Materialities of Ritual in the Black Atlantic

419 Pages·2014·18.217 MB·English

by  Akinwumi Ogundiran (editor), Paula Saunders (editor)

Copyright 2014. Indiana University Press.All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. EAABNcS:cC oO8u 5nP9tu8:b9 l1si 2s;9h 5iS3na4gu7 n3:d. emeraBsio,no .kPe ahCuoolsmatp rVe.h,e nOsgiuvned iArcaand,e mAikci nCwoulmlie.c;t iMoant e(rEiBaSlCiOthioesst )o f- Rpirtiunatle di no nt h5e/ 2B0l/a2c0k2 0A t4l:a0n3t iPcM via COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY - MAIN
Materialities of Ritual in
the Black Atlantic
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Blacks in the Diaspora
Founding Editors Darlene Clark Hine
John McCluskey, Jr., and
David Barry Gaspar
Editors Herman L. Bennett
Kim D. Butler
Judith A. Byfield
Tracy Sharpley-Whiting
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Materialities of Ritual in the
Black Atlantic
Edited by
Akinwumi Ogundiran and Paula Saunders
Indiana University Press
Bloomington & Indianapolis
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This book is a publication of Manufactured in the United States of America
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing Library of Congress
Herman B Wells Library 350 Cataloging-in-Publication Data
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA Materialities of ritual in the Black Atlantic /
edited by Akinwumi Ogundiran and Paula
iupress.indiana.edu Saunders.
page cm. — (Blacks in the diaspora)
Telephone [phone] Includes bibliographical references and
Fax [phone] index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01386-6 (cloth) — ISBN
© 2014 by Indiana University Press 978-0-253-01391-0 (ebook) 1. African
All rights reserved diaspora. 2. Blacks—Material culture—
Atlantic Ocean Region. 3. Blacks—Material
No part of this book may be reproduced culture—Caribbean Area. 4. African
or utilized in any form or by any means, Americans—Material culture. 5. Material
electronic or mechanical, including photo- culture—Atlantic Ocean Region. 6. Material
copying and recording, or by any informa- culture—Caribbean Area. 7. Material
tion storage and retrieval system, without culture—United States. 8. Ritual—Atlantic
permission in writing from the publisher. Ocean Region. 9. Ritual—Caribbean Area.
The Association of American University 10. Ritual—United States. I. Ogundiran,
Presses’ Resolution on Permissions consti- Akinwumi, editor of compilation, author.
tutes the only exception to this prohibition. II. Saunders, Paula V., editor of compilation,
author. III. Series: Blacks in the diaspora.
The paper used in this publication meets DT16.5.M37 2014
the minimum requirements of the American 306.45096—dc23
National Standard for Information Sciences 2014010218
—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992. 1 2 3 4 5 19 18 17 16 15 14
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Robert Farris Thompson (b. 1932)
Ogun, the pathfinder in Black Atlantic Studies,
and
Otegbeye (ca. 1840–1890)
Orphan of the Middle Passage, gentle warrior of Ibadan,
Ogun-Osoosi, the restorer of memory
—AO
AND
Many people in the Black Atlantic world who have
and continue to engage in ritual: your practice has
not gone unnoticed.
—PS
v
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Contents
Preface / ix
1. On the Materiality of Black Atlantic Rituals / 1
Akinwumi Ogundiran and Paula Saunders
2. Reconstructing the Archaeology of Movement in Northern Ghana:
Insights into Past Ritual Posture and Performance / 28
Timothy Insoll and Benjamin W. Kankpeyeng
3. Sacred Vortices of the African Atlantic World: Materiality of the
Accumulative Aesthetic in the Hueda Kingdom, 1650–1727 ce / 47
Neil L. Norman
4. Cowries and Rituals of Self-Realization in the Yoruba Region,
ca. 1600–1860 / 68
Akinwumi Ogundiran
5. Spiritual Vibrations of Historic Kormantse and the Search for
African Diaspora Identity and Freedom / 87
E. Kofi Agorsah
6. Rituals of Iron in the Black Atlantic World / 108
Candice Goucher
7. Transatlantic Meanings: African Rituals and Material Culture
in the Early Modern Spanish Caribbean / 125
Pablo F. Gómez
8. “Instruments of Obeah”: The Significance of Ritual Objects
in the Jamaican Legal System, 1760 to the Present / 143
Danielle N. Boaz
9. Charms and Spiritual Practitioners: Negotiating Power Dynamics
in an Enslaved African Community in Jamaica / 159
Paula Saunders
10. Mundane or Spiritual? The Interpretation of Glass Bottle Containers
Found on Two Sites of the African Diaspora / 176
Matthew Reeves
vii
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11. Ritual Bundle in Colonial Annapolis / 198
Mark P. Leone, Jocelyn E. Knauf, and Amanda Tang
12. Dexterous Creation: Material Manifestations of Instrumental
Symbolism in the Americas / 216
Christopher C. Fennell
13. Ritualized Figuration in Special African American Yards / 236
Grey Gundaker
14. “I Cry ‘I Am’ for All to Hear Me”: The Informal Cemetery
in Central Georgia / 258
Hugh B. Matternes and Staci Richey
15. Spatial and Material Transformations in Commemoration
on St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands / 280
Helen C. Blouet
16. “As Above, So Below”: Ritual and Commemoration in African American
Archaeological Contexts in the Northern United States / 296
Cheryl J. LaRoche
17. Cape Coast Castle and Rituals of Memory / 317
Brempong Osei-Tutu
References / 339
List of Contributors / 385
Index / 389
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PREFACE
Broadly, the human experience of material—things, objects, and their con-
texts—in ritual domains is the subject of this book, with emphasis on the
everyday rituals that define human conditions in the Black Atlantic. There
are indeed many studies that have examined different aspects of spiritual
and religious traditions of African-descended populations in the Atlantic
world. This current book is different in its focus on the material dimensions
of quotidian rituals. The overriding question that guides the volume is how
objects, places, and landscapes are mobilized to fulfill their communicative,
symbolic, and semiotic roles in the rituals of everyday life dealing with the
different ramifications of human conditions, including birth, death, healing,
wellness, social preservation, self-realization, memory, and identity forma-
tion, and the consequences for forging meaningful human existence.
We have sought to answer this question across different temporal and
spatial planes. In the process, the contributors offer important insights into
the agentive action of the material life on the cultural formation processes
through which rituals were invented and mobilized in the making of modern
black subjectivities. They take us out of the synchronic boundaries of mean-
ings that have dominated the literature to the open field of meaningfulness
that highlight Black Atlantic rituals as innovative cultural processes and
products enmeshed in sociopolitical and economic realities as well as spiri-
tual and power relations. This collection of integrated essays also examines
how the entanglement of the African-descended peoples in different spheres
of the Atlantic encounters—commerce, commodification, slavery, Middle
Passage, colonialism, and post-emancipation—shaped the forms, contents,
ix
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