Dan and Mende masks: a structural comparison

Abstract

Opening Paragraph The masks and associated traditions of the people of the central Guinea coast of West Africa are among the most obvious and well-known features of the contemporary cultural landscape of the region. For some time social anthropologists have described the functions of the masks as social control mechanisms (Horton, 1976). Recently anthropologists have been elucidating these cultural items in terms of symbolic or structural analyses (Fischer and Himmelheber, 1976; Jdrej, 1976; MacCormack, 1980; Phillips, 1978). So far the studies concerned with symbolism, where they have not been explicitly general and theoretical (Jdrej, 1980; Tonkin, 1979), have confined themselves to a particular culture or a particular mask or subset of masks.

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