Demanding Objects: Malian Antiquities and Western Scholarship

The President and Fellows of Harvard College Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Demanding Objects: Malian Antiquities and Western Scholarship Author(s): Kristina van Dyke Source: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 52, Museums: Crossing Boundaries (Autumn, 2007), pp. 141-152 Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard College acting through the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20167749 Accessed: 11-06-2016 18:34 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics This content downloaded from 129.7.158.43 on Sat, 11 Jun 2016 18:34:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Demanding objects Malian antiquities and Western scholarship KRISTINA VAN DYKE Between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, peoples inhabiting the Inland Niger Delta (IND) region of present-day Mali produced figurative sculpture in terra cotta. These sculptures express a remarkable range of physical states and human emotion. One example from The Menil Collection shows a kneeling figure covered with writhing serpents, which appear to empower a healthy body (fig. 1). Another shows a seated, hunching figure whose emaciated body is afflicted by serpent-like motifs (fig. 2). While these two sculptures reveal the work of highly skilled ceramicists who labored over artistic details and possessed a deep knowledge of firing technologies, other works demonstrate significantly less skill. These are quickly made forms that required less sophisticated firing techniques (figs. 3 and 4). Archaeologists have located only a handful of such sculptures in their research. They have found figurative works embedded in floors and walls, positioned with pottery and metalwork in a shrine-like structure, placed in or around large funerary vessels or deposited in rubbish piles, among other contexts.1 These Versions of this paper were presented at the 2006 African Studies Association meeting in San Francisco, CA; 2007 Arts Council of the African Studies Association in Gainesville, FL; Williams College, Williamstown, MA; and University of Houston, Houston, TX. I am grateful for the comments and criticisms I received on each of these occasions. Over the past year I have discussed this topic with scholars, dealers, and collectors in the United States and Europe, too numerous to list here, but wish to acknowledge their thoughtful suggestions. At The Menil Collection, my project has received the support of Josef Helfenstein, director; Brad Epley, chief conservator; Bettina Raphael, visiting conservator; and many others to whom I am grateful. Mary Lambrakos has read multiple versions of this essay and offered endless helpful suggestions and encouragement and I offer her my heartfelt thanks. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the thoughtful editorial advice of Francesco Pellizzi and Natasha Kurchanova. 1. For example, Susan Keech Mclntosh and Roderick Mclntosh undertook excavations in 1977 and 1981 at Jenne-Jeno and environs that unearthed relatively whole terra cotta sculptures and fragments in architectural contexts and a rubbish pit. Mamadou Sarr located a sculpture in a funerary jar near Sevar? in 1972 and H. K. Barth observed a similar occurrence in the area in 1976. Cristiana P?nella provides a synopsis of archaeological work in the IND region since independence. See Cristiana P?nella, Les Terres de la Discorde: D?terrement et Ecoulement des Terres Cuites Anthropromorphes du Mali (Leiden: University of Leiden, 2002), pp. 149-153. extraordinary objects offer insight into the period of the trans-Saharan trading empire of Mali and push back the timeline of art history in West Africa by centuries. Given their importance, it is surprising that they have received so little scholarly attention. The vast majority of this corpus has come to light through the art market, which proffered both legal and illegal works to Western collectors since the 1960s. Objects obtained for the market were extricated from Malian soil with little regard for their archaeological context, resulting in an irretrievable loss of knowledge. Scholars have therefore been reluctant to study, publish, or exhibit these works for fear of becoming complicit in this destruction by making the terra cottas more desirable and valuable. Roderick Mclntosh, one of the preeminent archaeologists to work in the IND, provides an example of this thinking: "[PJillaged pieces, even if later displayed in a museum for scholars to study, are by the very act of removal from archaeological sites rendered of negligible knowledge value."2 He went on to say: "True, there are those who still offer the bankrupt argument that looted, context-bereft art can still provide knowledge to scholars . . . scholarly use of illicit art means tacitly justifying the means by which the pieces are obtained and demonstrably contributes to acts of thievery."3 2. Roderick J. Mclntosh, "Just Say Shame: Excising the Rot of Cultural Genocide," in Plundering Africa's Past, ed. Peter R. Schmidt and Roderick J. Mclntosh (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 45. Mclntosh and his collaborator, Susan Keech Mclntosh, are perhaps best known for their important work on urban ism in the IND. Their groundbreaking research has demonstrated that the city of Jenne-Jeno was comprised of clustered settlements of specialists capable of checking one another's power such that the city's organization was characterized by heterarchy as opposed to centralization and hierarchy. 3. Ibid., 49. For archaeologists, the terra cottas are only as intellectually valuable as the site of which they are a part. They hold that an understanding of the site and its deep history is imperative to and a prerequisite for an understanding of the terra cottas. While the demands archaeologists make on the terra cottas are understandable within their disciplinary framework, others can be made of the works as well. Art historians can study methods of production, style, and iconography, admittedly with certain limitations, in order to shed light on aspects of the artistic production of this period. This content downloaded from 129.7.158.43 on Sat, 11 Jun 2016 18:34:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 142 RES 52 AUTUMN 2007 Figure 1. Terra cotta figure, Inland Niger Delta, Mali 12th-15th century, 187/8 x 93/4 x 103/4 in. The Menil Collection, 81-056 DJ. In order to protect this important body of work, scholarly discourse has thus largely focused on the barrier.4 We know little of how these objects were produced, their stylistic diffusion, or iconographie terra cottas' status within the politicized framework of cultural heritage. This activist tactic buffers the objects, creating a cocoon around them by requiring an engagement with questions of ethics as a starting point for scholarly inquiry. However, it also contributes to the obfuscation of the material and historical dimensions of the sculptures themselves