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Divining Value: Cowries, the Ancestral Realm
and the Global in Southern Africa
Abigail Joy Moffett & Simon Hall
The global distribution of cowrie shells (Monetaria annulus and Monetaria moneta)
attests to their exchange over long distances and their value in diverse cultural
contexts. In addition to their commodification, cowries functioned as adornment, ritual,
art and in the elaboration of both living and ancestral beings in many settings through
time. Examining the circulation and usage of cowries in these different contexts
facilitates an exploration of the ways in which a global commodity may carry, lose and
acquire value. An ethnographic review of cowrie use in the hitherto overlooked context
of southern Africa suggests that particular qualities of the shell imbued it with
culturally specific value. It is suggested that cowries, as part of divination sets, were
active in divination because of their white colour and their origin in the (maritime)
ancestral realm that anchored divination in notions of ancestry, fertility and healing.
Furthermore, in certain contexts, cowries were conceived of as animate objects,
metonymically active in ‘cooling’and healing. These observations, set within a broader
discussion relating to archaeological approaches to the accumulation of value, indicate
the importance of exploring alternative ontologies in the biographies of global
commodities, and reveal the potential of a biographical ontology of the ‘ancestral’.
Introduction
How objects accrete, exude, embody, or denote value
remains of central interest to archaeological enquiry
(Graeber 2001; Harris 2017; J. Thomas 1996).
Biographical approaches to object life-histories
focus on how the experiences and world-views of
users shape and reshape the valuation of objects
within different contexts of exchange and use
(Appadurai 1986; Gosden & Marshall 1999;
Kopytoff 1986; Miller 1995; N. Thomas 1991). At
the same time, interest in the agency of materials
has drawn attention to the ways in which attributes
such as colour, patina, touch and smell combine to
shape its value and the experience of it to its users
(Boivin 2008; Hodder 2012; Knappett 2005).
Additional explorations of the valuation of objects
also address the inter-artifactual domain (cf.
Gosden 2005), where a wider set of interacting object
properties further elaborate value. Given this, there is
an awareness that the process by which objects are
valued in space and time is situational, complex
and constructed dialectically within a pool of con-
cepts, beliefs, materials, memories, smells, sounds
and actions (Ingold 2007).
The endeavour to assess the value of ‘global
commodities’in the pre-industrial world, such as
cloth, marine shells, precious metals, ceramics and
glass trade beads, as they travelled through different
exchange and use contexts, has received a significant
amount of archaeological attention and remains per-
tinent to debates surrounding the nature and impact
of early global trading connections (Brumfiel & Earle
1987; Friedman & Rowlands 1977; Graeber 2011;
Hayden 1998; Marcus 2008; Prestholdt 2008; Price
& Feinman 1995; Stein 1998). Underscoring many
of these discussions is the idea that ‘exotic’early glo-
bal commodities were objects of ‘high value’that
Cambridge Archaeological Journal Page 1 of 14 © McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 2019
doi:10.1017/S0959774319000659 Received 17 Apr 2019; Accepted 6 Oct 2019; Revised 26 Aug 2019
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functioned as wealth and underscored power
(D’Altroy & Earle 1985; Earle 2002; Friedman &
Rowlands 1977; Harris 2017; Hayden 1998;
Schortman & Urban 2004; Trubitt 2003). While fungi-
bility, high investments of labour and the rare phys-
ical properties of particular objects are considered
important contributors to the high valuation of
global commodities, of particular significance is the
contribution of ‘distance’. This relates to the incre-
mentally increasing value of an object in proportion
to the distance travelled, the economic costs of trans-
port, as well as ‘exotic’mystique that rarity and a for-
eign origin and a ‘far-away’place evoke (see, for
example, Earle 2002; Helms 1993).
The widespread use of these value ascriptions
has often resulted in the assumption, rather than
demonstration, of the high value of long-distance
trade objects in local contexts. As a result, less atten-
tion has been paid to exploring the various contribut-
ing factors to their valuation, along with the concepts
of origin that may be variously activated. Contextual
studies of the biographies of these global commod-
ities provide a means to redress this. In this paper
we address the valuation of an important yet often
overlooked global commodity, the cowrie shell, and
assess the potential implications of this for archaeo-
logical approaches to the valuation of early global
commodities.
