Tilburg University

Destroying the graven image Corbey, R.H.A.

Published in: Anthropology Today

Publication date: 2003

Link to publication in Tilburg University Research Portal

Citation for published version (APA): Corbey, R. H. A. (2003). Destroying the graven image: Religious iconoclasm on the Christian frontier. Anthropology Today, 19(4), 10-14.

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Download date: 27. sep. 2021 Destroying the graven image Religious iconoclasm on the Christian frontier

RAYMOND CORBEY Raymond Corbey is attached to the Department of Philosophy of Tilburg University and the Department of Archaeology of Leiden University, both in The Netherlands. Most of his current research is on the history and epistemology of the anthropological disciplines. His email is: [email protected]

Fig. 1. A siluwang or spirit grove in Pakantan, Batak, Sumatra, about 1900, shortly before it was acquired and destroyed by a Lutheran missionary. From Thiessen 1914.

You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for property. All too often it is automatically assumed that the yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on rightful home of the ethnographic artefacts now housed in the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow Western collections is their original context. Many were down to them or worship them for I, the Lord your God, am a indeed taken by theft or force, but matters were often more jealous God. Exodus 20, 1-4 complex, with natives themselves taking the initiative to exchange, sell, donate or simply dispose of their sacred While researching the movements of ethnographic arte- belongings of their own free will. facts from Dutch and Belgian colonies to Europe, through It has not proved easy to find source material related to the hands of colonial officials, military personnel, planters, iconoclasm in the colonies, and as yet it appears that there dealers and ethnologists as well as, importantly, mission- has been little analysis of such material. The following, aries (Corbey 2000), I was struck by the fact that the latter then, is intended as an exploration and inventory of rele- not only collected but also destroyed indigenous cult vant cases and analytical perspectives. First I present a objects. There are even cases of missionaries who picked series of cases of missionaries destroying native ritual out the finest specimens from piles designated for burning, objects, or having them destroyed. Then I analyse some and sent the selected objects to Europe for sale, or for dis- material which shows clear initiatives on the part of play in museums. natives, sometimes in interactions with Western colo- In this article I focus on the destruction of images on the nizers, but also in the context of native traditions of dis- Christian frontier in European colonies, and more specifi- posing of ritual objects once these had served their cally on the matter of agency – who did what and why. The purpose. stereotypical perception is that it was the missionaries who This article deals only with the destruction of indige- burned or otherwise destroyed native paraphernalia, but it nous artefacts. The analytical interest here is not so much turns out that native initiatives were also involved, and historical as structural, and I focus more on similarities were often even the dominant factor, in these actions. than on differences between events which are sometimes Native iconoclastic practices could be provoked by the separated by substantial stretches of space and time. As a colonial situation, as in the case of cargo cults, but could result, the how and why of specific diachronic changes in also be part of pre-colonial, purely indigenous traditions. practices of image destruction will remain underexposed. Often, as I show below, these various forms of agency However, often the same missionary societies, congrega- were so entangled that it is difficult to sort them out, all the tions or churches were active in various parts of the world, more so because of the scarcity, brevity and biased nature with the same or similar ideologies. of source material, which usually has to be culled, with much effort, from missionary archives and periodicals. Missionary initiative Recent scholarship stresses native agency – local It is hard to deny that many Christian missionaries agendas, initiatives and creativity – in colonial contexts severely repressed native religious practices, as the fol- (O’Hanlon & Welsch 2000; cf. Corbey 2002, Schefold & lowing examples show. Vermeulen 2002), criticizing the earlier tendency to see Around 1900, the Protestant missionary Johannes local people as passive recipients of Western influences. Thiessen destroyed several sacred groves in Pakantan, one This issue is also germane to discussions about cultural of the Batak regions of Northern Sumatra. These siluwang

10 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 19 NO 4, AUGUST 2003 Fig. 2-5. Headdresses, amulets, weapons and other indigenous objects being burned in the presence of an American fundamentalist evangelist, Ilaga Valley, western New Guinea, spring 1960. From Anonymous 1960.