in that scholarship rarely penetrates this politicized 4. Bernard de Grunne is the only art historian to conduct sustained interpretive scholarship on the topic of the IND terra cottas. He published the first in-depth study on these works in 1980, which dealt with stylistic and iconographie concerns. This was followed by a dissertation at Yale University on the topic in 1987. His dissertation explored the language of gesture, arguing that certain poses in the corpus represent a means of communicating with deities. Since then, This content downloaded from 129.7.158.43 on Sat, 11 Jun 2016 18:34:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Van Dyke: Demanding objects 143 Figure 2. Terra cotta figure, Inland Niger Delta, Mali, 12th?15th century, 12V2 x 7V2 x 97/8 ?n. The Menil Collection, 83-037 DJ. logic.5 The extent, nature, and whereabouts of this corpus remain unknown. In addition to the terra cottas he has published numerous essays and catalogues on the topic. See Bernard de Grunne, Terres Cuites de l'Ouest Africain (Louvain: Universit? Catholique de Louvain, 1980); Bernard de Grunne, "Divine Gestures and Earthly Gods: A Study of the Ancient Terracotta Statuary from the Inland Niger Delta in Mali" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1987). 5. The art historian Barbara Frank wrote an important essay that took up the question of the identity of the terra cottas' creators and argued for greater attention to the clues provided by the technologies still in situ in Mali or housed in the Mus?e National du Mali as well as those published examples from public and private collections, perhaps thousands of additional sculptures exist in the West. Scholars' political position with regard to the terra cottas was largely established during the period when of their production. See Barbara Frank, "Thoughts on Who Made the Jenn?Terra-cottas: Gender, Craft Specialization, and Mande Art History," Mande Studies 4 (2002):121-132. This content downloaded from 129.7.158.43 on Sat, 11 Jun 2016 18:34:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 144 RES 52 AUTUMN 2007 Figure 3. Terra cotta figure, Inland Niger Delta, Mali, 12th-15th century, 8% x 5V4 x 65/Q in. The Menil Collection, Figure 4. Terra cotta figure, Inland Niger Delta, Mali, 12th-15th century, 6 x 5]/Q x 3]/8 in. The Menil Collection, X631. CA 6703. the market for terra cottas was intensifying. While terra international consciousness about the need to protect Mali's heritage and effectively diminished demand for the terra cottas by making involved parties accountable. cottas were known to the West from the colonial period onwards, they only emerged as collectable objects in the 1960s, Western demand increased steadily in the 1970s and peaked in the 1980s and early 1990s. During this period of increased demand, the government of Mali and an international group of concerned scholars mobilized to stop the hemorrhaging of these antiquities from their sites. The Malian government and some Western governments simultaneously became increasingly sensitive to cultural heritage issues, a shift that resulted in stronger national laws and international agreements about cultural heritage. Mali passed laws in 1985 and 1986 that forbid tampering with archaeological sites and the exportation of archaeological material. In addition, it negotiated a bilateral agreement with the United States in 1993 under the UNESCO convention that obliged the United States to uphold its export laws on antiquities.6 These combined efforts raised 6. In 1983, the United States enacted legislation that implemented the UNESCO convention, which was written in 1970. Mali ratified the convention in 1987 and subsequently petitioned the United States to enter into a bilateral agreement to protect its archaeological material. This agreement, effectively barring the importation of Mali's archaeological objects into the country, was put in place in 1993 and has been extended two times. Hearings were held in the spring of 2007 to determine whether the agreement will be extended again. 7. Very few dealers openly sell these works any more and those who do tend to sell works that have provenance dating back to at least the period before the 1993 ban, which not only affected the market significantly in the United States but also had repercussions for Europe (Belgium, which was the hub of the IND terra cotta trade is not a party to the UNESCO convention, while France, another significant source, ratified the convention in 1997). Works with deeper provenance are more attractive to collectors for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the perception that they are less likely to be fakes, though as Panel la and Brent suggest, faking began at the early stages of the market (see note 9). Today, "runners" appear to dominate the market for these works but there is a perception that the majority of what they offer is pastiche or fake. This content downloaded from 129.7.158.43 on Sat, 11 Jun 2016 18:34:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Van Dyke: Demanding objects 145 Changed circumstances beg the question of whether scholars' strategic avoidance of the terra cottas' historical and material dimensions is the optimal ethical course of action today. If the objects warrant protection because of their potential knowledge value and the pillaging of archaeological sites has slowed, it seems as though we have an imperative to study these works such that they yield the very contributions to an understanding of African pasts that we have attempted to safeguard. While the contextual and stratigraphie evidence related to the extant corpus in public and private collections will never be regained, the terra cottas are not mute.8 In their very materiality, they can potentially tell us something of how and where they were made, and in their form, how they relate to one another. Perhaps more importantly, an understanding of the terra cottas as physical objects will help us to determine which ones are, in fact, the antiquities they claim to be. Fakes and pastiches appear to have developed in tandem with the market for authentic terra cottas, meaning that protection of these works extends to both newly created objects as well as ancient ones.9 Establishing and vetting the corpus will provide the basis for future scholarship. It will also work to seal the corpus as it exists today, making newly arrived sculptures conspicuous, thereby supporting Malian efforts to police continued pillaging and faking.10 When it comes to Malian antiquities, we do not have the luxury of dictating the terms of our evidence. We must work with what exists, we must find new ways to 8. Archaeologists have vigorously debated the positives and negatives of studying and publishing unprovenanced objects. While many choose to avoid such works, others feel that doing so is tantamount to ignoring or even censoring data. See, for example: Hugh Eakin, "Must Looted Relics Be Ignored?" New York Times, May 2, 2006, section E. 9. The anthropologist Cristiana Ranella, who recently published a book on the trade in IND terra cottas, argues that faking began in the 1960s. See P?nella (note 1), p. 164. Michel Brent, a Belgian journalist who has also conducted research on the IND terra cotta trade, argues that pastiches began in the early 1970s and that since the 1980s, roughly 80 percent of the terra cottas on the market are fakes. See Michel Brent, "Faking African Art," Archaeology 54 (2001 ): 26-32. 