Africana Periodical Literature 
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| Title: | 'I'm not evil': materialising identities of marginalised potters in Tigray region, Ethiopia |
| Authors: | Lyons, Diane Freeman, Andrea |
| Year: | 2009 |
| Periodical: | Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa |
| Volume: | 44 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 75-93 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Ethiopia |
| Subjects: | artisans women social stratification stereotypes pottery archaeology |
| External link: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00671990902795772 |
| Abstract: | This paper presents the first ethnoarchaeological study of stigmatized market pottery production in Tigray Region in northern highland Ethiopia. In Tigray the rural farm economy is based on ox-plough cereal farming, which frequently fails to produce a household's subsistence. Rural women are particularly vulnerable to extreme poverty and some turn to potterymaking in order to survive. However, in northeastern Tigray the act of pottery making is associated with evildoers.Therefore, women's choice to turn to potterymaking has some negative consequences, including social stigma, domestic conflict, and sometimes violence. Pottery production has been an important factor in constructing social differences in rural farming communities in Tigray for at least the past half millennium. The situation poses a problem for archaeologists: how can political and social differences in the experiences of non-elite rural people who share a common material culture be recognized? The paper, which is based on ethnoarchaeological studies carried out in Gulo-Makeda district (between 2003 and 2006) and in Edagahamus (in 2007), presents preliminary evidence of how market potters' stigmatized identities are constituted and materialized in pottery fabrication practices, spatial contexts of production, and in the generation of rural political landscapes. Bibliogr., note, sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract, edited] |
