY.
OZURI, EBIRA, 1967.
PHOTO: JOHN PICTON
PHOTO: JOHN PICTON
istic range of alternative schematizations.
Thus, some masks are a combination of
flat planes and angles (Figs. 20, 21).
Others are almost featureless, almost
faceless, having just two holes to see
through (Fig. 31); and it can be argued
that the eyeholes are only coincidentally
part of the external sculptural form, for
they serve primarily to enable the wear-
er to see and are placed accordingly,
from within. There are masks some-
where between these extremes, and
there are others so inept-seeming to be
so uncertain in the realization of a clear
shape as to suggest lack of skill on the
part of the sculptor-that it is hard to
place them. Still others are so obscured
by sacrificial accumulation that it is
impossible to know what they originally
looked like (Fig. 27). Similarly, decora-
tive embellishment, such as abrus seeds
and pieces of mirror, can obscure the
original shape more or less completely.
Much of the commentary on Ebira
wooden masks would also be true of the
masks carved for Ebira-derived masquer-
ades in northern Edo and Ijumu villages
(Figs. 28, 30; see also Borgatti 1976: figs. 2,
46
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10, 12). In all cases we are, of course, talk-
ing of Ebira institutions that have been
borrowed, in whole or in part, and with
certain connotations of masculinity and
ancestral authority retained even though
incorporated into otherwise very differ-
ent ritual and metaphysical orders. For
example, at Ososo (Figs. 29, 30) the at-
traction, so I was told, was that women
respected these masquerades; but the
new-year and mid-year festival structure
had been taken into the calendar, appar-
ently without the ancestral embodiment
within ekuoba that provides justification
for all other aspects of performance in
Ebira. The eclectic putting together of a
satisfying set of festivals and perfor-
mances has already been described by
Borgatti elsewhere in northern Edo
(1976) and seems to have been wide-
spread in this area, perhaps as a re-
sponse to the experience of Nupe and
then British conquest. Conversely, Ebira
people are eclectic in their choice and
use of masks and masquerade costum-
ing, points I have already made else-
where (Picton 1990).
An Ebira history of art would be writ-
ten in terms of a coming together of
masking traditions with an eastward dis-
tribution and a technology, shared with
their immediate neighbors north and
south, with in part (e.g., textiles) a west-
ward distribution; and this technology
came to be served by the ironworking
skills of Edo-speaking smiths originating
to the south. For many villages of the
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Yoruba to the northeast, Akoko-Edo, and
Etsako, local histories of art would
include these same elements, among oth-
ers, but arranged in a different order. The
Ebira presence is the source of certain
kinds of masquerades in this region,
while at the same time Ebira people have
largely taken on the surrounding technol-
ogy. In those northern Edo villages that
have Ebira-derived masquerades, these
coexist side by side with the preexisting
local masquerades that are a celebratory
feature of the system of age stratification,
except at Ososo where pre-Ebira mas-
querades disappeared without a trace.
A final comment on the possibility of
a mediating role for the smiths in the
distribution of the smaller-scale works
now seems appropriate. The huge
Akoko-Edo age-grade masks are defi-
nitely the work of local (i.e., non-smith)
carvers, as indeed are probably the
majority of the smaller-scale works in
Akoko-Edo. As Uneme smiths moved
northward, supplying the equipment for
local sculptors and apparently supplant-
ing local smiths, they must have realized
that in taking to wood sculpture them-
selves they would enhance their useful-
ness, in particular supplying stools and
staffs. They would have drawn upon
their own existing skills in the carving of
wooden hafts and hilts for the mounting
of hoe and knife blades, thereby intro-
ducing a further level of schematization.
As they moved through Ebira toward
Kabba they would have supplied both
ironwork and wood sculpture, using
their new skills as sculptors to supply
face masks to Ebira and Yoruba patrons.
In their turn, a few local people, having
observed the smiths, took to sculpture,
perhaps because they wanted to avoid
having to commission a smith. Yet ironi-
cally, the work of smiths provided the
model to be copied.12
A note on certain "exotic" artifacts is
also appropriate. In 1966, in a village of
the eastern Ebira district of Eganyi, I pur-
chased a mask for the Lagos Museum
(see Willett 1971: pl. 205) that was unex-
OPPOSITE PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT
27. MASK OF AN EKUECICI.
WOOD, MAGICAL MEDICINE, ABINU
AND EBIRA CLOTH. THE WOOD OF
THE MASK IS COMPLETELY OBSCURED
BY SACRIFICIAL MATTER.