10. Frank Willett's scholarship on the Ife corpus, for example, defined this group of Nigerian antiquities rather firmly, such that there is a great deal of skepticism about newly discovered works. Lacking a publication record and provenance more generally, these objects are not as desirable as they might otherwise be. While it remains problematic that the Willett corpus may not represent the breadth of existing Ife antiquities, the benefits of establishing a well-defined corpus are clear: Market demand is reduced and the publication of the works facilitates scholarship and knowledge of the period more generally. make limited resources speak, to respond creatively and thoughtfully to the challenges and lacunae of this art historical period as well as to the complicated ethical dilemmas the terra cottas' collection histories present. This is difficult work, but there are wide-ranging implications for art history as a discipline, museums as custodians of African art, and Western scholars as participants in the politics of cultural heritage. As we shall see, the story of the terra cottas' emergence on the art market closely resembled that of any body of African art in public and private collections in the West. Their status as antiquities and relatively late arrival onto the art market distinguish them to some degree from the nineteenth- and twentieth-century wooden objects that comprise the field, but the tangled network of relations among African and Western dealers, collectors, and scholars through which they emerged resembled those of these objects brought to the West since the colonial period. In distancing ourselves from the material and historical aspects of the IND terra cottas, we have attempted to extricate ourselves from the dictates of market forces. While this tactic may help safeguard the terra cottas from continued pillaging today, it does little to address how we go about answering larger, complicated questions about the history of our discipline's formation. In addition, cutting ourselves off from dealers and collectors, who have long supplied our objects of study, comes at a price for our understanding of the terra cottas. Dealers and collectors who were once involved in the terra cotta trade possess important information about the provenance of these works. We must weigh the merits and weaknesses of our present position with regard to the terra cottas and consider the potential loss of information it requires. Our decisions will affect future generations' ability to understand these works and their historical significance. To determine how we might advance our knowledge of the terra cottas, we must explore the stakes, past and present, for Western scholarship in addition to those of Mali, which have been privileged in the discourse on these objects. We must consider how our own localized attitudes about the terra cottas and the politics of our discipline shaped our approach to the corpus and may even limit it today. The anthropologist Cristiana P?nella recently published a study that examines how the market for the IND terra cottas developed.11 She cites colonial-era 11. P?nella (see note 1). This work represents an important contribution to our limited understanding of the terra cottas' This content downloaded from 129.7.158.43 on Sat, 11 Jun 2016 18:34:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 146 RES 52 AUTUMN 2007 documents and publications that suggest local populations were aware of the existence of the sculptures, which surfaced from erosion or chance finds.12 Local populations most often left them in situ because they did not want to tamper with the histories of the previous and unrelated populations who inhabited the location. The French made occasional chance discoveries of terra cottas from the moment they arrived in the region, collecting these works as souvenirs or sending them to research institutions such as the Institut Francais d'Afrique Noire.13 By the 1940s and 1950s, French-sponsored archaeological work was under way in the IND, resulting in the collection of additional small and fragmentary works of art and occasional published notices in colonial journals.14 The modest nature of the finds, however, failed to attract the attention of a larger scholarly audience. Terra cotta sculptures began to appear on the art market in the 1960s, offered locally to tourists and expatriates, and finding their way to Europe and the United States in limited quantity. Dominique and John emergence on the Western market. Panella's account offers insight into the nuances and complexities of this history, suggesting that the very notion of a "terra cotta" in the West was decades in the making. She demonstrates that the ethical dilemmas surrounding them similarly took decades to develop. 12. Ibid., pp. 140-144. The accounts of ethnographers Herta Haselberger and Ziedonis Ligers suggest that in the 1950s and 1960s, local populations viewed these objects as evidence of past populations inhabiting the region and appear to have most often left them in situ. Ligers notes an account from Koa, where two sculptures were discovered and maintained by the village as representations of their ancestors. de Menil, founders of The Menil Collection, acquired three small figurative sculptures at this time from French and American galleries,15 The invoices from these works attribute them to Dogon and Bozo cultures, an attempt to integrate this newly discovered material into existing cultural and historical frameworks. Like those objects discovered by French archaeologists and officers, the terra cottas coming on to the market during this period were small in scale and fragmentary. As the supply of wooden masks and sculptures was decreasing in the early 1970s, dealers and collectors became increasingly interested in the terra cottas.16 The Belgian collector Count Baudouin de Grunne began to assemble his collection at this time, which would eventually number around three hundred objects.17 By the mid-1970s, market demand prompted organized prospecting for terra cottas in Mali that resulted in more impressive sculptures, both in terms of artistic refinement and scale. The Brussels-based dealer, Emile Deletaille, for example, obtained a remarkable group of horse and rider figures, decoratively painted and embellished with ornate accoutrements.18 15. The de Menils acquired three small terra cottas in the 1960s: X 352 and X 631 from Henri Kamer and CA 6703 from Ren? Rasmussen. 