Bèè à n’a ka laada

Each person has his customs.

This pot has seven figures in medium-relief with a continuous line under the figure’s feet representing the ground, and incising on the vessel’s rim. The figures are seemingly unisex and stand with their arms outstretched in a U-shape, maybe in a protective stance.

In many West African cultures, Bamana among them, the number seven represents perfection and unity as it is the combination of three, which represents the masculine, and four, which represents the feminine. This object is covered in a dirt residue not obtained from the firing process as this is done above ground, suggesting that it could have been buried at one point or the exterior rubbed with dirt to enhance the dimensionality of the figures. 

In Bamana, each type of pot has a specific name and purpose. This particular object shares a resemblance to both the cooking pot ‘daga’ and the water jar ‘jidaga.’ They are both globular, short and broad and many, like this pot, have wide mouths and a narrower foot. The body is thick and solid, making the object quite heavy but also able to retain coolness. ‘Jigadaw’ are often placed under a tree outside a family’s compound to serve visitors a cup of cool water upon arrival. The ‘daga’ cooking pots, despite their ubiquitousness in markets, are used less often than ‘nègèdaga’ metal cooking pots that have taken their place. Other ‘jidagaw’ feature more elaborate geometric motifs, as well as lizards, tortoises, snakes and other water animals.

The Bamana were a royal section of the Mandinka people who founded the Greater-Mande Mali Empire which comprised areas of the Niger River Delta and surrounding savanna in what is modern day Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania, Guinea and parts of Burkina Faso and Niger. The Mali Empire was an alliance of twelve kingdoms founded around 1235 by its first warrior-king Sundiata Keita, who overthrew the Kaniaga or Sosso Empire, a successor of the nearby Ghana Empire which was dominated by another Mande speaking population, the Soninke. There are long histories of conquest and rebellion between competing empires in the region vying to control powerful and prosperous territories and trade cities like Gao, Timbuktu and Djenné. The Mali Empire was at its peak under Mansa Musa’s rule in the early 14th century and ruled until 1610 when its final ruler, Mahmud IV, died and it fell to the Segou or Bamana Empire, a successor of the neighboring Songhai Empire which had at one point also been under Malian rule. The Bamana Empire lasted until 1861 when Umar Tal and his Toucouleur jihad occupied much of the region with the aim of unifying the populace under Islam. The Toucouleur Empire was short-lived and the area underwent numerous dynastic changes in the next decades before the French were given much of Western Africa at the Berlin Conference, and deposed local authorities in the early 1890s. They’re conglomerate of eighteen colonized African territories was simply called ‘French West Africa’ until nationalist movements succeeded in liberation in the late 1950s and 1960s.

While rulers of the Mali Empire converted to Islam as early as the thirteenth century and efforts to do so continued into the 19th century, there was sustained resistance from the more rural populace who continued to practice polytheistic local traditions. The terms Bamana and Bambara have meant different things to different people at different times and are used interchangeably by outsiders. In western Sudan in the 19th century it denoted raiders and conquerors, while for the Soninke it meant “slave.” For Muslim conquerors throughout western Africa’s long history of conversion, Banmana meant “unbeliever” or “infidel” due to the population’s resistance to Islam. Bamana people never used the term Bambara to refer to themselves, this word was always a designation given by an outside population like the French or Arabs. It was the French colonialists who made racial classifications between different ethnic groups like the Bamana, Mandinka (who they called Malinke) and Soninke who had been interchanging for centuries amongst themselves and other groups. In essence, Bamana does not refer so much to a racial or ethnic group as much as it does to people in the area who practice local ancestral religious traditions. Many of the terms, especially now after so many centuries of intermixing, are fluid and sometimes enforce arbitrary boundaries.

Process and Meaning

The Bamana share many similarities with other patrilinear Mande cultures in their continued use of an endogamous caste social structure and age, sex and vocational based societies known as Tons. In this hierarchy consisting of nobility, vassals, artisans, merchants, farmers and griots, potters are the wives and daughters of blacksmiths and are called numumusow or “blacksmith women.” Along with being the only people with the knowledge of the technology of pottery production, they also serve important social roles in rites of passage like baptism, marriage, death and excision, and oftentimes act as hairdresser. 

The pottery process begins with the women and their husbands finding the best quality clay pits to dig from. This is the only step of the process men are involved in and is also the part that carries the most risks. Mande people believe raw clay is rich in a vital energy called nyama which can cause blindness, barrenness, miscarriages and even death if not handled properly. Special solutions are prepared to protect the potters and their husbands on their expeditions, and prayers and sacrifices are offered to the spirit forces- or jinns- of the chosen areas which are often miles away from their homes. The work is seasonal and the clay harvested from one dig can last an entire season or as long as multiple years. After the clay is brought back, the clay is dried in the sun and any impurities removed before being stored in ceramic vessels. When ready to use, water is added to bring the clay to the desired consistency and ground fired clay particles are mixed in to reduce shrinkage, crackage and breakage in the firing process. The clay is then wedged before being compressed and then shaped in two steps. First it’s pounded onto convex molds of old unusable pots and then the walls are finished by coiling and smoothed out by hand. They are outfitted with feet and rims and then decorated through slip-painting, carving, incising, burnishing and adding low to high relief sculpted details.

Bibliography

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