INOZIOOMI, EBIRA, 1969.
28. A PERFORMER WEARS A MASK
CARVED BY A SMITH.
GBELEKO, OWE-IJUMU, YORUBA, 1964.
29. MASK OF AN EBIRA-STYLE MASQUERADE.
(BEING A WOMAN, SUSAN PICTON WAS
NOT ALLOWED TO SEE IT.)
OSOSO, AKOKO-EDO, 1969.
8I
30. MASK OF AN EBIRA-STYLE MASQUERADE.
(AGAIN, SUSAN PICTON WAS z
NOT ALLOWED TO SEE IT.) 'D
OSOSO, AKOKO-EDO, 1969.
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All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 I4
PHOTO: JOHN PICTON

daughter had continued Kaka's work as
a sculptor. This remains to be followed
up. The metropolitan Igala style is not
pan-Igala, of course, as Roy Sieber de-
monstrated so many years ago (1961):
beyond the metropolitan area there is
another range of schematic styles, each
probably the work of no more than a sin-
gle carver. Umale, living near Dekina and
identified by Susan Picton, provides us
with one of the very few of these hands
to which we can put a name (Fig. 33).
Also under the rubric of the "exotic" I
would also place those masks in some
Etsako communities whose characteristic
shapes and colors seem to have much in
common with northern Igbo masking
. traditions, and about which Borgatti has
,-, already written (1976, 1979).
A tension runs through this paper
between the need to avoid ethnic labels
:'4 and, paradoxically, the need to use them.
Questions about the historical and social
placing of artifacts can only be answered
in terms of particular local events given
the very complexity of the categories.
This complexity could be explained as a
function of the confluence historically as
a meeting point, but such an explanation
would be a mistake, not simply because
it might be a misconstruction of conflu-
ence history and society, but perhaps
because the certainties and relative sim-
plicities that seem to obtain elsewhere
are also misconstructed. In my paper on
Ekpeye masks and masking (Picton
1988b), I noted that the Niger Delta
seemed to be an area in which individual
artifacts, cults, motifs, and the like -and
even the names of such things, irrespec-
tive of whether two things with the same
name in two different places looked at
all like each other-had unique and indi-
vidual distribution networks, which

31. MASK OF AN EKUECICI CALLED

OCUVOVAGU, "THE ARM OF THE PATAS MONKEY."
WOOD; MAGICAL MEDICINE; ABINU, EBIRA, AND
OTHER TEXTILES. IT SEEMS REDUCED TO THE BARE
ESSENTIALS NECESSARY FOR THE PURPOSE.
OKENEBA, EBIRA, 1966.

32. MASK FOR A PERFORMANCE

IN CELEBRATION OF AN ISLAMIC FEAST.
BASA-NGGE, 1967.

pected in terms of its subject matter and

embellishment. I was told it was the
work of an anivasa carver called Okaka.
The word anivasa means "inhabitant of
Basa," but the Basa referred to here are
the so-called Basa-ngge ("We are not
Basa"); that is, they are the Nupe people
who settled in the northwest of the Igala
kingdom as early as 1840, not the "true"
Basa (Basa-kwomu) further along the
Benue. The greater number of Basa-ngge
communities are to the east of the lower
Niger, although there are riverain Basa-
ngge villages along the west bank also.
Masked performances are part of the
cycle of Muslim fasts and feasts. The
masks themselves present various forms
of wild animals, and the manner of their
carving reminds me of the metropolitan
Igala style of wood sculpture. Susan
Picton worked in several Basa-ngge, non-
metropolitan Igala, and Basa-kwomu vil-
lages to the east of the Niger in 1969,
when I also visited some of the riverain
communities on both sides of the river,
Basa-ngge and Igala (Fig. 32), where the
Russians have since built a steelworks.
Susan was told, quite independently of
my Eganyi information, of a Basa-ngge
sculptor called Kaka. Apparently Kaka
was the one and only Basa-ngge sculptor.