16. By the 1970s and 1980s, it was increasingly difficult to find "authentic" and "traditional" works of African art in volume, particularly the wooden sculptures and masks that the West had long valued. This is the moment in which the terra cottas and other African antiquities emerged. Given this context, it is unsurprising that dealers and collectors responded to them with such enthusiasm. 17. During the 1980s, Baudouin de Grunne's collection became a lightning rod for criticism by archaeologists and scholars. It attracted a great deal of negative attention by activists simply by virtue of its size, 13. Ibid. In 1896, for example, a French officer enlisted villagers to dig at a site near Goundam for three weeks, turning up pottery, copper bracelets, and terra cotta objects. But until the mid-1900s, terra cottas but it was de Grunne's sale of the collection to the Mus?e Dapper in the 1990 that made tempers flare. Scholars saw this high-profile were more often discovered through chance finds than active searching. Requisitioned laborers turned up countless objects between 1925-1945 when laying train tracks for Office du Niger. A French colonial teacher named C. Daire reportedly encountered surface finds at Kaniana, a site near Jenne, in 1933, which prompted him to conduct superficial digging, resulting in the discovery of a number of figurative fragments and a vase. The whereabouts of these works and others gathered as souvenirs or given to study collections is largely demand. The perception that de Grunne's col lection was formed on the coattails of archaeological activity in the region inexplicably lingers. De Grunne formed his collection earlier than most. It was under way by 1970, the bulk of it formed by the 1980 exhibition that his son, Bernard de Grunne, organized at Louvain in 1980. The Mus?e Dapper's collection represents a body of work that will be of major importance to future research on the terra cottas. 18. Early in the trade, it seems, almost all objects were market worthy and only as the volume increased could a more selective group of "exceptional" works emerge, driving demand and prices. Emile Deletaille was the first European dealer to go to Mali and seriously enter the trade. Deletaille arrived in Mali in the early 1970s and obtained a number of significant objects, many of which received export papers from the Malian government. While Deletaille dominated the market for a brief period in the early 1970s, other dealers soon joined the trade, perhaps most importantly Philippe Guimiot. Other European and American dealers obtained terra cottas from intermediaries in the late 1970s and early 1980s. unknown. 14. Beginning in the 1940s, colonial officials and archaeologists published brief notices in the Bulletin de l'Institut Fran?ais d'Afrique Noire and Notes Africaines on both surface finds and excavations. Gilbert Vieillard, Theodore Monod, A. Masson-Debourtet, and Georges Szumosky all published short descriptions of objects in the 1940s and 1950s, based on limited archaeological work beginning in this period or chance finds collected by others. The first known publication of a terra cotta was in the Bulletin de l'Institut Francais d'Afrique Noire in 1940, followed by Theodore Monod in Notes Africaines in 1943. transaction as a further affront to their attempts to quell market This content downloaded from 129.7.158.43 on Sat, 11 Jun 2016 18:34:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Van Dyke: Demanding objects 147 Shortly after this group emerged, the American archaeologists Roderick Mclntosh and Susan Keech Mclntosh excavated the site of Jenne-Jeno, precursor to the modern city of Jenne, and discovered a terra cotta sculpture in situ.19 The figure was found near a charcoal deposit that enabled radiocarbon dating to be undertaken. In a 1979 publication, the Mclntoshes were able to argue that the figure may have been placed in its location between 1000-1300 ce.20 A year later, Bernard de Grunne, Baudouin de Grunne's son, organized an exhibition at Louvain-la-neuve of terra cottas from Mali and Ghana and produced a catalogue, marking the first significant publication on the sculptures.21 The Mclntoshes' and de Grunne's scholarship made the terra cottas better known and undoubtedly more desirable to collectors. It was in the early 1980s, for example, that Dominique de Menil acquired four large sculptures.22 These works were purchased from the Brussels-based dealer Philippe Guimiot, who largely cornered the market on IND terra cottas around this time, selling works to many important European and American collectors who were keen to add the latest "discovery" from Africa to their collections. The development of the market for these works had close parallels with other groups of African objects. Like the Baga objects that came out of Guinea en masse during the Islamic campaigns or Mumuye sculptures that came out of Nigeria in bulk during the Biafran War, the IND terra cottas constituted a new category of object and potential strong reaction to the collection of objects extricated from living cultures where memories of their use were fresh, such was not the case.24 However, despite the fact that few people living in the IND region made claims about the use of these cultures, the response to their arrival in the West was strong and negative by comparison. As the market intensified in the 1980s, scholars, mainly archaeologists, and the Malian government became increasingly aware of the importance of these objects and the value of the knowledge being lost to the market. The tension between scholars, on the one hand, and dealers and collectors on the other, increased, as more objects came out of Mali during this period. As a result, scholars became increasingly outspoken in the 1980s and 1990s, mobilizing to put an end to the trade in terra cottas. Given the urgency of the situation, these impassioned activists resorted to whatever means they had at their disposal to stem the growing exportation of the sculptures, including a documentary film in 1990 by Walter van Beek, The African King, that constituted an aggressive attack in the form of expos? journalism on the trade in Mali and abroad.25 This approach was supported by Roderick Mclntosh in his essay "Just Say Shame: Excising the Rot of Cultural Genocide" (see note 2), which advocated public shaming of parties involved in the trade as a strategy for controlling the actions of dealers, collectors, and scholars. While this tactic study within African art in a short period of time.23 Where one might have expected the field to have a 19. Beginning in the 1960s, archaeologists from European universities, including Utrecht and Basel, began to collaborate with their Malian colleagues to conduct increasingly professional and serious excavations that turned up sculptures, pottery, sherds, and metal work in situ. 20. Roderick J. Mclntosh and Susan Keech Mclntosh, "Terracotta Statuettes from Mali," African Arts 12 (1979):52. The radiocarbon collections of museums in Europe and the United States, including the Royal Museum of African Art in Brussels, the Mus?e de l'Homme in Paris, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Following independence, dealers often exported concentrated groups of a culture's or region's objects, particularly during periods of political turmoil. Such was the case when Baga art came out of Guinea en masse in the 1950s following the Islamic campaigns and when Nigerian art, such as Chamba sculptures, from the area afflicted by the Biafran War came onto the market in concentration in the late 1960s. result was interpreted by the Mclntoshes to suggest a 66 percent See, for example, Frederick Lamp, The Art of the Baga: A Drama of Cultural Reinvention (New York: The Museum for African Art, 1996), probability that the charcoal date is between 1010-1290. 