Ann Stahl - Efficacious Objects and Improvisational Practice: The Affordances of 'Ornaments' in Banda, Ghana

Date: 

Wednesday, February 22, 2017, 12:00pm to 1:00pm

Location: 

Tozzer Library Room 203, 21 Divinity Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138

 

Harvard Archaeology Seminar Series Presents:

Efficacious Objects and Improvisational Practice: The Affordances of 'Ornaments' in Banda, Ghana

 

A growing literature highlights the incorporative ethos and openness to new affordances that characterized practice in West Africa in relation to shifting topologies of power, opportunity and constraint over recent centuries. Drawing on evidence from the Banda area of west central Ghana during centuries characterized by turbulence and shifting entanglements, Ann Stahl explores “ornaments” as relational elements in a broader repertoire of well-being and personhood.

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