2011. "Ancestor Cults". (In), Insoll, T. (ed.). Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1043-1058 (original) (raw)
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(In), Barrowclough, D., and Malone, C. (eds.), Cult in Context. Oxford: Oxbow Books, pp. 326-33, 2007
This paper attempts an interpretive retrieval of the traditional ancestral cult found in many cultures of sub-Saharan Africa using philosophical insights from the Personal language of John Macmurray. It argues that the ancestral cult is not Africans obsession with their dead. If well interpreted the cult has the potential to expanding our human reality of being-in-relation, of which friendship is its unique characteristic. As a practical engagement of the community's intentional consciousness outside of itself, the ancestral cult could be an important mediation of the Christian love of God.
(In), Dawson, A. (ed.), Shrines in Africa. Calgary: The University of Calgary Press, pp. 41-70, 2009
the material culture of the Tallensi is, comparatively speaking, somewhat analytically neglected in comparison to the wealth of ethnographic material available. The present paper seeks to redress this dearth ofarchaeological data by focusing on the history ofa particular Tallensi shrine in the Tongo Hills of northern Ghana. Shrines, especially in the West African context, appear to serve as symbolic repositories of information and shared understanding about regional social processes, and ethnohistory and archaeological excavation of shrines and associated material culture can reveal much about settlement patterns, resource utilization, and ethnicity.
The dead have something to do with the living (Muller ,97e , ,7oj enous religions, past and present, is perhaps incqrrect. Ethnography suggests (e.g., Fortes r9B3) that ancestral veneration was probably'bundled' with other concepts, potentially, but riot necessariiy, linked to metaphorical relations with animals and plants, solxetimes sirrlplistically referred to as'totemism' (L6vi-Strauss r99r; Fortes 1987), the ascription of animate properties to materials and locations, belief in a high God, and earth and medicine cults related to fertility and healing (Insoll et al. zot3). Equally, thinking of African indigenous religions out of context is also slightly problematical for they related to, and were structllred by, other concepts and referents surrounding, for example, landscape, technology, perceptions of bodies and identities, and plants and animals (Insoll in press). ANCESTOR CONCEPTS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA Attempting adequately to summarise and generalise as to why ancestors were (and are) important in manyAfrican societies is difiicr,rlt, for there is no single meaning.'What r53
Elders - Ancestors - Sacrifices. Concepts and Meanings among the Bulsa [Northern Ghana]
Franz Kröger and Barbara Meier (eds.): Ghana's North. Research on Culture, Religion and Politics of Societies in Transition. Frankfurt: Peter Lang., 2003
As in many other ethnic groups of Northern Ghana, Bulsa elders play a leading role in the traditional society. Their prominent position is based on their owning the shrine of the founding ancestor of their lineage and thus becoming the lineage-head. This status is acquired from their predecessors according to the rules of lateral succession which means that it is not the sons who succeed to their deceased father’s office, but the eldest of his younger brothers. This rule also applies to larger lineages. Among all the descendants of the deceased elder/ancestor, the oldest living man of the most senior generation will inherit and succeed. For many other ethnic groups in Northern Ghana, such a regulation only applies to 3-4 generations, but for the Bulsa it may refer to ten or more generations. As the members of such a lineage can live in more than 50 homesteads, the shrine of the founding ancestor and with it the office of the elder rotates through all these homesteads. All shrines and secular goods acquired by this founding ancestor, for example female ancestor shrines, shrines of bush spirits (ngandoksa) and important medicine shrines, rotate together with the male ancestor shrine. It is economically extremely important that also all land and livestock, and in earlier times also slaves of the ancestor, are subject to this rotation. An important task of the elder is offering sacrifices to the ancestral shrine. The sacrifices are not so much offered to the deceased personality or his soul (chiik), but to a divine element (wen), which the ancestor acquired in his childhood. In a particular ritual (wen-piirika) this wen descended from the sun (wen) into a small earth mound, and if the lineage does not die out it will receive sacrifices for centuries. Thus, in the so-called ancestor veneration a partial aspect of the God of Heaven (Wen or Naawen) is worshipped.
(In), Anquandah, J., Apoh, W., and Kankpeyeng, B. (eds.). Current Perspectives in the Archaeology of Ghana. Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers, pp. 244-262, 2014