21. De Grunne, Terres Cuites (see note 4). With the increased pp. 224-227; Richard Fardon and Christine Stelzig, Column to Volume: Formal Innovation in Chamba Statuary (London: Saffron market activity in the 1970s, museums, dealers, and collectors began to exhibit terra cottas. Prior to de Grunne's exhibition in Louvain, the Detroit Institute of Arts organized an exhibition in 1973 that featured many terra cotta sculptures and Guimiot exhibited two terra cottas and a small bronze mask from the IND region at the Mus?e Ethnographique in Antwerp in 1975. In 1982, de Grunne was involved in an exhibition in New York, organized by The African American Institute, entitled "Ancient Treasures in Terra Cotta of Mali and Ghana." 22. The four terra cottas acquired from Philippe Guimiot are Menil object numbers 81-56 DJ, 81-61 DJ, 82-20 DJ, and 83-37 DJ. 23. From the onset of colonialism large caches of objects were brought out of the continent via collecting expeditions, filling the great Books, 2005), pp. 104-105. 24. A notable exception was the case of the famed Afo-a-Kom figure from Cameroon, which became the subject of numerous New York Times articles in the early 1970s that ultimately prompted its return. See Eugenia Shanklin, "The Odyssey of the Afo-a-Kom," African Arts 23 (1990):62-29, 95-96. Keith Nicklin, among others, was outspoken about the hemorrhaging of Nigerian art during the Biafran War, but on the whole, the field did not address in a significant way this instance of mass exportation of art or others. See Keith Nicklin, "The Rape of Nigeria's Antiquities," African Arts 8 (1975):86-88. 25. Walter van Beek, The African King (London: Pilgrim Pictures, 1990), film. This content downloaded from 129.7.158.43 on Sat, 11 Jun 2016 18:34:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 148 RES 52 AUTUMN 2007 effected immediate results by raising the stakes for anyone with connections to the terra cottas, particularly in the West, it also had a chilling effect. Given the terra cottas' politically charged status, scholars were reluctant to take them up as a topic or seek alternative strategies to curtailing market demand. Bernard de Grunne was the only art historian to seriously engage with the subject, writing his dissertation at Yale University on the IND terra cottas, which built on his previous publications and exhibitions.26 Parties involved in the trade, even those that preceded the enactment of the UNESCO convention in 1983 in the United States and Malian laws of 1985-1986, retreated behind a veil of silence. Perhaps most disconcerting, the whereabouts of objects became a mystery as though they had been buried a second time. The shaming strategy espoused by Roderick Mclntosh hinged on the idea that the closer one was to the money trail that transformed cultural heritage into property, the more suspect one's ethical position. Hence, dealers and collectors largely came to be viewed in negative terms as did scholarship that framed objects as works of art for aesthetic consumption. This critique coincided with shifts under way in the field of art history in the late 1980s and early 1990s. At the time, art historians were reevaluating their own position in the transformation of objects into cultural property. Their scholarship increasingly focused on the history of collecting itself, where Western demands on African objects were largely viewed in critical terms. Some scholars became uncomfortable with the idea that collecting is possessing, something akin to the way the colonial relationship with Africa itself had been characterized, which was, of course, the basis of the critique.27 In an effort to connect with the cultures they studied on more equitable terms, they critiqued the notion of objects as property. They studied the collection and reception of 26. De Grunne, Terres Cuites and "Divine Gestures" (see note 4). The Mclntoshes and others called his research into question on the basis of research methodology, which they criticized for relying too heavily on contemporary testimony. As they state: "Interpretation has been limited to a search for motifs or attributes recalled in local oral traditions which are then used as the devices to 'explain' the art. . . this low-level inference by analogy is unverifiable. Any one art piece might be equally 'explained' by several traditions" (see Roderick J. Mclntosh and Susan Keech Mclntosh, "Dilettantism and Plunder: Illicit Traffic in Ancient Malian Art," Museum 38 [1986]:51). Yet, as I will suggest below, finding ways to connect the terra cottas to oral histories recounted today may offer a powerful means of engaging local communities in preservation. 27. James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 218. African art itself as a way of directly confronting the issue or, alternatively, turned to concerns that addressed the life histories of objects, framing them as part of performance or attending to their uses in localized circumstances. Much of this work relied on African interlocutors with a living memory of the work or tradition in question, making sculptures such as the terra cottas difficult subjects of study, given the fact that no memory of them existed. Despite the fact that the route to the Western market was remarkably similar for the IND antiquities and wooden objects created in the nineteenth or twentieth century, engagement with more recent objects appeared to be less fraught because scholars could give histories to these works. This critical gesture appeared to counteract the object's perception as property. Because scholars could not endow the context-bereft terra cottas with such a history and their collection was under way, they appeared to stubbornly remain discreet, aestheticized entities?commodities on the art market. The fact that the terra cottas came out of the ground, as opposed to circulating above ground as wooden works do, may explain in part the different reactions to antiquities versus traditional objects. While circulating objects are viewed as alienable, objects that are made from the soil and come out of the soil?the geographical basis of the nation-state?strike one as inalienable. The fact that these objects were antiquities seemed to make their exportation particularly offensive. For Western