Susan was also told that at his death his

48
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indicated a capacity for parts of a com-
plex of practices to be moved about
apparently as readily as complete assem-
blages. In the absence of detailed knowl-
edge of the histories of local people and
communities, this must sound as if it is
an entirely random process; obviously
that would be an absurd conclusion, as if
artifacts had a life without people. (On
the other hand, the reverse of that propo-
sition, that the lives of people are depen-
dent upon artifacts, is a basic point of
fact.) The situation in the confluence
seems to be like that in the Niger Delta,
and it is a case about which I can be
more specific. In this paper there are
examples in which individuals and com-
munities have moved from one place to
another. There are also examples of arti-
facts, techniques, artists, rites, motifs,
and institutions (and names, though I
have not cited examples here) being
moved from one place to another. I con-
clude that all this is emblematic of a
widespread, perhaps virtually universal,
absence of the simplicities we seem to
have yearned for and, perhaps unwit-
tingly, have invented. In other words,
areas such as the confluence force us to
consider the multidimensionality of
human life not as a situation peculiar to
the confluence, but as a general reality of
people and the things they make and
acquire and use and think with.13
I have used the term "social" to
describe the institutional bases of what
people do (e.g., the structure of authori-
ty, rights to land). I am aware that I have
used "community" in a manner that is
ambiguous, referring not just to the dis-
crete settlement such as the village or the
town, but also to that sense of identity
that develops when people live and
work together. This feeling will exist of
course by virtue of the institutional tra-
ditions of particular places (titles, cults,
etc.), but there are always other and
sometimes novel structures-the mar-
ketplace, the church, the mosque, the
school-as well as those informal situa-
tions in which alternative senses of com-
munity will develop. Some people may
wonder at my inclusion of so much
detail about language and community
earlier in this paper, but I frankly do not
understand how anyone could claim to
understand the continuities and disjunc-
tions in art without also understanding
these as existing among other continu-
ities and disjunctions. The manner in
which people are brought together in
one dimension of their lives will not nec-
essarily coincide with the pattern of
unity and disjunction in others. In this
sense, particular boundaries will be cre-
ated, maintained, embodied, subverted,
and signified within and because of each
particular dimension. These boundaries
may or may not coincide, and there is no
"law," beyond the consequences of par-
ticular histories, that insists that they
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33. MIRROR FRAME BY UMALE, IDENTIFIED
BY SUSAN PICTON AS A SCULPTOR FROM
THE DEKINA AREA OF NONMETROPOLITAN IGALA.
IT WAS COLLECTED BY PHILIP ALLISON IN 1962 FOR
THE NATIONAL MUSEUM IN LAGOS. 1969.
must coincide. The result is (and we all
know that this is true: the proposition is
not restricted to the areas under discus-
sion) that two people or groups of peo-
ple can feel at one with one another
when considering their relationship from
one point of view, yet at odds when con-
sidering it from another. The question of
identity thus becomes a complex process
of negotiation through these multiple
dimensions, with a result that is only
very exceptionally unified.
The place of artifacts in this negotia-
tion of identity is inevitable, but no less
complex for all that. Precisely how do
people create identity and communi-
ty-and difference-by means and by
virtue of artifacts? These are not new
questions, of course, as they have been
discussed in different ways by Ian
Hodder (1982) and John Mack (1982).
Several further examples have been
given above. Quite apart from the social
irony of the historical significances of
the smiths, there are the potters of Oja
and Oboroke, and there are masquer-
ades. The stratification embodied in par-
ticular sets of age-grade masks is a case
in point. Ebira masquerades certainly
provide for more than one sense of unity
and community and disjunction. There
is the identification of particular house-
holds, sometimes lineages, with particu-
lar masquerades; there is the community
of those who have enjoyed the healing
power of particular masks; there is the
fact that for the great festivals at which
masked performances provide the focus
of public entertainment, men will en-
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
deavor to return home, whether from
the farm, the cocoa plantations of Yor-
ubaland, or the cities; there is the catego-
rization by gender; and there is that
sense of Ebira identity that exists as a
function of the derivation of Ebira mas-
querades by many surrounding commu-
nities without any denial of their source.