(Fig. 1) were inhabited by flying foxes, perceived as being as gender roles and sexuality, was emphatically prohibited dangerous spirits, and were offered sacrifices by the vil- in 1884. As elsewhere, churches were if possible con- lagers. Thiessen succeeded ‘in acquiring the whole wood structed on what had previously been the site of temples or with everything inside it, and thus this stronghold of Satan sacred enclosures, which were thus obliterated. Traditional has disappeared from the stage.’ He had the wood cut woodcarvings had to be destroyed or handed over to the down with axes, ‘as Boniface did away with the thunder missionaries, who either burned them or sent them to oak at Wismar,’ which took two to three months and was museums. ‘crushing, among Muslims as well as Christians’ The story was similar in the German colony of (Thiessen 1914: 6, 9-10). Cameroon, where the Basler Mission was active. In 1896- Some 80 years earlier Joseph Kam and other mission- 97 near the missionary post of Bombe, in the Bakossi aries of the Nederlandsch Zendeling-Genootschap (Dutch region, the missionary Nathanael Lauffer burned artefacts Missionary Society) in the Moluccas (Maluku) had shown of the Mungi society in front of the shocked villagers. The themselves even more rigorous, encouraging natives to society’s secret knowledge was desecrated by revealing it destroy their sacred things voluntarily, by burning them or to women (Lauffer 1899). ‘As a cavalry detachment over- throwing them into the sea. On 30 September 1816 a whelms the enemy like a storm,’ another missionary from native guru (teacher) wrote to Kam that he had spent four the same area wrote in 1898, ‘we have overwhelmed the days demolishing, among other things, 35 ‘houses of the idols… and taken them prisoner, despite heavy weather’ Devil’ and 15 sago palm groves dedicated to spirits on the (Keller 1898). island of Haruku (Hustamu 1818; cf. Enklaar 1963). Desecrating secret religious knowledge or sacred Similar events took place on the island in 1822. Temporary objects by showing them to uninitiated individuals was a exclusion from Holy Communion and other Christian cunning iconoclastic strategy. More common approaches sacraments was used as an effective punishment for those included burning, dismantling, derision, overturning, cut- who refused. ting up, burying, throwing into the sea, and hiding in In 1833, Kam’s successor August Gericke received caves. Churches and chapels were built over indigenous word from the Dutch Resident of Saparua about the inten- structures. Confiscation and collecting were two particu- For their feedback, I would sive traditional rituals on that island. Gericke announced larly interesting and often contradictory modes of com- like to thank Barry Craig, that everyone was to be excluded from Protestant services bating indigenous religious practices. Objects might be Gabrielle Delbarre, Tijs Goldschmidt, Joep for a full year. The villagers, horrified by this prospect, dis- seized for destruction, or for shipment to museums or Heinemans SVD, David posed of their sacred artefacts. A reconciliation followed in home bases in Europe, where they were exhibited in per- Henley, Jac Hoogerbrugge, which the villagers abjured their spirits, and Gericke manent or temporary missionary exhibitions, or sold. In a Wil Roebroeks, Wim preached on Ezekiel 14, 6: ‘Thus saith the Lord God: number of cases ethnographic artefacts were collected Rosema, Reimar Schefold and his Leiden Indonesië Repent, and turn yourselves from your idols; and turn with a clear scientific, ethnological purpose; sometimes Kring research group, Frans away your faces from all your abominations’ (Enklaar aesthetic considerations prevailed, but usually there was a Theuws, Zoë Strother, the 1963: 104). mixture of motives which is difficult to disentangle. late Gerard Zegwaard MSC, as well as audiences at the On the Marquesas Islands Roman Catholic and An extreme form of combating indigenous religious Leiden University and Protestant missionaries campaigned from the early 19th practices and objects was the expulsion of devils with the University College London century against all forms of ‘heathen’ customs, including help of Roman Catholic rituals. Woodcarvings were archaeology departments. I songs, dances, native dress, kava drinking and, ironically, whipped to punish them or demonstrate their lack of spir- am also grateful to the anonymous AT referees for each other’s ceremonies. The elaborate traditional tat- itual efficacy. Human excrement was used in Pangia, input. tooing, which related to social identity and status as well Southern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea in the

