Figural Staff

Across central Africa, figurative staffs signal the social status, authority, and cosmopolitan connections of their owners. In this example, the prominent, valorizing depiction of a woman underscores the importance of women in these matrilineal societies. Soft, naturalistic features likely associate this staff with Lwena sculptors in the borderlands of Zambia and Angola. Yet the figure’s coiffure displays an uncommon—likely imaginative—mixture of local hairstyles. This accumulation of influences speaks to how these commonly traded objects often incorporated iconography and styles from neighboring groups. A small amulet around the figure’s neck hints at hidden powers and protection, but the binding around her ankles and feet connotes servitude, and may allude to the long histories of slavery and indentured labor that undergirded men’s power and social status in this part of central Africa.