The discussion is not, therefore,
about open or closed frontiers, or about
borderlands where there is a stylistic
mix or confusion, but about "the limita-
tions of labels" (Visona 1987) given the
proposition that the boundaries mani-
fest in one dimension may be absent in
another. A trans-"ethnic" distribution
should not be explained as the tran-
scending of a boundary but rather as the
absence of a boundary, and as the
absence of a coincidence of boundaries
between the multiple dimensions of
social life. Whatever we might mean by
"ethnic" identity, it "may not be a solid
and certain property" (Mack 1982:121);
it cannot be taken for granted either as a
certain property of individuals or com-
munities, or even as something that
exists at all. The very proposition of eth-
nicity as a characteristic of the peoples
of Asia and Africa is an imposition as
much as it is an oversimplification. The
reality is likely to be very complex, as
much for a British Islander or an
American as for someone from Ogbe or
Oboroke. For any individual person or
community, the sense of identity can
remain a fluid and sophisticated proper-
ty, and dependent upon the circum-
stances in which an identity needs to be
identified (Mack 1982:121).
I can have no argument with the per-
son who wishes to call himself or herself
Ebira, or Yoruba, or Okpameri, or Okulo-
sho, or Akoko-Edo, or Nigerian, or what-
ever; but I would then ask questions
about the social, historical, and artistic
circumstances in which an identity of
that kind, as no more than one of several
possible species of identity, comes to
have an overriding significance. On the
other hand, it has also to be recognized
that the idea of being "Yoruba," or "Eng-
lish," or "American," has a force and a
value that is quite independent of the
content taken to be subsumed under the
terms themselves, and in that sense their
continued use may be justified. If, how-
ever, we find these words little more
than a convenient shorthand, as a conve-
nience packaging, then we should
remember that sooner or later we are
expected to remove the contents and
throw the packages away.'4 D
Notes, page 93
49
selection, by Susan Vogel, of the pieces to be
included in the book and the accompanying
show; the photographs by Jerry Thompson,
including his choice of angles and lighting;
and the "lessons" on how to see that preface
and accompany the pictures. The authors'
perspective is unabashedly reactionary:
"Formal analysis is an old-fashioned enter-
prise," declares Vogel in the foreword. In
recent years, labels have been expected to
provide an ethnographic context for African
works, although often, as in the case of most
of the pieces in this exhibition (see review, p.
82), very little is known about them besides
what we can tell by looking.
Vogel accepts the fashionable contention
that Westerners privilege the visual sense
over all others, but she shares none of the
feeling one encounters in postmodernist cir-
cles that this cultural proclivity is something
we should feel guilty about. In her introduc-
tory essay, somewhat aggressively titled
"Primer," Vogel says that when we find the
echo of our own private experiences of well-
being, mortality, sex, fear, or humor in
African sculptures, we should remember that
"these emotions do not come from real con-
tact with the art, but rather from contact with
our own inner life. An experience of the
sculpture itself must begin with a clear visual
reading of its sculptural form" (p. 75). In
Africa, the making of a work, or even its
mere existence, might be more important
than its appearance. Though masks and cer-
tain other theatrical works were intended to
create a visual effect, the audience did not
seek "the purely visual contact that we in the
West associate with looking at art" (p. 79).
Well, that's the theory of the Western art
experience, but an ethnographically percep-
tive account of our galleries and museums
would surely report that more goes into that
experience than disembodied looking. There
may not be, as in Africa, the music, recitation,
and movement to which Vogel refers, but
there are surely, as in Africa, "belief, anticipa-
tion and understanding," guided by the
appearance and atmosphere of the building,
by the catalogue in our hand, and by the
curatorial voice in our ear (p. 80).
In his introductory essay, "Some Thoughts
on Looking at African Sculpture," Thompson
repeats the theme of the book. "Looking at
the face of an African figure apart from the
rest of it is probably not very African. For
that matter, just looking at, not touching,
feeding, conversing with, or otherwise liv-
ing with these figures is not very African"
(p. 63). Nevertheless, he says, for viewers
concerned only with looking, the face may
be a strategic area. Thompson stresses not
only the active role of both the human eye
and the camera in creating images, but also
the importance of multiple photographic
views to a full understanding of a three-
dimensional piece. Dramatic black-and-
white photographs, most of them closeups,
illustrate and fully support his contentions.