Cowries are small marine molluscs that occur in
the wider Indo-Pacific region and have an extremely
widespread and long history of trade and consump-
tion. Although there are many closely related species
of cowries, the name ‘cowrie’is a general name that
refers in particular to the two gastropod species
Monetaria annulus and Monetaria moneta (Fig. 1)
(Hogendorn & Johnson 1986). Both cowrie
species were used widely across many regions,
from as early as 3000 BC in China (Peng & Zhu
1995; Yang 2011), in the Neolithic of the Levant
and Europe (Alarashi 2018; Mayer 1997) and for
over two millennia in many regions around the
Indian Ocean rim (Hogendorn & Johnson 1986;
Kearney 2004).
As a result of their distribution through long-
distance trade networks, the ‘commodity phase’(cf.
Appadurai 1986) in the valuation of cowries has
been given significant research attention (Einzig
1966; Hiskett 1966; Hogendorn & Johnson 1986;
Johnson 1970; Peng & Zhu 1995; Quiggin 1949;
Yang 2011). In particular, the large-scale trade in
cowries from the sixteenth century by European mer-
chants, who imported large amounts of moneta cow-
ries into West Africa via oceanic routes for use in the
slave trade, made cowries one of the most important
global commodities of the modern era (Christie &
Haour 2018; Heath 2017; Hogendorn & Johnson
1986; Ogundiran 2002). This has resulted in the
close association with cowries as currency (Einzig
1966; Hogendorn & Johnson 1986; Peng & Zhu
1995; Quiggin 1949; Yang 2011).
Beyond their exchange context, however, a
review of the use and archaeological contexts of cow-
ries suggests that they have been prepared, modified,
consumed and deposited in a variety of ways from
the earliest periods of their use (Hogendorn &
Johnson 1986; Kovács & Radócz 2008; Mayer 1997;
Yang 2011). Ethnographic and historical sources indi-
cate that both moneta and annulus were widely used
as items of adornment, in divination and as amulets
(Bascom 1980; Golani 2014; Hogendorn & Johnson
1986; Johnson 1970; Kay 1985; Leslie 2007; Yang
2011). Cowries have also been used compositely
with other materials to elaborate masks and gar-
ments (Arnoldi & Kreamer 1995; Pemberton 2008),
and have been widely imitated in other materials,
such as bronze, terracotta and carnelian (Golani
2014;Yang2011). In their exchange and use con-
texts, be it as currency, adornment, art and in
burials, cowries articulated a range of values to
do with personhood, ancestry, rank and status
(Boone 1990;Insoll2011; Sciama & Eicher 1998).
Beyond an emblemic stylistic realm, cowrie use
has also activated and enhanced fertility and pro-
tection from evil (Golani 2014;Hiskett1966;
Sciama & Eicher 1998).
The physical properties of a cowrie shell likely
contributed towards their valuation and use.
Cowrie shells are hard shells and have a naturally
high polish that does not wear easily (Hogendorn
& Johnson 1986). Their hardiness and small size
mean that cowries are easy to handle, transport
and store, and their ventral aperture makes them
easy to turn into pendants (Clark 1986). Notable is
Figure 1. Cowrie shells; Monetaria annulus (left) and
Monetaria moneta (right). Scale in cm.
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the sensual attractiveness of the shell, with its ellip-
tical shape and shiny patina. The shape of the ventral
aperture is often likened in shape to that of the vulva,
which may have facilitated an association between
cowries and fertility (Golani 2014; Hogendorn &
Johnson 1986; Kovács & Radócz 2008; Quiggin
1949; Sciama & Eicher 1998). Similarly, the resem-
blance of the ventral surface with a human eye
may reflect its widespread use as a protective amulet
against the evil eye (Golani 2014; Hiskett 1966;
Kovács & Radócz 2008). Importantly, the marine ori-
gin of cowries potentially imbued them with a range
of further symbolic associations (Boone 1990; Hobbs
& Leibhammer 2011; Isichei 2002).
In contrast to other regions, research on cowries
in southern Africa has been relatively neglected,
compounded in part by the erroneous assumption
that cowries were of relatively little importance in
southern and eastern Africa until the nineteenth cen-
tury (Hogendorn & Johnson 1986, 17). This is some-
what surprising, given the evidence for the long and
continued use in southern Africa from the seventh
century AD until the present (Denbow 1990;
Hanisch 1980; Klehm 2017; Maggs 1980; Moffett
2017; Moffett & Chirikure 2016; Plug 2000; Plug &
Badenhorst 2006; Raath Antonites 2014; Tiley &
Burger 2002; Voigt 1983; Welbourne 1975;
Whitelaw 1994). While recent studies of cowrie use
from archaeological contexts have begun to provide
insight into the valuation of cowries in the deeper
past in southern Africa (Moffett 2017, 238–72; Tiley
& Burger 2002), this paper focuses on cowrie usage
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which pro-
vide rich, and thus far unexplored material, on how
the cowrie was valued in the southern African
context.
