No open-access location is known for this record yet.
No open-access location is known for this record yet.
The focus of Bernard de Grunne's volume Djenné-Jeno (old Djenné) is on figurative sculptures and other objects found within the general boundaries of Mali's great Inland Delta of the Niger, an inundation zone the size of the state of Maine. Over the past several decades, this area yielded an impressive array of archeological objects. Foremost among these are magnificent terracotta statues, for the most part anthropomorphic (animals like horses, rams, buffalos, lizards, and snakes are also depicted), produced over a period of a thousand years. Created by Soninke peoples between approximately ce 700 and 1700, they constitute a corpus of exceptional ancient art whose complex meanings and purposes may always remain somewhat enigmatic.A historian of African art, de Grunne has intensely studied the archeological finds from this region for several decades and published important findings. Here his focus is primarily on ancient terracotta statuary, but he also examines wooden and bronze objects from central Mali. In presenting the subject of terracottas through both text and magnificent photographs, he provides readers with exhaustive coverage of these statues supported by thermoluminescence (TL) determined dates for most, and the results of meticulous analyses.Early in his career, de Grunne came under the influence of Albert A. Maesen of the Royal Museum for Central Africa at Tervuren, Belgium, and George Kubler, an American art historian and expert on pre-Colombian art. He then studied under Robert Farris Thompson, and conducted his dissertation field work on terracotta objects in Mali in the mid-1980s. Thus, he brings to this volume very impressive educational and experiential credentials augmented by his intimate knowledge of an ever-expanding scholarly literature on the archeology of West Africa.Terracotta figurative sculptures from Mali's Inland Delta currently populate many Western museum and private collections. Despite their numbers, estimated by the author to be in excess of 1,000, little is known about their historical contextual meanings and use. While controlled archeological digs can inform to some degree about given excavated sculptures, such conclusions are often more general than precise. Additionally, these conclusions cannot always be convincingly applied to figures found elsewhere in the Inland Delta that may have been created during earlier or later periods.Despite these realities, but thanks to the archeological excavations of Roderick and Susan McIntosh and other archeologists, as well as TL dating of some 385 statues, the author has been able to create a chronology for these works. He reasonably offers several caveats concerning this detailed chronology, but interestingly notes that several motifs such as snakes, pustules (papules), and certain facial features are consistently present from 700 to 1700.In an effort to establish geographic style distributions, the author created a database of seventy terracotta statues “with verifiable archeological context” (pp. 20, 140, 372). Based on these findings, he then projected the geographic origins of a larger group of 393 statues. While doing this, he also relied on inferential stylistic evidence. This was clearly a herculean undertaking, but one which provides us with the first reliable data on the geographic distribution of various styles and motifs.The chapter “Field Work in Mali” describes his attempts to attribute meaning to sculptural forms such as those depicting maternity and fertility, pustules, the power of the snake, and celestial vessels. While discussing pustules or excrescences found on a large number of statues, he concludes that they may represent either disease or ornament. In his Foreword, Thompson puts forth the opinion that they represent smallpox. This is likely for some statues, especially when the pustules are anatomically centrifugal in distribution or are depicted with central umbilication. However, I believe these pustules may also represent secondary yaws, a highly contagious disease, which was endemic during the centuries when the statues were fired. A third medical possibility I propose is that these cutaneous papules on some statues may represent keloids, which are dermatologic scars due to intentional ritual cicatrization. Finally, depending on anatomic location and numbers, they might also be stylized talismans.The author next attempts to interpret anatomic positions and gestures in his chapter “The Iconography of Djenné-Jeno Statuary.” Based on positions, he classifies statues into eight useful, broad groups: kneeling on two knees, sitting, sitting/kneeling, riding, acrobatic poses, kneeling on all fours, standing, and lying on the back. Of the 281 statues so classified, he found that kneeling on two knees (149 statues) and sitting (86 statues) are the most common.Most of “Field Work in Mali” describes his efforts to correlate statuary postures with current positions associated with worship, sacrifices, prayers, Mande myths, and the power of snakes. This has led him to conclude that these terracotta statues symbolize the gods of the Inland Delta's ancient inhabitants. He bases this conclusion on the resemblance of the supposed prayer positions of a number of terracotta statues and those assumed by people in an Islamized Mande culture. Whether this is coincidence or not remains to some degree an open question. Less questionable is that some statues uncovered in controlled digs may have been used in ancestral cults as theorized by Roderick and Susan McIntosh. He further reasons that some of these gods were considered “deified ancestors of famous founding kings and queens …” This “pantheic usage” is an interesting hypothesis that the author reasonably leaves open to further exploration. However, he allows that if it is proven true, then “one can conclude that this corpus of statues was part of a religious cult that was widely practiced in the Inland Niger Delta” (p. 372).Following through on the idea that current cultural practices may reflect ancient antecedents, de Grunne presents an intriguing hypothesis about the creators of Djenné-Jeno's ancient terracotta statues. Blacksmiths in this part of Africa have long been associated with the creation of ritual objects in wood and metal. Women have been potters, creating a variety of terracotta objects. De Grunne, based on various pieces of evidence, suggests that perhaps the wives of smiths may have had either a unique or collaborative role in the creation of the ancient terracotta statues, thus challenging the assumption that they were only created by men (p. 51).The final two chapters respectively discuss ancient wooden Soninke statuary and bronze objects. De Grunne states that there are some sixty-three ancient carbon-14 dated Soninke and Dogon statues described by Hélène Leloup, and twenty-two by Michel Leveau, dating from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries. Architectonic evidence from some of these wooden statues links them stylistically to ancient terracotta figures spanning 950 to 1560. Their exact geographic origins remain unsolved. What is known is that they came from areas neighboring the Inland Delta. They temporally overlap with the wooden sculptures of the Tellem, who occupied the Bandiagara Escarpment prior to the arrival of the Dogon. Yet the precise nature of Tellem art is not known nor is its relationship with the Soninke creators of terracotta statues. The author very clearly recognizes the need for further research in order to untangle Soninke-Tellem cultural contacts and exchanges.In the final chapter of the book, “Bronze Statuettes from the Djenné-Jeno Culture,” de Grunne discusses fourteen objects including small amulets, seated, kneeling and standing human figures, impressive masks and pendants, and bovine and antelope statues. These bronze objects, like the terracotta figures, are ancient. However, the author concludes that it is unrealistic to make clear distinctions between what might be stylistically Dogon or Djenné-Jeno. What is more certain is that metal, wood, and fired clay objects “came from a broad style spectrum that embraced a variety of workshops and personal sub-styles extending no doubt over several generations or even centuries” (p. 355).Djenné-Jeno is a superb volume that comprehensively discusses the archeological discoveries in Mali's Inland Delta of the Niger. It is based on meticulous scholarly research compiled over several decades. Throughout, the author has directed the discourse about ancient terracotta statues, wooden sculptures, and bronze objects in several new and exciting directions. He has done so with a well-organized text and with an engaging style that makes this discussion accessible to a broad range of readers. The 280 illustrations plus the maps and sketches also greatly contribute to the exciting new interpretive paths that the author has chartered.Bernard de Grunne has successfully achieved the book's principal aim, “to establish an initial corpus of genuine Djenné-Jeno style terracotta sculpture in order to contribute to a better understanding of the full art history of the Inland Niger Delta region and its ancient historical connections with other art styles from Mali and beyond” (p. 16). This book is essential reading for all who are interested in the archeologic origins of art in Sub-Sahara Africa and in the history of Mali.
Loading…
Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.