In the exhibition itself, eyepieces were pro-
vided to encourage viewers to adopt specific
perspectives. Thompson ends on a romantic
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note, claiming that whereas Westerners are
interested in the particular and the personal,
African art seems to concern itself with "the
nature of things" (p. 72). After some dubi-
ous references to the alleged conservatism
of African culture, he recommends that
viewers approach African art humbly, rec-
ognizing in it centuries of celebration of
mysteries that we do not understand. Our
"exuberant and subtle refinement of visual
skill" will nonetheless give us access to
African sculpture (p. 72).
Vogel dwells on what she calls active
inner volume, or an apparent concentration
of energy ready to burst outward, as the out-
standing characteristic of African sculpture.
Her metaphors amplifying this concept draw
variously on thermodynamics, electricity,
and sex. The African artist may well give
separate sculptural treatment to the several
segments of a figure, rather than unifying
them, as would be more usual in Europe;
thus, in the well-known Grebo masks, the
eyes become discrete units virtually indepen-
dent of the face to which they belong.
Africans, Vogel says, are not interested in
surface textures, except when thick encrusta-
tions of blood and dirt may be respected as
signs of great age and power. African sculp-
tors disconcert us with imaginative leaps
from realism to geometrical abstraction, from
volume to shallow engraving. Although
African sculpture is said to be symmetrical,
its asymmetry is often its exciting feature.
"Traditional African artists tend to create
symmetrical designs, but deliberately avoid
symmetry in their execution; their works
mock symmetry to create interest" (p. 79).
Is all this asymmetry intentional? Vogel is
so frank about the viewer's-particularly her
own-contribution to the aesthetic experi-
ence that she calls into question some of her
own assertions about African artistic inten-
tions. On the other hand, the most convinc-
ing evidence for her contentions about
dynamic volume was provided by the exhi-
bition itself, in which one was astonished to
discover how small some of the seemingly
massive sculptural forms shown in the pho-
tographs actually are.
Vogel also briefly introduces the two col-
lections, one belonging to Udo Horstmann
and the other to an anonymous American
businessman who has little use for documen-
tation and "never bothers much with anthro-
pology" (p. 127). His collection is highly
personal, full of "powerful, aggressive and
demanding pieces" (p. 127). Approximately
three-fifths of all the pieces shown have
never been published before.
What then do we see? There are few sur-
prises. Though many of the individual pieces
are new, the genres represented are mostly
familiar. Particularly noteworthy are a conical
Kete mask from Zaire, a masterpiece of com-
position; two Suku masks that could well be
portraits of men you know; an Ijo mask of a
water spirit, with a face like a flat sieve; a
Dogon mother and child composed of
"machinelike tubes, rods, and knobs" (p.
131); a small, ribbed and knobbed Lulua fig-
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
ure that may have been invented for the for-
eign market, since it is not quite like anything
else and arrived in the art world lacking the
patina of use; and an enigmatic clay figure
encrusted with shells and serpents from
Djenne in Mali. We are reminded once again
of the astonishing geometries that African
sculptors discover in the human face and
body. Sometimes African sculptures are said
not to be realistic, as Greek sculpture suppos-
edly is, but in fact there are many realisms.
Thompson's photographs document some
sculpted truths about the body that the
Greeks never knew. D
notes
PICTON: Notes, from page 49
From 1961 to 1970 I was an employee of the Department of
Antiquities of the Federal Government of Nigeria. I offer
my thanks to Professor Ekpo Eyo and the National
Commission for Museums and Monuments for the oppor-
tunity to live and work in Nigeria and for permission to
publish this material, including the photographs by
Christopher Awe, Kenneth Murray, and Susan Picton. I am
particularly grateful to Doig Simmonds for preparing the
maps. I also acknowledge the help of His Highness Alhaji
Sanni Omolori, Ohinoyi of Ebira; the Right Reverend Dr.
Alex Makozi, Bishop of Lokoja; and the late Andrew
Ogembe, my field assistant in Ebira. Without their help
none of this would have been possible. In addition to the
Nigerian Government, I also acknowledge the financial
assistance of the British Museum, the British Academy, and
the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University
of London. I thank the late Kenneth Murray, who sent me
to Ebira and the confluence; Susan Connell (later Picton),
whom I sent to work in Akoko-Edo and without whose
field data this paper could not have been written; and the
late John Omoluabi, to whom Susan introduced me in
Ososo and who was so important a part of our work in
1982. Then, Jean Borgatti came through London at various
times on her way to and from an adjacent part of northern
Edo. Her work and ideas have provided constant illumina-
tion. I also thank Maria Berns for her comments on the first
draft of this paper. I certainly feel better satisfied with it as
a result.
