You are where you build: Hierarchy, Inequality, and Equalitarianism in Mandara Highland Architecture

Archéologie et architecture traditionnelle en Afrique de l'Ouest: Le cas des revêtements de sols au Togo: Une étude comparée by Dola Angèle Aguigah is an extract from Volume 2 of a doctoral thesis submitted to Université Paris I, France, in 1995. The book, which consists of five chapters, explores spatial organization in traditional architecture in Africa.Aguigah believes that potsherd pavements and rammed floors have not received adequate research attention when compared to the study of the doors, posts, windows, and walls of houses. This study highlights the technological choices made by artisans, the functions or the place of pavements and rammed floors in the spatial organization of living spaces, their aesthetic function, and their protection of the ground in public places (courtyards, meeting rooms, and walkways) and worship places (tombs, shrines, and temples).The first chapter describes field research in Togo, noting that Merrick Posnansky in 1979 indicated the presence of pavements made of quartz stones at Notsé. The archaeological research at Notsé from 1984 to 1986 documented the presence and the spatial distribution of these quartz pavements. The literature review describes the different types of floor pavements in the Gulf of Guinea, citing sites in Benin, Chad, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, and Togo. Ancient and modern pavements are distinguished as two separate categories. This chapter also addresses the difficulties of the excavation and study of pavements, along with problems of chronology, methodology, and data collection.The next chapter presents an analysis of the composition and decoration of the pavements and rammed floors, highlighting the materials used, the techniques, and the various modes of production. The decorations are geometric motifs, horizontal, vertical, or oblique forms, rectangles, and parallel lines. Sometimes they form one or two enclosing bands and, in other places, several oblique parallel bands converge toward the central part of the

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Slavery and Its Aftermath in the Mandara Mountains

Chétima

2020

Hist. J.

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Based on long-term oral historical research in the Mandara Mountains, this article traces the ways in which memories of slavery have been preserved in songs which are usually not part of the more formal oral historical narratives. It historicizes this process by focusing on the selective memories of different generations as well as on the influence of colonial and post-colonial politics, particularly post-1990 democratic politics in Cameroon. The major change over time is the shift from the shameful memory of slavery to be repressed – or treated only obliquely – to its public claim as a political resource after the democratic transition of the 1990s. In retelling the history of being sold as slaves, the residents of the Mandara Mountains reversed the negative meaning of slavery to use it to celebrate their resistance to Islam and to voice political claims. This new narrative congeals around being kirdi, a new regional and trans-religious identity claimed by Christians and pagans in the mountains.

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You are where you build: Hierarchy, Inequality, and Equalitarianism in Mandara Highland Architecture

Cited by 14 publications

References 37 publications

David Morton. Age of Concrete: Housing and the Shape of Aspiration in the Capital of Mozambique. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2019. 336 pp. List of Illustrations. Glossary. Notes. Sources. $90.00. Cloth. ISBN: 978-0821423677.

David Morton. Age of Concrete: Housing and the Shape of Aspiration in the Capital of Mozambique. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2019. 336 pp. List of Illustrations. Glossary. Notes. Sources. $90.00. Cloth. ISBN: 978-0821423677.

Dola Angèle Aguigah. Archéologie et architecture traditionnelle en Afrique de l’Ouest: Le cas des revêtements de sols au Togo: Une étude comparée. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2018. 277 pp. Photographs. Bibliography. €31.00. E-book. ISBN: 978-2-343-15637-8.

Slavery and Its Aftermath in the Mandara Mountains

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