Iron Torque

Iron collar of unknown ethnicity (Gan or Lobi) from Burkina Faso. For centuries, people have settled and resettled across West Africa, sometimes uprooting themselves to new homelands as war, slave raiding, crop failure and other threats to communal survival made the process necessary. Colonial rule imposed pressures of a different kind, including the imposition of requirements that villages be accessible by road even if that meant moving settlements in some cases, rather than building roads to access them. The establishment of faunal reserves likewise depopulated areas that had long been settled. Combined, these movements meant the abandonment of settlements, traditional shrines, ancestral burial grounds and much besides. The former dealer and later head of Burkina’s Dozo society of traditional hunters described finding the sites of former villages deep within hunting reserves across Burkina Faso. The were marked by barely visible mudbrick foundations and the mouths of abandoned water jars, which had slowly sunken into the surrounding soil each rainy season, while the soil turned to welcoming mud. Of course, people took with them what they could, but lacking vehicles, they left much behind. That which could survive — artifacts in iron, bronze, stone and terracotta — did. Enterprising pickers and dealers unearth some of this treasure and bring it to market where it has long been mixed in with younger work and even fakes. Older works have a distinct character and develop qualities to their surface that can only happen over considerable time. It is unclear whether this collar was intended for a dog or other animal — certainly it could not fit over a person’s head, but perhaps it served another purpose, maybe as a shrine object. Ex collection Joseph Knopfelmacher. Mounted $300

7.5″

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