scholars, they represented a precious resource as evidence from a deep past in an oral culture where written records and other material evidence, such as architecture of considerable age, were in short supply. While local communities in the IND were aware of the existence and antiquity of these sculptures, in most cases it seems they did not forge a relationship with them or claim them. Aware of their considerable age as objects created by populations that had preceded them, they were occasionally maintained where an ancestral ? connection was perceived with their site of origin, but it seems most often that they were left in situ. Because history is always personal in the cultural thought of this region, as I will show below, the idea of tampering with another group's objects risks arousing fear, suspicion, and shame.28 Furthermore, the terra cottas were widely 28. P?nella (see note 1), pp. 140-142, 163. During her research, P?nella found that despite the fact that local communities often knew of the existence of terra cotta sculptures, they did not retrieve them out of respect and fear for others' pasts. In the 1950s and 1960s, Ligers and Haselberger noted that local communities were aware of the existence of terra cottas but similarly opted to leave them in situ. This content downloaded from 129.7.158.43 on Sat, 11 Jun 2016 18:34:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Van Dyke: Demanding objects 149 perceived to be the creation of pre-lslamic populations or groups that bore little connection to present-day inhabitants of the region.29 For these reasons, there was a conscious desire on the part of local communities to put a distance between themselves and the terra cottas' creators. It would seem that for many Malians, it is preferable to let the corpus fade away, untapped. The Malian network of dealers and diggers seemed the only parties to register a different point of view on the terra cottas, believing the spiritual risks of tampering with these sites would be offset by economic benefit. Local communities' opinions about the value of the terra cottas are at odds with Western attitudes towards other peoples' histories and the deep past, revealing different demands on objects and laying bare the fact that there are competing notions of terra cottas at stake here. As Western scholars, we wish to map these periods and recuperate them, bring them forth from their historical distance. Many Malian scholars and government officials, the majority of whom share similar training to our own and are active participants in an international discourse on cultural heritage, take a similar position. This desire is rooted in a belief that the historical record should be made evident and preserved for all to see, presumably because there is a universal desire to understand our collective human past. James Clifford, however, sees this as a particularly Western inclination: "Collecting?at least in the West, where time is generally thought to be linear and irreversible? implies a rescue of phenomena from inevitable historical decay or loss."30 The predominant position in cultural heritage debates is very much rooted in such a recuperative idea of history. There is a strong sense that it is our responsibility as Western-educated scholars to educate afflicted communities about their cultural and historical heritage?to correct their perceived undervaluation of material evidence from the past. To this end, Mali established a cultural mission in Jenne and other important historic sites to educate communities about their cultural heritage in hopes that they become invested participants in its protection. Subsequently, local preservation organizations supported by nonprofit groups have been established in Mali as well. These efforts have produced impressive results, precisely because they represent an active engagement, or even better an intellectual competition about history, with local communities, a notion distinct from the idea that we can or should "teach" these communities about their history. Roderick Mclntosh speaks to the value of education when he states: "Education, pride of one's place in history, and a sense of a common purpose with one's compatriots can demonstrably affect the peasant cash croppers exploited for their labor by the local antiquarians."31 He also states: "[KJnowledge by the peoples of Mali of their artistic heritage serves, in Bator's terms, as a mirror of their inner consciousness, Intimately tied to the existence and awareness of a sense of community.' This splendid corpus of ancient art enables Malians to demonstrate that they are the inheritors of an urban civilization on a par with those of contemporary Mesoamerica or the early first millennium B.c. Aegean."32 But we cannot assume that the pedagogical methods and historical criteria we value as Western scholars are fully shared by Malians. To assume that Malians require a mirror to be held up to them and that Western scholarship can act in such reflective manner risks suggesting that they do not see themselves accurately. Though economically disadvantaged and illiterate by and large, Malians do not lack modes of history production. The fact that Malians are poor does not mean that they are unaware of what is being taken from them nor does it follow that were the playing field level they would share our position. This is problematic for its an evolutionary logic/reminiscent of colonial worldviews that we have readily critiqued: That is, if the terra cottas were preserved locally and Malians' economic situation improved, they would come to value these objects as history in the ways we have as literate scholars of developed nations. However, given that the worldview they construct is largely rooted in orality, many Malians may not share our investment in material objects and the representational logic by which we frame them. The visible world is only ever partial in the cultural thought of this region, not the world given-to be-seen.33 As such, Malians may not make the same kinds of epistemological investments in material form? they may not view an object as evidence, an embodiment of the past in need of decoding. The conceptualization of objects largely comes about through actions and practice. For example, among the Bamana, agreement by the ciwara association to direct spiritual action at a headdress empowers the object, but 31. Mclntosh (see note 2), p. 56. 32. Ibid., p. 50. 29. Mclntosh (see note 2), pp. 56-57. 30. Clifford (see note 27), p. 231. 