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 19 NO 4, AUGUST 2003 11 Fig. 6. Indigenous ritual early 1960s, where Lutheran evangelists had talked vil- in the presence of some 80 baptized natives, many objects objects at a Protestant lagers into throwing away their sacred timbu and tapa were thrown into the river, but only after they had been missionary post on Alor, Netherlands East Indies, stones, believed to be spiritually powerful and dangerous. anointed with the blood of sheep, sacrificed for the occa- 1930. Items such as that held The evangelists smeared these stones with excrement to sion at the initiative of the local people. The ceremony was by the missionary's wife were degrade them, and explained the fact that the missionaries followed by a service (Ntungwa 1935, Balz 1984). burned; the rest, mostly themselves survived this action as a sign of their own The Marquesas Islands provide another example of the representations of the mythical serpent naga, were greater spiritual force (Strathern 1981). complexities involved in the destruction of images. Suggs, collected for an ethnological an archaeologist who excavated there in the 1950s, and in museum in the Netherlands. Native agency the process conducted some valuable ethnographic and However, naga are known to have been burned on a The foregoing suggests massive missionary agency. Yet historical research, points to ‘the nearly complete destruc- considerable scale on this many burnings in the Netherlands East Indies and else- tion of the native religious system by Catholicism’. island on other occasions. where took place at the explicit request of villagers or local Military and religious authorities forbade ‘aboriginal Photo reproduced by chiefs, or at least so missionary publications claim. Even dress, cosmetics, dancing, music and musical instruments, permission of Boeken Kruger Family Archives, Eindhoven, the cases presented thus far are not entirely unambiguous. art, tattooing, polygyny, organized religion, adolescent the Netherlands. In one case involving Kam, an earthquake had prompted dormitories, nudity, and any overt acts of sexual congress’ local people to large-scale destruction of statues and cere- (1966: 35, 191). But here as elsewhere, processes of accul- monial buildings by villagers before he had arrived, out of turation and globalization had commenced through trade fear of God’s wrath (Anonymous 1817). A missionary in contacts even before colonization, and these had also Cameroon claimed to have burned Götzenhauser, idol weakened the ceremonies. In the course of the 19th cen- houses, ‘at the explicit demand of those in charge here’ tury, the Marquesans had already ‘enthusiastically adopted (Lauffer 1899). Here I present a number of cases with clear European items of clothing on a completely voluntary evidence of native agency. basis’, and ‘wilfully disposed of [traditional] items often, On Aniwa in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu), the Scottish in order to obtain liquor, weapons, or other goods’ (ibid.: missionary John Paton met with considerable resistance, 94, 149). until in 1868 he discovered the presence of much-coveted Melanesian cargo cults of the colonial period were fresh water on the island. In the eyes of the native popula- related to the anticipated arrival of material wealth and tion this amounted to a miracle, and it turned the tide. In a salvation from heaven or from overseas, through spirits, passionate speech, a chief credited Paton’s god with pro- ancestors or foreigners. There is much controversy over viding the fresh water. During the following weeks ‘com- the interpretation of such rites of renewal. Two points are pany after company came to the spot, loaded with their clear, though: that they often involved the ritual destruc- gods of wood and stone, and piled them up in heaps, amid tion of traditional artefacts, in the aspiration to acquire the tears and sobs of some… What could be burned, we new, modern ones, and that they were clearly the initiative cast into the flames; others we buried in pits… [or] sank of natives. far out into the deep sea’ (Paton 1889: 192, 355). An event in the Netherlands New Guinea, in the spring A second case of native agency concerned the Basler of 1960, revealed elements resembling the features of a Mission in Cameroon, where on 26 October 1934 mis- cargo cult. Figures 2-5, from a local Dutch Roman sionaries publicly exposed cult objects of the Ahon society Catholic periodical, show a 30-metre-long pile of indige- in Nyasoso in order to desecrate them. The clans who nous objects being burned in the Ilaga Valley. An owned the objects distanced themselves solemnly from American fundamentalist evangelist was present at the them and assumed Christianity, but apparently more from burning. The villagers, according to the caption in the political and economic considerations than religious ones. anonymous source, believed a new era was imminent, Everyone helped, and everyone was happy. The next day, offering them personal immortality as well as steel

