Cultural Symbolism on Living Skin and Clay: The Female Body as Mnemonic Landscape

Harald Haarmann (Finland)

Abstract

Figurines, whether belonging to prehistoric, historic or recent cultures, do not stand isolated but are always embedded in a network of cultural patterns. The purpose of figurines in such a network is determined by the values and the beliefs (i.e., the mentifacts) which overarch communal life in a given culture. Thus, every culture is composed of what is visible (artifacts) and what is invisible (mentifacts). The mentifacts that make a culture operate function as constituents in a web of symbols and symbolic activities. The key to an understanding of the possible function which figurines had in prehistoric societies may lie in the study of the cultural values which are assigned to the human body in different societies of the world.

In addition to biological existence and the functioning of the senses, the human body may be viewed as a receiver and transformer of spiritual energy, intrinsically linking physical corporeality to the realm of a spirited world. A culture for which this analogy has been extensively studied is that of the Luba people who inhabit the southeastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaïre). Among the Luba it is commonly believed that women have an exceptional capacity to attract spiritual power. The Luba woman’s body is inscribed with symbolic designs through scarification that evoke the memory of cultural meanings. A mirror image of her role as a living mnemonic landscape is replicated in sculpted images of revered female ancestors. As a living model, Luba culture illustrates how the underlying conceptualization of the female body as a mnemonic landscape shapes the fabric of iconography as to the preferences of forms, motifs and their symbolic meaning. It is possible to draw a comparison between the Luba culture and other societies in which figurines have functioned as cultural markers. A similar orientation of how the Visible and the Invisible function in symbiotic interplay in a spirited world finds vivid visual expression in the application of cultural symbols on female iconography from the Neolithic societies of Southeast Europe.