Mandara Mountain basketry in continental context: significance for archaeologists

Basketry is worthy of archaeologists’ attention for its own sake and because variations in techniques and typology complement those evident in pottery, stone tools and other domains of material culture. In this paper I first focus on the basketry of the Mandara Mountains of Nigeria and Cameroon where both men and women make and use baskets but employ different techniques of manufacture. This class of material culture correlates with gender and ethnicity very differently than in other artefact classes. A survey of other studies of African basketry suggests that in any region at any one time gender and basketry technique are highly correlated, although there is variability both across space and through time. There is also variation in the extent to which African basketry is charged with symbolism. The examination of these techniques, raw materials, tools, workspace, uses and related objects reveals the complexity of ‘the world according to basketry’. It is a world to which recent approaches to material culture and technology can profitably be applied and into which archaeologists have more access than they perhaps suppose.