1. At Ososo in Akoko-Edo, for example, there is a dual sys-
tem of descent and inheritance, patrilineal and matrilineal.
Two sets of lineages give people two ways of reckoning
relationships and access to two sets of land rights, and two
sets of title-taking rights. Matrilineages and patrilineages
cut across one other, presupposing complex networks of
loyalties; and across these, again, is the structuring of the
age grades creating yet further loyalties. Then, as an elder,
having graduated through the age-grade system, a man can
enter the title-taking structure, which provides a ranked
sequence of junior and senior titles, provided there is a
vacant title within either of his lineages. The day-to-day
government of Ososo was, and continues to be, through
regular (and now minuted) meetings of the elders and
titled men in each ward. This pattern, in particular the age-
grade stratification as defining the basis of authority, with
or without the complications of matrilineages (and some-
times, as in the Edo kingdom, without any lineages), is
characteristic of much of the region immediately south of
the confluence, east and west of the lower Niger, including
the Yoruba communities around Kabba as well as the Edo-
and Igbo-speaking areas. In many of these, the taking of a
title is open to any elder of sufficient means without the
restrictions of lineage as at Ososo.
2. In Ebira communities, however, government was, and to
some extent still is, by ad hoc meetings of the elders of the
clans and lineages represented there. Ebira descent groups
are strictly patrilineal and determine access to both land and
authority, though whether clan, sub-clan, lineage or lineage
segment is the land-holding authority depends on the
numerical size of the descent group. The land of a small clan
will be administered as a single unit, whereas a lineage seg-
ment within a large clan may well be the effective land-hold-
ing group. The lineage is, of course, the group within which
descent from a common ancestor is more or less precise,
whereas the clan is composed of several lineages all
acknowledging descent from a common ancestor, but with-
out knowing the precise link. There is no age-grade organi-
zation, and the status of elder is determined by absolute
rather than social age. Most clans have at least one title, an
93
office of ritual duty on behalf of the clan; it confers honor
and esteem on the immediate lineage segment chosen to pre-
sent a candidate for a vacant title. Moreover, the title is
always conferred by the elder upon a man junior to himself.
The ritual status of a titleholder enables him to act as
spokesman for the clan, but always under the authority of
the elder.
3. There seems to be no a priori inhibition on the creating of
a sense of identity between peoples inhabiting differing
social orders.
4. As Arnold Rubin noted after an initial presentation of
this paper at the Museum of Cultural History, UCLA,
November 1987, it made little sense in this region to talk of
(categories and continuities of) "style," but rather of (cate-
gories and continuities of) "form." One might also add the
general point that continuities of style cart exist without
continuities of form, and vice versa. The original title of
this paper was "On Form and Style at the Niger-Benue
Confluence," but I have preferred not to become involved
here in unraveling the complex meanings of these words,
particularly "form" with its Aristotelian and Platonic reso-
nances. In any case "artifact" and "identity" serve, I hope,
to clarify the argument presented. I should add, however,
that I would not have thought this through but for the
comments on the first draft by Marla Berns. Having been
asked by her to clarify my use of terms such as form, style,
and culture, I concluded that I would do better to rewrite
the paper not using them at all.
5. The unclassified languages are:
i. Ogori-Magongo, unclassified but presumed to be Niger-
Congo, spoken in two villages in the south of the area
administered from the Ebira town of Okene but which in
terms of social institutions are otherwise better regarded
as Akoko-Edo.
ii. Ukaan, also unclassified but presumed to be Niger-
Congo, spoken with variations of dialect in a group of
even smaller villages, some within the Akoko-Edo area
of Bendel State, others in the adjacent area of Ondo
State.
iii. Akpes, also unclassified but presumed to be Niger-
Congo, spoken in villages (including Ikeram and Ibaram)
in the area adjacent to Ukaan.
The Kwa languages are classified as follows:
I. The Yoruba group:
i. Yoruba (and all its dialects, mutually intelligible and
unintelligible).
ii. The Akoko cluster: some eleven languages/dialects,
sufficiently remote from Yoruba to need a separate
identity, mostly within the Akoko Division (which
indeed also includes eastern Yoruba communities) of
Ondo State, but also including Ayere in Kabba
Division.
iii. Igala: again sufficiently remote to need separate listing.
