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Alrighty, welcome back.
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And we are going to now talk about
our first key image,
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and this is an image -- an object from
present day Ghana,
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this is part of the Asante or Ashanti
culture in Ghana which still exists,
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and if any of you as kids ever knew
the story of "Anansi the Spider"
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that is part of Ashanti culture,
I can hear the song about it in my head,
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my kids were little,
all these years later.
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And this is -- you can see here, sometimes
we don't know the artists for these,
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but in this case,
this is a very important object,
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and we do know the artist, or the artist
that it's attributed to, Kojo Bonsu,
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and it is a finial of a speaker's staff.
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And so, if you think about -- oh
I should have brought in an image of a --
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like a Bishop's crook,
or the Pope carries a staff,
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or some sort of staff that has
something at the top.
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Oh I know what, at graduation
there's usually the Marshal at graduation
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who has a staff --
a piece of wood on top of it.
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So, that is an age-old,
cross-cultural symbol of power,
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to hold a staff like that.
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And then of course, you can use
the finial, or the top of it,
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has a lot of rich possibilities
for iconography.
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And there are many, many,
many examples of these,
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and this is just one particularly
beautiful one here that is wood and gold,
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and -- but when I say the height is
11 inches that's the height of the figure,
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because the staff would be
of human height.
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And you can see 1960s-1970s,
so this is not an ancient object,
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this is something that was created
relatively recently,
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and is the sort of object that is --
that continues to be created.
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You will also notice that it's some
very fine wood-carving here,
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and then just, a lavish amount
of gold, because again,
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we are in the part of the world
where there is a lot of gold and so
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many of these objects are very richly
made because of the natural resources.
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Here you can see-- here is Ghana,
again, in the Western part, Ivory Coast,
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and then Africa goes up this way.
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And then you can see here we have
the Ashanti who are down here in this
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Southernmost part of Ghana.
And so they are, you know
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the Ashanti or the Asante.
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Still very much a vibrant culture in this
region and a lot of really important
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African art from this region.
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So this spokesperson staff, so this
is not really the King's staff,
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this is the spokesperson's staff
and the spokesperson to the ruler.
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And so the ruler could sort of sit
back-- and it's interesting that the ruler
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has this orb that is, again, sort of
a symbol of power that goes
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across the orb and the scepter
that go across cultures, but
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this person would be like I don't know,
like the secretary of state or something
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like that, would be the next most
important. You can imagine going out
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with this golden-- and I'll show you
a picture in a minute, this golden
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rod and sort of stomping it and
being able to be the spokesperson.
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As I said, one of the important things
about this is the fact that this is really
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solid gold and your book mentions--
and it's a little hard to see from this,
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but this is, it's particularly shiny
and yellow and particularly high quality
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gold in this and so these are, as you
can imagine, these are very sought after
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objects. These are-- they are carved
of wood and then they, in this instance,
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they now glue the gold on. But apparently
they used to use these almost sort of like
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staple-like that were also made
out of gold to keep the gold
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tacked onto these. And so--
and you can see here, all the sort of
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decorative carving and the carving
of the seat and again,
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the idea of abstraction. Okay?
And so, while this may have been used
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in a specific person's rule and
for a specific person,
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there is an abstract quality
to the facial features here.
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Here you can see some of the
other examples and these things are
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beautiful and you know,
sadly many of them are also
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not in collections - not in Africa,
they are in collections elsewhere.
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I did not put the one that has the--
from the Metropolitan, the Metropolitan
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Museum has a beautiful one and
you can see here sometimes
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these are ebony wood, you know
this very dark wood, sometimes
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it's painted and just different
scenes that relate to
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some story or some part of their
mythology. And this is my particular
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favorite one because it happens,
I have a dog who happens to look
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quite-- who's sleeping here next to me,
who happens to look quite a bit
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like this one. So, you know, a jackal
is a hunter and other important--
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my dog is not important, but it's a very
important hunter and symbol
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of strength and wiliness. Again,
across a lot of different cultures.
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They were also feared because
they were, you know bad for
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if you had livestock.
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Here you can see the-- a speaker,
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an Okyeame here holding the
speaker poles here
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and so you can-- this would have
been a conference of a number of different
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sections of the Asante
or Ashanti region.
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And each person you can see the
variations, sort of the spectacular nature
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again all of this is either ebony and
then gold on top of this, so these are
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quite splendid objects.
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The other thing you'll note, and this is
actually one of your reading images
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is the kente cloth, this cloth that
is very typical of the region.
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And that is woven and has been
woven from natural fibers and
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is now, you know, they're using more
synthetic fibers but it is
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a very important, very ceremonial part
of the dress in this region. Not unlike
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what we saw with the Inca tunic.
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Okay, in our next segment,
we're going to be going
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just a little bit farther south and
looking at the Congo culture.