33. Kristina Van Dyke, The Oral-Visual Nexus: Rethinking Visuality in Mali (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2005), chap. 1. This content downloaded from 129.7.158.43 on Sat, 11 Jun 2016 18:34:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 150 RES 52 AUTUMN 2007 this action can readily shift to another headdress.34 An object Jives through a sustained connection. It is therefore little wonder that given the severed connection to the terra cottas, many Malians have little interest in preserving them. We must ask to what degree we are imposing our own ideals here. Are we colonizing definitions of objects and history in specifying the ways in which objects should be approached, stored, owned, treated, and interpreted? If this is the case, how do we reconcile our own positions on this material with local ones? IND populations have a deep historical consciousness, one where there is a basic familiarity with the thirteenth-century epic of Sundiata, for example, which is frequently performed live and on the radio. Individuals regularly attend baptisms, weddings, and other events where centuries-old family histories are sung by griots. In addition to these public manifestations, oral history arises in a variety of other contexts, including secret associations, the transmission of knowledge from one family member to another, and so on. In the oral context of Mali, history is genealogical.35 One produces history by strengthening or deemphasizing familial ties to the past. History is thus understood to be positioned. For example, at the epic level of Sundiata, the Keita family's version of history will be necessarily different from the rival Traore's history. An abstract or generic history does not exist as it does in a literate model, where the very act of writing distances the narrator of history from the events being recounted, enabling an abstracted chronology to develop. While notions of history rooted in literate (representational) thinking tend to be relatively totalizing and consensus-oriented, genealogical history does not have such aims, because history is competitive and even confrontational. One delves selectively into the reservoir of relations and events in the past, choosing to focus on certain elements that will enhance one's present-day standing most. The past is used to make claims on the present, establish a lineage's rights to resources (spiritual and material), and make demands on other groups/ lineages. If the terra cottas represent a blight on the historical record of a community given pre-lslamic or other associations, it is not surprising that the community would choose to edit these out of their past. 34. Stephen Wooten, "Antelope Headdresses and Champion Farmers: Negotiating Meaning and Identity through the Bamana Ciwaraw Complex," African Arts 33 (Summer 2000): 20. 35. Stephen Belcher, Epic Traditions of Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). The challenge for us as scholars is not to right a wrong perception?this kind of thinking is rooted in a generic or abstracted notion of history. Rather, it is to engage with the positioned history in play at present?to engage in competitive history at the local level by making an argument for why these objects are part of a history worth reclaiming. It is possible to imagine new actions and performances that would represent a rekindling of past connections, to forge new connections between objects and communities that would empower local communities to preserve these works. This is not possible if we do not study the objects that are in public and private collections and continue archaeological work in the region. Engaging in this competitive history has no guaranteed outcome, but at the very least, it will provide an arena for the multiple and sometimes conflicting demands on these objects. Not only will we be in a position to make our case about the terra cottas and their importance?for there is nothing inherently wrong with the fact that we look for different things in the terra cottas and wish to discuss our motivations with Malians?but also we will be in a position to debate modes of history more generally with Malian communities as well. Such an arena would create an opportunity for these communities to critically respond to our work and our position within the contested history production there and in the West. The debate around the terra cottas has centered on the implications for Mali's cultural heritage and market politics in the West. We would be well served to consider how this debate affects our own localized intellectual politics as well. For example, while we are aware that scholarship resulting in the excavation and dating of terra cottas, and publication and exhibition of them, increases the object's value, these activities affect the intellectual capital of those involved as well. Our good intentions for Mali's cultural heritage are not without positive effects for our own agendas as scholars. Given the fact that the terra cottas represent hard evidence of deep history in Mali in keeping with our own research demands, knowledge of them not only changes the general public's attitudes about Africa, but also those of our scholarly colleagues with regard to our nascent field. This evidence strengthens the arguments we make on the basis of more ephemeral forms of knowledge, such as oral history or performance. The fact that we may invest in tangible forms of knowledge in ways Malians might not share or that there are multiple gains to be made by engaging with this material is not in itself problematic. In fact, self-awareness about them helps us avoid falling into the trap of paternalism that This content downloaded from 129.7.158.43 on Sat, 11 Jun 2016 18:34:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Van Dyke: Demanding objects 151 has characterized Western scholarship's association with the continent. The politicization of terra cottas, where they have come to stand for politics such that historical inquiry itself becomes difficult, has worked to create a situation where few scholars wish to risk their capital on this important body of work and the issues it raises for our disciplines. The shaming strategy deployed in the 1990s had the perhaps unintentional effect of creating a sense that the market for ideas about terra cottas would be strongly policed. While it would*be na?ve to suggest that cultural heritage debates are not political, the issues facing museums and the academy warrant greater participation by a range of international scholars in order to widen the discussion and find creative, diverse, and effective solutions. That everyone should agree to uphold national laws and international agreements is a basic and obvious presupposition. That there should be greater collaboration between disciplines and between museums and the academy is a desired outcome. However, we will not all agree on every point and will certainly make different demands on this objects from our respective positions. I believe that the terra cotta corpus has much to contribute to an understanding of the twelfth- to whereabouts of extant terra cottas and to establish a method for vetting the corpus. Ranella, Brent, and others have suggested that the corpus is rife with fakes and pastiches. Therefore, it makes little sense to begin to study the terra cottas' range of styles and iconography before definitively establishing which works are authentic. The initial phases of this research require basic close looking at a wide range of