II. The Edo group (and here I only list those relevant to this
paper):
a. North-Central Edo languages:
i. Etsako (properly known as Yekhee)
ii. Ikpeshi
iii. Otuo (properly known as Ghotuo)
iv. Uneme (the smiths)
v. Ate-Okpela
vi. Ososo
vii. Sasaru-Enwan-Igwe
viii. Ora
N.B.: Edo proper, the language of the Benin Kingdom,
and Ishan are also classed in this group.
b. North-West Edo languages:
i. Okpameri-Okulosho
ii. Okpe-Akuku-etc.
iii. Uhami-Ishua-etc.
iv. Ukue-Ehuen/Ikpenmi-etc.
(Etc. here means that there are other villages, but no
common name.)
III. The Ebira group: Ebira, also incorrectly known by a
Yoruba-ized spelling as Igbira, and spoken primarily
within the administrative area known as Igbirra Division.
Speakers of this language are also found at Igara, the
administrative center of Akoko-Edo Division, where it is
qualified as Ebira-etuno; and north of the confluence,
around Koton-Karifi, where its name is pronounced
Egbira or Egbura. Ebira and Egbira are to all intents and
purposes entirely distinct.
IV. The Nupe group: including Nupe (itself including Basa-
ngge among many other dialects) and other languages of
the middle Niger region.
It will be remembered that Basa-kwomu, the "true" Basa, is
placed within the Western Plateau group of Benue-Congo
languages.
6. At Ososo, if a smith comes to your house and sits down,
you would purify the chair by passing fire over it as soon as
he has gone. In the past if an Ososo woman gave birth to
twins, they would be given to the smiths to be cared for. In
Ebira, no one would willingly marry his daughter to a smith,
and no one would want a smith-girl as his first wife.
7. An irony will be noted: women weave cloth, including the
cloth for masquerade costuming, while smiths produce the
hoe; and yet those are the artifacts that more than any other
embody the masculinity of the freebor Ebira male.
8. I am grateful to Theodore Celenko for pointing this
94
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out to me: he had found the same technique north of the
confluence.
9. I do not intend to suggest anything of the artistic process
in the use of this word to describe an apparent reduction of
complex to simple forms. It is one thing for the historian of
art to note a diagrammatic likeness, but quite another to
suppose that artists, on the basis of what they can see,
intentionally produce an outline representation: this would
ignore everything that we know of sculptural and iconic
convention. Nor does the term refer to quality. While it
must be acknowledged that some schematic forms arise
from an inept handling of tools and materials, it is more
often the case that it is as possible to achieve excellence
with schematization as with naturalism. Nor do I suggest
that schematic and naturalistic are hard-and-fast categories:
indeed, they are no more than words. Also, I am using the
word "schematic" where many people might use the term
"abstract" of this material; but this latter term is distinctly
unhelpful and indeed confusing for reasons that I intend to
deal with in a separate note to African Arts in the future.
For the moment it will have to suffice that I make use of
"schematic" within three contrasting and certainly very
complex pairs of terms: naturalistic/schematic; figura-
tive/non-figurative; and representational/non-representa-
tional. However, in the absence of local knowledge we
cannot know whether something was intended to be figu-
rative or not, representational (whether iconic or non-icon-
ic) or not.
10. The ekuoba belongs, historically, to a masking complex
distributed along the Benue valley and found in Jukun,
Idoma, and Igala; in parts of northwest Igbo; and also in a
number of northern Edo and Ijumu communities (e.g., see
Borgatti 1976: fig. 7). Underlying this complex is an eschato-
logical tradition that suggests a common heritage of ideas,
deeply structured within the culture history of a wide area of
what is now Nigeria, at least from the western borders of the
Yoruba-speaking region to the middle Benue valley. Thus,
the Idoma language has kwu, to die; okwu, corpse; and ekwu,
masquerader. In Yoruba the relevant terms are: ku, to die;
oku, corpse; but egun, egigun, egungun, eegun, masked figure.
