Time and Space in Madagascar the Lewis And

WINTER 1981 ISSUE A PUBLICATION OF THE PEABODY MUSEUM AND THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY • 11 DIVINITY AVENUE CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 02138 America's Great Lost Expedition LEA S. McCHESNEY Until recently the largest and single most significant collection of Hopi In dian art lay buried amidst the dusty re cesses of the Peabody Museum. The "Thomas V . Kearn Collection of Hopi Material Culture," consisting of approx imately 4,500 ethnographic objects ranging from prehistoric pots, baskets, and textile fragments to nineteenth century wooden tablitas and ceremonial art, was acquired through a pioneering scientific expedition. It currently consti tutes the core of a major research proj ect at the Peabody. Renovated storage and conservation of the collection have been accomplished through support provided by the National Science Foun dation. A catalogue of some 1,500 of the historic ceramics has been prepared for the National Park Service. Through the Continued on page 14 Stylized stone serpent from Copan (Peabody Museum 92-49-20/C74) Photo: Hillel Burger. See page 16 for article. Featured in this issue: Time and space in Madagascar RICHARD HUNTINGTON The Lewis and Clark Expedition: American's first great thrust into the unknown Polacca polychrome effigy water bottle, ca. JEFFREY P. BRAIN 1890 (Peabody Museum 43-39-10/25784) Photo: Hillel Burger Symbols • Winter 1981 • 1 Time and space in Madagascar: spatial indicators of social process RICHARD HUNTINGTON Richard Huntington has taught in Harvard's Anthropology Department and has been a Curator with the Peabody since 1974. Additionally, he has taught anthropology at the University of Cape Town (1972-1974) and the University of Khartoum (1979-1980). Professor Huntington has done field research with two African pastoralist societies: the Bara of Madagascar and the Dinka of Sudan. With Peter Metcalf, he recently authored a monograph on the importance of funeral rituals in human society, Celebration of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual , Cambridge University Press. Cur rently, Dr. Huntington is working with the Harvard Institute for Interna tional Development on a program to improve the design of development projects which affect traditional peoples. Hamlet of Anosibe village. ocial anthropologists working Madagascar- universal system of pastoralists, who tend ample herds of in Africa have found that careful spatial evaluation. I must confess that Zebu cattle on the dry and sparsely S attention to spatial arrangements the anthropology of settlement patterns, populated southern savannah, and who is particularly illuminating for the architecture, and related aesthetics is traditionally have had a rather fractured study of the dynamics of social pro not a strong professional interest of political system which earned them a cesses. One thinks first of E. E. mine. But as so often happens for the great reputation as warriors and cattle Evans-Pritchard's famous study of the anthropologist, I turn to such issues be thieves. Nuer in which he uses a long Chapter cause one of the peoples with whom I Let me devote the rest of this paper on concepts of time and space to link studied, the Malagasy, has a profound to the spatial organization of this one the seasonal variations in the environ and pervasive interest in spatial rela people. Obviously it is difficult to pres ment with the structure of the segment tions. A couple of years ago a number ent a picture of social process and ing political lineage system. One thinks of us who had worked with various change without first presenting a nor of Derrick Stenning's description of the Malagasy peoples found that one com mative description of the stable ele spatial representation (in terms of mon denominator was the primacy each ments of moral/spatial evaluation. I be house placement) of the expanding Fu of our peoples gives to the spatial rep gin by looking at the relatively stable lani lineage. There is John Middleton's resentation of moral judgement, divina ideal at the wider perspective on Bara equation of the Lugbara concepts of tion and curing, political power, and social organization and move towards time, space, and morality. He shows family relations. Notions of space pro the smallest unit. We will quickly move how Lugbara ideas of distance toward vide an almost universal Malagasy con from Bara society to Bara village to the the horizon, time toward the past, and ceptual framework. arrangement of hamlets in the village to morality away from normal humanity I am speaking of the nearly 8 million the setting of houses in the hamlet to all are expressed on a uniform concep Malagasy people who form 18 ethnic the seating of individuals in the house. tual grid. More recently, Monica Wilson groups all living on the island