Through a contextual study of the usages of
cowries in southern Africa we attempt to unravel
how different domains of influence, from physical
properties along with origins and contexts of use,
may have intersected in shaping the value of cowries.
The focus on the ethnographic context facilitates a
unique opportunity to explore the process of cowrie
valuation ‘in motion’. These ethnographic observa-
tions are pertinent to expanding archaeological
approaches to object valuation in a range of ways
that extend beyond analogy. Ethnographic observa-
tions allow archaeologists to explore a wider range
and variability in the ways people interact with
the material world (Lyons & Casey 2016,610),and
facilitate an increased awareness of alternative
ontologies in which the value making process may
take place (Alberti & Marshall 2009;Albertiet al.
2011).
Divining cowries in motion: cowries, ancestors and
healing practices in southern Africa
As part of this study we examined cowrie-related
ethnographic artifacts in museum collections in
South Africa, which were largely collected from the
nineteenth to the mid twentieth centuries, as well
as historical ethnographies pertaining to cowrie use
in this period. This revealed an interesting pattern
in cowrie usage in the more recent past. Unlike in
other regions of the continent, where cowries were
more widely used in a variety of adornments, cowrie
usage for much of the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies, and indeed until today, appears to have been
closely associated with the realm of ‘traditional’heal-
ing practices, where they feature predominantly in
divination sets and in the regalia of traditional hea-
lers (Garbutt 1909; Hammond-Tooke 1989; Hoernlé
1937; Junod 1927; Plug 1987; Roberts 1917; Stayt
1931; Whiting et al. 2013). ‘Traditional medicine’
and ‘traditional healers’are the common nomencla-
ture used in relation to indigenous African healing
practices and practitioners in southern Africa
(Janzen 1995; Thornton 2009). Healers are commonly
referred to today as isangomas in South Africa after
the Zulu name, but are also known as igqira in
Xhosa, ngaka in North Sotho, selaodi in South Sotho,
mungome in Venda and Tsonga (Mozambique and
South Africa) and nganga in Shona (Zimbabwe)
(Hammond-Tooke 1989;1993).
Divination is a central feature of traditional
healing (Berglund 1976; Eiselen 1932; Hammond-
Tooke 1989; Janzen 1995; Junod 1927; Thornton
2009; Tracey 1934). The medium in which divination
is conducted ranges between divination through a
spirit medium to less direct methods where diviners
read cowries and other items as part of a divination
set (Hammond-Tooke 1993, 187) (Fig. 2). However,
all methods require the diviner’s ability to access
‘another type of knowledge’(Peek 1991, 195),
which in southern Africa is broadly associated with
communication with the ancestral realm (Thornton
2009). The most widely documented and practised
method of divination, sometimes referred to as
throwing the ‘bones’, refers to the reading of a collec-
tion of natural objects in a particular way by a div-
iner (Janzen 1992, 42). This is a common feature of
divination among Shona, Sotho-Tswana, Venda,
Tsonga and to a lesser extent Nguni language speak-
ers (Janzen 1992, 42). Historical ethnographies of
communities living in southern Mozambique,
Zimbabwe and northern South Africa indicate that
this divination practice has historical depth from
the late nineteenth century (Berglund 1976, 372–3;
Divining Value
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Bryant 1949; Coertze 1931; Eiselen 1932; Hoernlé
1937; Junod 1927; Kohler 1941).
The number and types of diviner’s‘bones’
which made up a set varied between diviner and
also through time (Eiselen 1932; Plug 1987). A com-
mon feature of divination sets in certain regions
involved the use of a set of four divining dice, ditaola
in Sotho or hakata in Shona, made out of wood/
ivory/bone (Hammond-Tooke 1989, 11; 1993, 196;
Tracey 1934, 23; Van Binsbergen 1996). Other prom-
inent objects noted historically in use in divination
sets were animal bones, in particular astragalus
bones, and to a lesser extent phalanges and frag-
ments of tortoise shells, stones or pebbles, botanical
items, including seeds and wooden objects, and sea-
shells (Hammond-Tooke 1989; Plug 1987; Thornton
2009). Cowries were the most common seashell,
and their presence in divination sets has been widely
noted historically (Garbutt 1909; Herbert et al. 2003;
Hoernlé 1937; Junod 1927, vol. II, 547; Mönnig
1967; Plug 1987; Stayt 1931).
