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  • Bura Funerary UrnsNiger Terracottas: An Interpretive Limbo?
  • Michelle Gilbert (bio)

The site of the necropolis of Bura-Asinda-Sikka in the lower Niger River valley in southwest Niger was discovered accidentally in 1975 by a young hunter who found two small terracotta heads. Three years later the discovery was reported to the Departement d'art et archaeologie (IRSH: l'Institut de Recherches en sciences humaines de l'Universite de Niamey). In 1983, Boube Gado (1944–2015)—head of the Department of Art and Archaeology, IRSH, Niamey—conducted a quick but rigorous archaeological excavation there, financed by the University of Niamey and the French Minister of Relations Exterieures. Among other things, Gado found tubular and oval-shaped anthropomorphic terracotta pots, some surmounted by heads or highly adorned equestrian warriors. The pots were placed upside down on the ground above burials and dated from the second to eleventh centuries ce. Gado wrote a short essay on these extraordinary terracotta vessels and his interpretation of their meaning for the exhibition catalog Vallees du Niger (Devisse 1993). The exhibit was held in Paris at the Musee National des Arts d'Afrique et d'Oceanie in 1993–1994 and travelled to museums in Europe, America, and West Africa throughout 1996. In the 575 page catalog, over forty scholars addressed aspects of the early history of the inland Niger Basin reconstructed through material objects and other sources. Gado's contribution is the only existing article to describe this Bura material. I was fascinated by these pots and surprised that so little had been published on them.

Gado (1993) tells us that, at the Bura necropolis, groups of pots covering several hundred square meters were found associated with burials: the archaeological excavation (25 x 20 meters in size) exposed 630 funerary urns placed upside down and close together. There were twice as many tubular urns as semi-ovoid ones (see maps and photo of site in Gado 1993: 365–66). The urns were placed on the ground several feet above the buried remains or they once covered or contained human skulls, teeth, bones, or offerings of cooked food for the dead.

Gado suggests that the vases with bodily features are "effigies" of those buried 1–1.2 meters below the surface and that some contained the head of a caretaker of the dead—perhaps a slave, servant, spouse, or kinsman sacrificed to serve the deceased in the afterworld. Gado maintains that the coffin-jars or anthropomorphic funerary urns from the Asinda-Sikka site are funerary statuettes. The terracotta pots vary in size but include tubular urns 70–80 cm in height and round or semi-ovoid urns, some of which are surmounted by standing figures, mounted horsemen, or heads (Fig. 1). Most urns, however, are decorated only with anthropomorphic features depicting eyes, nose, mouth, and/or coiffure. There are also representations of phalluses, breasts, and coiffures on the urns, which Gado says represent sexual differentiation. He interprets the iron arrowheads with hooked ends that were found beside every jar as remnants of a ritual sacrifice.1 The skeletons buried below the terracotta pots wore bracelets of brass or iron, brass nose rings, and sometimes strings of quartzite beads.

There are basically two shapes of pots found in the Bura necropolis: cylindrical and spherical. I suggest that most if not all of these represent genitalia. It is surely not an accident that the Hausa word bura means "penis" (Abraham 1962; Bargery 1934).2 The ancient stone megaliths at Tondidarou in Mali form a parallel example. To understand the sexually explicit forms on the Niger urns I consider them as a group, as a single category, and compare them with objects, myths, and rites performed by several other present-day peoples in nearby regions of West Africa.

The Bura terracotta pots that are reproduced in this essay were owned by New York collectors in the 1990s. They were purchased from American and European art dealers who in turn probably bought them from African runners and traders in the late 1980s.3 It is therefore an arbitrary selection. The collectors are anonymous. [End Page 66]


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Ceramic figure

Bura, Niger

Terracotta; 30...

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