12 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 19 NO 4, AUGUST 2003 Figure 7. Pile described as machetes and axes raining from the sky; this suggests their ‘heathen attributes and consent to and active participation in the event ancestor figures’, in Kurudu, Yapen, north coast of (Anonymous 1960). A more recent example of such a Netherlands New Guinea, on movement was the Rebaibal – ‘revival’ – movement in 16 October 1930, ready to be Telefolmin, Papua New Guinea, which in the early 1980s burned on the occasion of the systematically pursued the destruction of all the cult solemn baptism of 648 individuals from the houses of the region. surrounding villages (from de On the other hand, much native agency took the form of Neef 1937: 77). Protestant fierce resistance to any form of religious renewal. As var- missionaries are known to have destroyed much in this region, ious chroniclers report, many indigenous leaders and but sometimes saved selected priests in early 16th-century Middle America, for example, woodcarvings, in some cases hid their sacred figures, drums, mirrors, masks, amulets, handpicking them from the oracles, stones, pottery, body adornments and stools from piles. the Spanish conquerors wherever and for as long as they could. An extreme case of resistance was the intentional Anonymous 1817. Uittreksel destruction by Maya priests and chiefs of traditional uit de brieven. Berigten sacred codices, in order to prevent the Spanish conquerors en Brieven Nederlandsch Zendelinggenootschap 2: from handling and polluting them. Nevertheless, thou- 32. sands of cosmological, historical and mathematical trea- – 1820. Oost-Indien. tises were burnt by the latter. Berigten en Brieven Nederlandsch Another case of resistance was reported by a Dutch Zendelinggenootschap 3: anthropologist (personal communication, 1999) who con- 54 ff. ducted research along the Ramu river in Papua New – 1960. Brandstapels in het Guinea in the early 1970s. There he met a European bergland. De Tifa: Wekelijks Nieuwsblad Roman Catholic priest who himself broached the subject voor Nieuw-Guinea, 5: 23 of the sacred flutes which were traditionally used in April. ancestor cults. The priest somewhat provocatively, as if Balz, Heinrich 1984. Where the faith has to live. Part expecting the subject to be raised, claimed responsibility I: Living together. Studies for the burning of these flutes. The anthropologist subse- in Bakossi Society and quently found out that the villagers had secretly removed oped the concept of ‘cosmicization’ for what missionaries, Religion. Basel and and preserved the most important parts of the flutes – the among others, do. According to Eliade, holy places such as Berlin: Dietrich Reimer- Verlag/Basler Mission. attached wooden masks. Rome, Mecca and Jerusalem were seen as the centre of the Corbey, Raymond 2000. world, with a direct link to the divine, ordering and sacral- Tribal art traffic: A Native traditions of disposal izing what was around them. ‘Kosmos’, the Greek word chronicle of taste, trade and desire in colonial and A further complication in analysing ritual disposal in mis- for nature or reality, held connotations of order and beauty. post-colonial times. sionary contexts, in addition to the mix of missionary and What lay beyond the known – in this case, Christian – Amsterdam: KIT indigenous initiative, is that in many native traditions world was perceived as heathen, barbaric, chaotic and Publishers/Royal Tropical ritual objects have or had their own life cycle, of which demonic. It had to be purified and incorporated through Institute. – 2002. Review of O’Hanlon destruction or desecration forms an essential part. The ritual activities which would order the chaotic, and civi- & Welsch 2000. objects are disempowerd by burning them, leaving them to lize, purify and domesticate the wilderness, Christianizing Bijdragen tot de Taal-, rot in the forest, exposing them to termites and so on. This it (Eliade 