The selection and curation of the objects com-
prising a divination set appear to have been guided
by specific principles (Hoernlé 1937; Junod 1927;
Mönnig 1967; Stayt 1931). Conceptually, most of
these objects come from the ‘natural or ‘wild’world
of nature rather than the domestic realm and most
ethnographers noted the significance of the origin
of the object and the context of collection. For
example, Hoernlé (1937, 238) noted that the bones
used in a set must come from the animals killed by
the healer themselves. Venda diviners collected and
used particular stones that are reported to have
been recovered from the stomach of crocodiles
(Plug 1987, 53). Other collections were inherited
paternally, and prized because their age materialized
ancestral memory (Eiselen 1932, 3). Complementary
pairs were important in divination sets, particularly
pairs of objects representing male and female
(Eiselen 1932; Hoernlé 1937; Tracey 1934). This is par-
ticularly evident with regard to the use of the four
dice (hakata in the Shona system), each of which is
decorated differently to represent aspects of male
and female (Ellert 1984; Tracey 1934). Similarly,
with other objects, such as bones and shells, the
importance of having a clearly defined and
Figure 2. A typical divination set. (KwaZulu-Natal Museum Ethnographic collection.)
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contrasting convex and concave side was noted
(Eiselen 1932; Junod 1927; Roberts 1917, 400).
The significance of the choice of objects also
appears to be linked to their ability to act as meto-
nyms for different elements of life. Junod (1927,
vol. II, 560), for example, in discussing Tsonga divin-
atory sets, described the meaning of each object in
relation to its metonymic potential:
The secret bushpig, which eats bones, is the medicine
man; baboons, which are strongly territorial, represent
the village; the lion is the chief; the ambiguous hyena,
the witch, and the ant bear, nocturnal and living under-
ground, the ancestors. Bones of sheep and goats symbol-
ise the ordinary inhabitants of the village, for whom the
bones are thrown. (Junod 1927, vol. II, 560)
Similarly,
Sea-shells, (djama, dji-ma) belong to two different gen-
era: the Oliva shells, representing the attributes of the
male, assegais, virile courage, etc., the Cypraea shells
[cowries], corresponding to the attributes of the female,
baskets, pots, pregnancy, births, oxen, lobola, etc
(Junod 1927, vol. II, 547)
Eiselen (1932, 5) described how particular animal
bones represented totems among the baMasemola,
and that seashells represented Europeans, ‘people
who had come from beyond the ocean’.
The process of ‘reading’a thrown divination set
was complex, and the diviner analysed a combin-
ation of the orientation of individual objects and
their placement in relation to each other (Eiselen
1932,5–8; Junod 1927, vol. II, 560; Roberts 1917,
400). Junod (1927, vol. II, 560) described how a cow-
rie falling on its convex side represented ‘the river is
full’or ‘fertility’, while falling on the concave side
represented ‘drought’.InFigure 3, Junod (1927 Part
II: 560) notes that the interpretation of this configur-
ation, particularly the cowrie lying on its left side,
diagnosed that an ill mother was suffering from
dysentery.
Cowries were also part of other divinatory
methods in southern Africa, and feature prominently
in divination bowls (Fig. 4). Divinations bowls,
which were important in Venda divination and
among southern Shona speakers (ndilo in Venda),
are wooden bowls, with a wide, flat rim, carved
with symbols along the edge and bottom (Ellert
1984, 119; Stayt 1931, 291). Amongst Venda speakers
the symbols along the edge represented ‘the various
mutupo (totems) found among the Venda, and also
other figures of representative persons and objects’
(Hoernlé 1937, 236), but as Stayt (1931, 291) noted,
their interpretation varied from diviner to diviner.
Figure 3. Depiction of a divining set in the interpretation of ‘the case of a sick mother’. (Taken from Junod 1927, vol. II,
557.)
Divining Value
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Many divination bowls feature crocodile imagery
and geometric patterns on the underside of the
bowl, both of which widely represent the ancestral
realm, a place conceptually located within ‘pools of
water’(Loubser 2008, 196). A central feature of
many divination bowls is the small protuberance
in the middle of the bowl, upon which a single cow-
rie is often placed. This was called the mukhombo
[umbilicus] in Venda, and represented the mother’s
spirits (Stayt 1931,291–3). When used, the bowls
were filled with water and fruit shells placed in
the water. The diviner then interpreted the move-
ment and position of the shells in relation to the
symbols along the bowl edge and bottom (Stayt
1931, 291; Hammond-Tooke 1989, 115).
