Mandari women ?dancing
56 x 56 mm | Negative film nitrate
Date of Print:
Unknown
Previous PRM Number:
JB.2.61
Accession Number:
1998.97.79
Description:
A three-quarter length group image of three young Mandari women wearing textile body cloths and ornaments with their arms around each other's shoulders, possibly at a dance occasion.
In the background is a youth wearing an impressive set of rem beads from his waist upwards forming a 'corset'.
These beads, indicating a loosely-defined age set, were worn in numbers depending upon a youth's wealth.
In general, the Mandari Köbora men wore such excessive beads around the waist more than the Mandari 'Boronga' such as the Dari, but did not have the same age grade system as the latter.
Photographer:
Jean Carlile Buxton
Date of Photo:
1950 - 1952
Region:
[Southern Sudan] Bahr el Jebel Tali
Group:
Mandari Dari
PRM Source:
Ronald Carlile Buxton via Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Acquired:
Donated 1988
Other Owners:
Jean Buxton Collection
Class:
Ornament , Textile , ?Dance , Bead
Keyword:
Ornament Neck , Textile , Ornament Arm , Ornament Body
Event:
?Dance
Documentation:
See Related Documents File. Buxton field notebooks in Tylor Library.
Other Information:
In Some Notes on the Mandari of Equatoria Province, A.E.
Sudan, (typescript notebook of c.1951 in Tylor Library, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford), book II, page 209, Jean Buxton notes that 'There are no age-sets for girls.
They cannot wear REM beads.
Or rather they do wear them, because they are given strings by the young men, but the wearing of them has no significance, they can wear any colour they like.' [Chris Morton 18/1/2005] In Some Notes on the Mandari of Equatoria Province, A.E.
Sudan, (typescript notebook of c.1951 in Tylor Library, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford), book I, page 30, Jean Buxton notes that 'Although they [Mandari Boronga men] are naked, the wearing of beads is very popular.
These are of two different types and mean different things.
There are large strings of circular waist beads of different colours, which have a special significance and denote different age grades, and which can only be worn by an individual when he is in the appropriate age-grade.
The other kind of beads is usually worn around the neck, and is purely ornamental....an unmarried youth wears the REM beads of his age group, in quantity depending on his wealth or whether he has been fortunate in inheriting a set from an older brother.
He may thus wear only 3 or 4 strings, or up to as many as 30, coming up his hips as far as his waist.' [Chris Morton 20/1/2005]
Recorder:
Christopher Morton 20/1/2005 [Southern Sudan Project]
