Tropes, Materiality, and Ritual Embodiment of African Iron Smelting Furnaces as Human Figures

摘要

The largest baked clay figure in Africa is an iron smelting furnace. Clay breasts, vaginal openings, testicle-like bellows, and penis-like blow pipes are part of a culturally constructed reproductive system using the female body and parts of the male anatomy. Ritual embodiments using potent tropes, body gestures, and sounds transform furnaces into human bodies. Anthropological representations have long examined only female fecundity and misrepresented reproductive processes such as menses. Thick description of ritual expressions, however, sheds new light on previously dichotomous categories of male and female in iron smelting and creates a more complete understanding of the materiality of the female body in baked clay furnaces.