of Mada To look at social processes I will ex has discussed how careful attention to gascar off the east coast of Africa. One pand back out again, looking first at the the geographical spread of certain inno thing you should know and probably spatial representation of a crucial per vations (such as hoe cultivation) among do know about Madagascar is that dur sonal transformation - an individual's the Nyakyusa helps to lend empirical ing the first millennium A . D. peoples of death. Then I will look at group process substance to an otherwise shadowy various cultures immigrated to the is - lineage fission and fusion - and fi history. land. To a small population of Negritos nally at macrosocietal value changes in There are so many ways in which were added several waves of Indone the modern world. So we shall rapidly time and space are functions of one an sian settlers, to which were added sev contract and then expand, accordion other, that it is natural that spatial ar eral waves of Arab and Afro-Arab set fashion, our perspective on space rangements often provide the researcher tlers, to which were added waves of among the Bara. with clues and, finally, evidence of oth Bantu-speaking East Africans. All this Hamlets in the village. A Bara village , erwise invisible processes. I think it is happened a long time ago and has pro and for that matter most of the vast ex fair to say that the temporal domain has duced a variable cultural blend which panse of Bara territory, is dotted with always been a difficult but important in some ways seems very African and small hamlets whose core consists of one for social anthropologists. Our re in others more Asian. The Malagasy close male agnates who share corporate search methodology generally takes a language is clearly a Malayo-Polynesian rights over the hamlet, herd, rice fields, rather thin temporal slice of another language, in spite of the many Bantu and tomb; ·and who generally manage culture. What is a year or two out of the and Arabic loan words. affairs such as marriage, circumcision, long life cycle of a lineage or a king The Bara people - Malagasy seden curing, and funerals as group enter dom? One cannot do participant-obser tary pastoralists. My own research is prises. The dispersal of these hamlets is vation field research in any time period with the Bara, a group reputed to be one important aspect of Bara residence but the present. The most systematic the "most African" of the Malagasy that does relate to practical ecological present representation of processual dy peoples. That appellation is not very and economic factors. One village can namics- our research substitute for a meaningful and has often had racialist serve as an example. It consists of four time machine- is spatial arrangement. implications. The Bara are sedentary teen hamlets spread out over several 2 • Symbols • Winter 1981 kilometers. Five of the hamlets are west, south, or southwest, of the grouped together at the center in what houses of his immediate seniors. Usu Wife of 1 / is called lana-be, or the " big village." ally one builds to the south of an older 0 """''"" N / Three hamlets are spread out for several brother and to the west of a father so ~ kilometers northeast of the central vil that the senior generation is most east ooq lage, another is slightly west, and an erly with the patriarch to the northeast. additional five hamlets are stretd1ed out People related to the hamlet through over several kilometers to the south. marriage are usually placed farthest 0 /).0 ° / D This general settlement pattern is sou tl1 . This arrangement is explicit and / Patriarch largely determined by the ecology of is expressed through various taboos the area. The rice fields are spread out (Jady). The distribution of houses is sel 0 6 0 / in a line approximately four kilometers dom a perfect replication of the D. Women and f/ D to the west of the hamlets. The main hamlet's genealogy, for it is a custom children I river, with many of the gardens along pertaining more to the construction of the banks, is a kilometer to the east. new houses than to a village plan. Bara Important economic activities must be hamlets seem always in the process of I o~)~ ~;;;:;.~; ',:: ··~"" performed both in the rice fields and at almost achieving an arrangement coin the riverbank. Both of these areas are cident with their social relationships. flooded during the rainy season Oanu The arrangement of each hamlet ex )(_) junior males ary-February) and the area by the rice presses its genealogy combined with fields is without adequate water in the historical factors such l o D D. dry season (Aug us t-November). It is as who predeceased whom, who is 1/ D. essential, then, that hamlets be con divorced, or whose house has most structed on high ground, west of the recently tumbled down.

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