1957). This was achieved by the building of Land- en Volkenkunde 158: 104-105. can prevent them from winding up in the wrong hands, churches, often on native sacred places, the planting of de Neef, A.J. 1937. becoming too numerous, or playing tricks upon humans flags, the drawing of maps and boundaries, the erecting of Koeroedoe: Schetsen uit when no longer looked after carefully. Asmat mbish poles heraldic signs (such as, for example, the Dutch lion), and Papoealand. ‘s in southwest New Guinea, for example, were traditionally renaming. Indigenous spiritual beings were often incorpo- Gravenhage: Boekencentrum. left to rot in the gardens after serving their purpose in rated into Christian iconography by recasting them as Eliade, Mircea 1957. Das feasts. The same was true of malanggan ancestor panels devils and demons. Heilige und das Profane: and figures on the north coast of New Ireland. The sale of ‘Cosmicizing’ would seem to be a neat description of Vom Wesen des Religiösen. Hamburg: malanggan to Western travellers, traders and anthropolo- what missionaries do when they baptize people, or, indeed, Rowohlt. gists may have served as an alternative strategy of dis- burn things indigenous, although Eliade underestimates Enklaar, I.H. 1963. Joseph posal, at the same time providing access to Western goods the role played by those to be converted themselves. Kam, ‘Apostel der (Küchler 1997). Remarkably, native construction workers on the Molukken’. ‘s- Gravenhage: Among the KiKongo-speaking peoples along the lower Marquesas Islands, who were instrumental in Christian Boekencentrum. Congo river, many objects were burned by Belgian mis- ‘cosmicization’ through the building of the churches Frankfurter, David 1998. sionaries and indigenous converts who were often even intended to replace their temples, hid small tiki amulets in Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and more rigorous, though it is likely that much more was the brickwork of those churches in the process. Thus they resistance. Princeton burned by the followers of indigenous religious or continued an indigenous religious tradition in a new form, University Press. prophetic renewal movements such as Kimbanguism. and in turn, on a small scale, cosmicized something for- Gruzinski. Serge 1988. La Such movements have frequently arisen in sub-Saharan eign after their own fashion. colonisation de l’imagi- naire: Sociétés indigènes Africa through the ages, and, as recent interpretations There is something ambivalent in Eliade’s approach: on et occidentalisation dans stress, they are often politically motivated. In more recent the one hand, he presents the margins as chaotic and in le Mexique espagnol, times the political manoeuvres of chiefs played a major need of order, but on the other he implicitly admits, and XVIe-XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Gallimard. role, as they outwitted traditional enemies by adopting the rightly so, that they are already structured: they are the Hustamu, Isak 1818. Brief religion of mighty newcomers (Vanhee 2000). As in the domain of the devil, with indigenous statues, places and der gemeente van Melanesian cargo cults, destruction of old objects provides dignitaries dedicated to him. Sometimes missionaries Huliliuw. Berigten en a means of renewal. engaged in the destruction of images proclaimed that Brieven Nederlandsch Zendelinggenootschap native beliefs were empty and their statues powerless, 12: 235-236. Rituals of Christianization while on other occasions they stressed their demonic, dev- Keller, J. 1898. Two theoreticians of ritual are particularly helpful in ilish nature and real power, because of the spiritual entities Kollektivblättern (Basler Mission) 221: 6. understanding these cases of destruction of images: involved. Burning objects or ritually exorcizing the devil Küchler, Susanne 1997. Mircea Eliade and Victor Turner. It was Eliade who devel- may have been activities not so much of ordering the