In Ebira we have oku, corpse; and eku, masquerade; but su, to
die. This verb does not relate to the Yoruba euphemism for
death (sun, to sleep) but the typographical limitations of
African Arts does not allow me to explain why. The Ebira
manifestation of this complex is also informed by ideas
about metaphysical agency that find resonance in Nupe and
western Yoruba. As I have noted elsewhere (1988a), the
capacity to create life as mothers and to destroy life as witch-
es is, in the Ebira metaphysical tradition, predicated of wom-
anhood. In Yoruba and in Nupe the "phrasing" may be
different and not apparently located in the domain of the
eschatological; and their social institutions are certainly very
different. Yet the similarities to the ideology of Gelede mas-
querade and with Nupe ritual will be patent (Drewal &
Drewal 1983; Nadel 1954).
11. On this basis I commissioned a series of masks from
iKarimu for the Lagos Museum. I remember discussing them
with Arnold. Knowing that I was interested in sculpture,
iKarimu would sometimes carve other things to impress me
with his skill. Here was a man interested in art, whose skills
might, in more diverse circumstances, have been enabled in
ways that were not open to an Ebira farmer.
12. This historical model is, of course, entirely my own
invention.
13. This argument has several obvious starting points and
reinforcements along the way. One is my own fieldwork;
another is Rene Bravmann's Open Frontiers (1973); and
another is Arnold Rubin and a seminar he gave his graduate
students at UCLA when I was visiting: he said the messier it
all seemed, the more likely it was to be true.
14. Except in Gloucester, England, where there is now a
museum of packaging. However, in the conflicting identities
arising as a result of the horrors of the war with Iraq, a prob-
lem that might seem to be a mere function of descriptive
accuracy can be seen to have implications of tragic world-
wide consequence.
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KENNEDY: Notes, from page 55
The research on which this article is based was conducted in
Europe and South Africa in 1977, supported by the
Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad
Program. I would like to thank the staffs of the Museum fiir
V6lkerkunde in Berlin, the Voortrekker Museum in
Pietermaritzburg, and the Natal Museum in Pietermaritz-
burg for making their collections available to me for this
research. I am grateful to the Natal Museum, and especially
to Dr. Brian Stuckenberg, for institutional support during my
stay in South Africa in 1972-73 and 1977. I thank Dr. Roy
Sieber for commenting on an earlier draft of this article.
1. The center of the Zulu kingdom was located between the
upper reaches of the White and Black Mfolozi rivers in
South Africa, and its boundaries extended from the
Pongola River in the north to the Thukela River in the
south, between the Drakensberg Mountains and the Indian
Ocean. The boundaries changed over time. At the height of
his power, Shaka virtually controlled the area between the
Thukela and Mzimkhulu rivers, sending military parties
against numerous Nguni-speaking peoples living in south-
ern Natal.
2. The king's regiments worked on behalf of the state. The
large number of women formally associated with the royal
homesteads were of value not only for their labor but also
for the cattle received when they married, augmenting the
national herds.
3. The king's principal residences were distinguished from
the typical homestead by the enormous central cattle byre,
the vast number and large size of the individual structures
arranged around it, and the high quality of materials and
workmanship. These residences typically measured several
kilometers in circumference. Lunguza ka Mpukane stated
that "one shouting on one side [of emGungundlovu,
Dingane's principal homestead] could not be heard across
the other" (Webb & Wright 1976, vol. 1:344), and Allen
Gardiner calculated that emGungundlovu consisted of more
than 1,100 individual structures (1836:206).
4. The terms copper and brass are often used interchange-
ably in English sources, and the Zulu term ithusi generally
also refers to either brass or copper. Precise Zulu terms do
exist, however: ithusi elimhlophe (white ithusi) for brass
(which is an alloy of copper and zinc) and ithusi elibomvu
(red ithusi) for copper (Doke & Vilakazi 1972:809). Bryant
simply defines ithusi as brass, or a thing made of brass
(1905:666).
5. Also sometimes referred to as isidiya (pl. izidiya).
6. An illustration of a woman wearing this garment appears
in The Kafirs of Natal (Shooter 1857:151).
7. According to Gedhle, ubusenga were not known during the
reign of Mpande, Cetshwayo's predecessor (Webb & Wright
1976, vol. 1:148).
8. Alan Smith pointed out that because of the treacherous
currents along the Natal coast and the absence of adequate
harbors along the coastline, Delagoa Bay was the southern-