Cowries were not just a part of divination sets,
but were also embedded in the wider material reper-
toire and regalia of diviners. Many healers were dif-
ferentiated by wearing white clothing, or their use of
only white glass beads or shells, and/or smearing
their faces with ash or white clay (Berglund 1976,
134; Gelfand 1956; Hammond-Tooke 1981;1989).
Among Nguni diviners, headbands or wristbands
of cowries were an important ornament
(Hammond-Tooke 1993, 177). Sometimes other
shells, such as mottled black and white Nerita albicilla
shells, were worn as an armband (Berglund 1976,
186; Hammond-Tooke 1993, 177), and similarly,
Shona healers (nganga) in the first part of the twenti-
eth century were often adorned with and identified
by insignia that included cowries and or Ndoro
(Conus virgo) shells (Gelfand 1956,96–111; Tracey
1934).
The materiality of the ancestral realm
The use of cowries described in these historical eth-
nographies and evident in ethnographic collections
in South African museums indicates a close associ-
ation between cowries and traditional healing. They
were a part of composite divination sets, a central
focal point on divination bowls, and worn by divi-
ners as insignia of their status. While traditional heal-
ing practices were not static, and both materials and
methods changed through time (Hammond-Tooke
1993; Van Binsbergen 1996), cowries were clearly
able to articulate meaning in the context of healing
and divination that was understood by both diviners
and the community they served.
Untangling these meanings and values requires
understanding of the wider knowledge system within
which divination was embedded (Hammond-Tooke
1989; Peek 1991). While there is variation in the process
of diagnosis and the manner of healing, divination in
southern African communities was part of the larger
arena of communicative action with the ‘ancestors’
(Hammond-Tooke 1989; Janzen 1992), whose social
and ritual significance in the lives of southern
African communities was widely shared (Berglund
1976, 78; Hammond Tooke 1989, 47; Janzen 1992,2;
Stayt 1931, 240). Ancestors were those who are
neither living nor dead, but are ‘those who no longer
in humanly visible forms are seniors in their
lineage’(Berglund 1976, 30). General descent rules
determined which ancestors are recognized. Among
Nguni-speaking communities, the emphasis was on
patrilineal ancestors from the agnatic cluster; but
among Sotho-Tswana, Venda, Tsonga and Shona
speakers it may have been both matrilineal or patrilin-
eal (Hammond-Tooke 1989, 62). Furthermore, the
emphasis may also have changed based on different
descent rules due to shifting historical contexts
(Janzen 1992, 48).
The ancestors were omnipresent, and took an
active and positive interest in the life of their descen-
dants, whom they watched over, but if neglected
they could also be negative and cause illness
(Hammond-Tooke 1989, 71). In this regard, the div-
iner as ‘the imprimatur of the ancestors ...underpins
the divination process and lends it the authority of
the sacred’(Hammond-Tooke 1989, 104). How one
became a diviner varied. Sotho-Tswana diviners
were usually male, and the profession hereditary
(Eiselen 1932; Hammond-Tooke 1993, 189; Hoernlé
1937). Among most Nguni-speaking communities,
diviners experienced a ‘calling’from the ancestors
(Berglund 1976, 136; Hammond-Tooke 1989, 104,
106; Hirst 1997, 229; Hunter 1936, 321; Kohler
Figure 4. A wooden divination bowl. This bowl is
depicted in Stayt (1931). (Ditsong Cultural History
Museum Ethnographic collection.)
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1941). This calling manifested in the form of dreams,
visions, pain in the neck and shoulders, sleeplessness
and belching acid (Hammond-Tooke 1993, 187) and
if not heeded, physical and mental health deterio-
rated, often leading to intense psychological distress.
The personal narration of a diviner’s experience of
entering and emerging from the pool/river was of par-
ticular significance in the apprenticeship process
among Nguni-speaking diviners (Berglund 1976, 141;
Kohler 1941, 17). Novices typically recounted a certain
narrative of their experience of beingdrawn out of their
homes at night and into a deep pool, where they had
met with the ancestors, so identified because they are
covered in white clay, as well as a large snake/python
and fish/half human figures (Berglund 1976, 143–5;
Hirst 1997, 229; Hammond-Tooke 1993, 186; Kohler
1941,19–21). Often the novice would also retrieve
something from the pool, such as stones sitting on the
clay, to be included later in the divination set
(Hammond-Tooke 1993, 186). The narration of this
process, and the meeting of the ancestors, widely sym-
bolized the rebirth of the novice as diviner (Berglund
1976, 148).
