AA Unit 2: Kongo Across the Waters

Nkisi bundle, 18th c.,

Power Figure (Nkisi N’Kondi: Mangaaka)

Houston Conwill, Joseph De Pace, and Estella Conwill Majozo, Rivers, 19

Kongo Cosmogram

Retention and reinvention

Retention means elements carried over and kept, such as òrìṣà names, drumming patterns, or ways of arranging a grave or shrine. Reinvention means those elements were reshaped into something new to fit new places, materials, and conditions.

Syncretism

Combining elements from different religions or belief systems into one practice.

Material evidence

Physical objects used to reconstruct history, especially where written records are missing or were written by enslavers.

Ethnographic analogy

Interpreting archaeological or historical objects by comparing them with documented practices from a related living culture.

The Middle Passage

The forced voyage across the Atlantic from West and Central Africa to the Americas, the middle leg of the triangular trade.

The diasporic object

An object made by people of the African diaspora that carries African forms, meanings, or practices into a new context, often changed by new materials and influences.