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 19 NO 4, AUGUST 2003 13 Sacrificial economy and its chaotic as of subduing a well-known enemy, and Conclusion objects: Rethinking colonial collecting in Oceania. destroying images paradoxically implied recognition of The destruction of images could act as a triumphant sym- Journal of Material Culture their power at the same time. bolic gesture of overthrowing old ways for both mission- 2: 39-60. A second viewpoint which sheds light on the process, aries and natives. On the indigenous side, political and Lauffer, Nathanael 1899. Eine Siegesbotschaft aus including the cases of native initiative discussed below, is economic intentions could add to the complexities of dis- Kamerun. Der evangelische provided by Victor Turner’s well-known theory of ‘rites of posal of ritual artefacts. The analysis presented here Heidenbote Dec.: 89-91. passage’: culturally prescribed actions which accompany demonstrates the entanglement and variable character of Layton, R., Stone, P. & changes in social or life cycle states. Such activities usu- missionary and local agency in the destruction of images Thomas, J. 2001. The destruction and ally appear in three principal phases, each of which can be on Christian frontiers, and points to three concepts which conservation of cultural more or less elaborate: rites of separation from the old may be of help in interpreting such phenomena: ‘cosmi- property. London: status (for example, being ‘heathen’), a period of being cization’, ‘rite of passage’, and ‘syncretism’. Routledge. Ntungwa, H. (with E. Keller and ‘liminal’ (literally, on the threshold), and reaggregation or Detailed interpretations of the destruction of images in J. Itermann) 1935. Ein Sieg incorporation into a new condition (Turner 1974). missionary contexts need to address historical specifics über die Götzen in Nyasoso. Even without going into detail, it is obvious that several and diachronic shifts – a task made all the more difficult by Der evangelische Heidenbote of the cases presented exhibit such features. ‘A wonderful the scarcity and the biased nature of the information avail- 50-54. O’Hanlon, Michael & Welsch, deed representing an absolute break with the old,’ the able, which is found mainly in missionary sources. Among Robert L. (eds) 2000. Protestant missionary F.J.T. van Hasselt wrote of the Roman Catholic missionaries, for example, the 1960s saw Hunting the gatherers: burning of a large number of korwar ancestor figures on a shift from predominantly spiritual concerns towards a Ethnographic collectors, agents and agency in the island of Yapen, Netherlands New Guinea on 16 greater stress on the living conditions and health of native Melanesia, 1870s-1930s. October 1932 (Fig. 7). This took place during a Protestant peoples. It seems that the most drastic actions by mission- Oxford and New York: service celebrating the baptism of 648 natives. An element aries occurred soon after they arrived in a given place, in Berghahn Books. of the iconoclastic cosmicization of this particular event particular in the case of Protestant denominations. A Paton, J.G. 1889. John G. Paton, missionary to the was the conferment of new, Christian names to those bap- curious element in the East Indies and elsewhere is that New Hebrides: An tized, replacing the old ones which, according to van Roman Catholics and Protestants attacked not only native autobiography. London: Hasselt, were ‘ugly and dirty’, and too strongly associated practices but also each other, regularly ‘reconquering,’ as Hodder & Stoughton. Persoon, Gerard 1994. with adat beliefs in ancestors and spirits (van Hasselt they themselves often termed it, regions already mission- Vluchten of veranderen: 1933). ized by the other party. Processen van verandering Melanesian cargo cults, with their frequent frenzies of The present focus on missionary and native agency in en ontwikkeling bij tribale iconoclastic destruction, are also clear examples of rites of the destruction of images should not draw attention away groepen in Indonesië. Leiden: Faculteit der Sociale passage. In his monograph on religion in Roman Egypt, from the fact that there was often considerable pressure in Wetenschappen. Frankfurter draws a parallel between such cults and occur- that direction from government authorities as well. In Schefold, Reimar & rences during the Christianization of Egypt in the fifth cen- Indonesia in 1954, for example, a Rapat Tiga Agama Vermeulen, Han F. (eds) 2002. Treasure hunting? tury. In both contexts, he writes, enthusiastic collective (‘Gathering of the Three Religions’, i.e. Islam, Collectors and collections of action ‘functions at least temporarily to inaugurate a new Christianity and Hinduism) reinforced the effects of Indonesian artefacts. ideological order of things, a new cosmos… The partici- Christian proselytizing with the decree that arat sabu- Leiden: