Memorial Head (Ntiri)
Not on view
The Asante, Baule, and Anyi peoples belong to the Akan culture and language group. Since the second half of the sixteenth century, two traditions of terracotta sculpture produced by Akan women have played a role in funerary rites and memorialized the dead. While relief-decorated vessels are associated with the shrines of ordinary people, freestanding figures and heads were predominantly the prerogative of royalty. Enormous stylistic diversity is reflected in forms that range from seven to ten centimeters wide to lifesize and from hollow and sculpturally rounded to solid, flat, and circular.
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