sculptures, enhanced by magnification and UV light, when possible. Hypotheses about an object based on these observations can be checked through CT scanning, which allows one to see its internal structure, potentially revealing information about restoration or pastiche work.38 In addition, CT scans offer insight into the process of creation, raising exciting questions about artists' techniques and styles and possibly even use. For example, scans may suggest something of the range of firing techniques used in the region over time or show embedded objects within a sculpture's mass or cavity, where they exist. Conducting interviews with those involved in the trade both inside and outside of Mali, wherever possible, may shed light on the geographic origins of certain works or groupings that emerged from particular sites. Ranella's research offers hope that this may be a productive strategy for fifteenth-century IND. To this end, I have begun working with my colleagues at The Menil Collection to undertake a census of these works, building a database that will enable future research and scholarly exchange. This idea is very much a response to a statement made by Samuel Sidibe, director of the Mus?e National du Mali: "The battle against pillaging and illicit trafficking also necessitates the formulation of policies of inventory both within and outside of the country. Museum professionals from Europe and America could help with this inventory, which, furthermore, can serve as the basis of an giving some organizational structure to the corpus. When she showed photographs to individuals who had overseen multiple digs for the market since the 1970s, international and fruitful cooperation."36 We have begun to build this database using all published examples in auction and gallery catalogues, art periodicals, and books.37 Our goal is to determine the extent and stylistic features and, based on interviews with individuals involved in the trade, we have reason to they offered thoughts on the location of the original sites of these works and related pieces.39 Interviews with multiple sources will allow us to cross-check the information provided. Once a group of believable objects is established, we can begin to develop and test hypotheses about relations between them. For example, if within this group we found two works that share similar internal builds and believe they came from the same site, we might consider turning to neutron activation. This analytic tool uncovers trace elements within a clay body, allowing 36. Samuel Sidibe, "The Fight against the Plundering of Malian Cultural Heritage and Illicit Exportation," in Plundering Africa's Past (see note 2), p. 85. (Philip Ravenhill made a similar proposal in African Arts 1995.) 37. The Menil Collection has a history of engagement with the complex challenges of cultural heritage. In the early 1980s Dominique de Menil worked to rescue dome and apse frescoes from piecemeal disposal on the market after discovering that they were stolen from a church in Lysi, Cyprus. She sought the permission of the Archbishop of Cyprus to purchase the dome and apse fragments on the Church of Cyprus's behalf. The Menil Foundation underwrote their full restoration, after which time the Church of Cyprus lent the frescoes to the foundation for an extended period. A chapel to house the frescoes was designed by Francois de Menil. It opened in 1997, after being consecrated by the Archbishop of Cyprus. 38. At present, two individuals are exploring the application of this technology to art works: Dr. Marc Ghysels, a radiologist working in Brussels, and Mark Rasmussen of Rare Collections in St. Paul, Minnesota. 39. P?nella (see note 1), pp. 155-194. This content downloaded from 129.7.158.43 on Sat, 11 Jun 2016 18:34:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 152 RES 52 AUTUMN 2007 chemical signatures of source material to be determined. These investigations could raise interesting questions about whether production and use of the sculptures were localized or dispersed across the region. It could also allow us to explore relations between the sculptures and other clay-based forms, such as pottery and architecture. It is true that this research, whatever form it takes, will not provide the level of information that was lost when these objects were taken from their archaeological contexts, but it will advance our understanding of the corpus and hopefully in ways that dovetail with the knowledge of the terra cottas identity of their makers, or their use and reception in their historical context, the fact remains that these works were an attempt by historically situated persons to express something meaningful to their fellow human beings. Though they are fraught with political baggage, these objects deserve our attention. We have an opportunity to capture information that will serve future generations' understanding of these works. As scholars engaged in the interpretation of history, we should not forget that our own positions with regard to these objects will shift and be subject to future judgment. established by archaeological work in the region to date. A geographically organized corpus would undoubtedly have value for archaeologists as well as art historians and others. The shape and scope of this project depend on the interest and desire of Malian and international scholars and museums to participate. In addition, it will depend on the willingness of collectors to make their objects available for study and those involved in the trade to share information. While there are scholarly gains to be made, there are political ones as well. A census resulting in a relatively complete database would provide Mali with a means of policing continued movement of terra cottas and fakes out of the country. By defining a corpus, the parameters of which could be established in consultation with Mali, new objects on the market would be conspicuous and more difficult to sell, further decreasing demand. Accessible to interested scholarly parties, the database would represent the return of information about these works to Mali and the circulation of information about them to international and interdisciplinary researchers, allowing more individuals to engage in research on this material. Much exciting work lies ahead in the research on this important and enigmatic corpus. Our exploration of the terra cottas and the issues they embody likely have important lessons to teach us not only about the twelfth and fifteenth-century IND, but the ways in which we and Malians conceptualize the objects of our study. Cornel West has stated: "Art never simply reflects reality. Rather it forces us to engage our past and present so that we see the fragility and contingency of our prevailing views of reality. In this way, art can and does change the world."40 While at this point we know little of the 40. Cornel West, "Preface" to Africa: The Art of a Continent (New York: Prestel, 1999), p. 9. 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