Rijksmuseum voor pants, the destroyers, thereby move as a body out of their lungan, traditional beliefs, must be eradicated with the Volkenkunde, Mededelingen van het Rijksmuseum voor quotidian lives… into a status that is vividly disconnected help of the police. Everybody was to become either Volkenkunde 30. from the normal world, into what Victor Turner labelled Muslim or Christian within a few months, during which Strathern, Andrew 1981. “communitas” in its most radical form’ (Frankfurter 1998: period, indeed, burnings of adat items and conversions Introduction. In A.L. Crawford, Aida: Life and 280-281). took place on a considerable scale (Persoon 1994). ceremony of the Gogodala. It has been asserted of Roman Egypt, 16th-century Conversion to Islam of suku suku yang belum beragama Bathurst: Council of New Meso-America, early mediaeval Europe, sub-Saharan – groups which do not yet have a religion – has been high Guinea in association with Africa and Melanesia, among other periods and regions, on the agenda of the strongly Islam-minded Indonesian Robert Brown and Associates. that indigenous cultures absorbed Christianity rather than Departemen Agama (Department of Religion) in recent Strother, Zoë 2001. ‘When it’s the other way around. Patterns of traditional order decades, and schoolteachers and local officials have been time for an image to die: endured, often inextricably intertwined with Christian ele- instructed accordingly. In 1980-81 all kerei – traditional Iconoclasm in Africa’. Unpublished summary of a ments. Melanesian cargo cults and African renewal move- healers – on Siberut, one of the Mentawai Islands, were lecture at Ghent, Belgium. ments frequently merged with congenial messianic and obliged to stop performing their ‘backward’ healing cere- Suggs, Robert C. 1966. millenarian elements of Christianity, and missionaries monies and relinquish their paraphernalia. Some 240 of Marquesan sexual behavior. tended to make strategic use of this to lure natives into them complied, and ‘in all of the villages skulls of deer, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. their church. This suggests a third analytical concept monkeys, and pigs were burned publicly, as were the kat- Thiessen, Joh. 1914. Pakantan: which may be of use: syncretism. The term is not without saila from the uma, the central sacrificial site’ (Persoon Een belangrijk deel van conceptual difficulties, for it implies a duality when in fact 1986: 232). The same happened among many other suku Sumatra, 2nd ed. Apeldoorn: Joh. Thiessen. what is brought into being, on the basis of heterogeneous suku terasing – isolated groups – during the same period. Turner, Victor 1974. The ritual elements, native and foreign, are integrated unities. The In addition to a predominantly monotheist religious process: Structure and anti- ingredients are brought together in new myths, cults and iconoclasm, ideological and political iconoclasm occurs, structure, Harmondsworth: imagery through the creation of a narrative. exhibiting enough similarities with the former to warrant Pelican. van Hasselt, F.J.T. 1933. Destruction of images occurred on a massive scale in to some extent a common analysis (cf. Layton, Stone & Momentopnamen van 16th-century Meso-America, carried out first by Spanish Thomas 2001). Destruction of images has been practised Jappen, Kennemer-Bode 12 conquistadors and then by Franciscans who, assisted by by, among others, Russian Stalinists, German National (2): 1-3. Vanhee, H. 2000. Agents of indigenous converts, instigated an uncompromising cam- Socialists, post-colonial Marxist regimes in Africa, the order and disorder: Kongo paign of demolition and purification in the 1520s Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the Red Guards in China. Minkisi. In K. Arnaut (ed.), (Gruzinski 1988). The indigenous temples were cleansed Modernist art itself, targeted by Stalinists and National Re-visions: New and indigenous ritual art was replaced by Christian Socialists, had iconoclastic tendencies, directed against perspectives on the African art collections of the imagery. But there was also much syncretistic, ‘cosmi- traditional European aesthetic canons. The practice con- Horniman Museum, pp. 89- cizing’ narrative and pictorial appropriation, adoption and tinues: recent examples include the demolition of the giant 106. London/Coimbra: The reuse of figures, images, myths, rituals and sacred places, Buddha statues of the Bamiyan Valley, Afghanistan, by the Horniman Museum and Gardens and Museu on both sides. The appropriation of cultural and religious Islamic fundamentalist Taliban, in the spring of 2001, and Antropológico da idiom was a two-way traffic, with the native ‘converts’ the massive destruction of images and statues of Saddam Universidade de Coimbra. taking an active role. Hussein in Iraq in the spring of 2003. z

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