The significance of the pool/river and the col-
our white warrants further exploration. In most ana-
lyses of Nguni divination practices, it is clear that the
pool/river is conceptually the ‘other world’, the
realm of the deceased, variously described as a shad-
owy place underneath the earth, the place where
humans came from and where the ancestors reside
(Berglund 1976, 144). It is also the place where life
is given, and is described as the ‘water of the
women when she is pregnant’(Berglund 1976, 146).
This water is critical for the novice diviner because
it is not just water. It is living water (amanzi aphilayo),
meaning that something is happening today. If the
water was dead, like water in pools, then they (the
shades) [the ancestors] would refuse to do their work
of making a diviner. That is why the water must be liv-
ing, so that they can do their work of making a diviner.
(Berglund 1976, 167)
Rivers and pools were also symbolically significant
in relation to conceptualizations of the ancestral
realm among other southern African communities
(Hammond-Tooke 1993, 106; Stayt 1931, 238–9),
and as places of primary creation, such as
Ntsunasatsi (Maggs 1976). Among various
Sotho-Tswana-speaking communities, rock cisterns
at Lowe (Botswana) continue to hold special signifi-
cance as places from which the first people emerged
(Maggs 1976; Morton 2011). For this reason, these cis-
terns are libation portals to the ancestral realm (Van
der Ryst et al. 2004; Walker 1997). Similarly, Stayt
(1931, 238–9) outlines the importance of rivers,
pools and lakes, particularly Lake Fundudzi, in
Venda creation stories, because the first Venda
Singo [king] emerged from a pool within a mountain
cave (Aschwanden 1982; Loubser 2008).
Additionally, ‘The assembly area, or khoro, is also
known as a “pool,”or thivha, and it is here that pre-
marital initiates are reborn during the domba
(python) dance, very like the apical ancestors during
creation’(Blacking 1969, in Loubser 2008, 195). If a
group of people, or a chief, were spoken about in
relation to a ‘pool’, it was in reference to the ritual
potency of the person (Loubser 2008, 195).
The iconography and symbolism on Venda div-
ination bowls make specific reference to the concept
of ‘pool’and, as noted, the crocodile and geometric
shapes referenced the ancestral realm (Duffey 2012,
178; Mack 2007, 110). When the bowl was filled
with water, the cowrie shell and motifs at the centre
of the bowl were submerged in the ‘underwater’pool
of primary creation, the ancestral realm. While vari-
ous heirlooms, such as hoe-heads and copper mal-
embe (replica hoes), were used by Venda
communities to access their own ancestors directly
(Moffett et al. 2017), there is some indication that
the divination bowl was only used by powerful divi-
ners to access the ancestral realm of the ruling
lineages (Duffey 2012, 178; Mack 2007, 110).
Along with water, the colour white has often
been (and remains) closely associated with ancestors.
That white is the colour of the ancestors is clearly
illustrated in the birth/rebirth of Nguni diviners,
who, when entering the pool/water, recognized the
ancestors by their appearance as ‘white’, often as
white clay. As one healer recounted to Berglund
(1976, 146): ‘As I said, the white clay that is under
the snake is the clay of the shades [ancestors]. They
have one and the same colour. So they resemble
one another. The clay is the clay of the shades’. The
significance of white can be understood more
broadly across southern African communities in rela-
tion to the materialization of pollution concepts
(Hammond-Tooke 1981;1993; Kuper 1982).
Pollution concepts, in particular the binary concepts
of ‘hot’and ‘cool/dark’, were important in many
southern African communities, and related to what
has been termed the ‘thermodynamic’philosophy
(cf. de Heusch 1982), in which hot was seen as a dan-
gerous state associated with death, miscarriage and
liminality and cool with fertility, healing and health
(Hammond-Tooke 1981, 123). White, red and black
colours are symbolically linked to these states.
White is often associated with ancestors and a state
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of purity, ‘coolness’and little ‘heat’and linked to
healing and divination and materialized by semen,
water, ash and rain (Kuper 1982). This colour schema
was often expressed in beadwork, on pottery or in
metals.
Discussion
Through an exploration of the wider context of
beliefs encompassing the divination process, we
begin to see that the value of cowries, used in the
adornment of healers and in the divination sets,
was shaped by particular concepts of pollution, fertil-
ity and ancestry. The use of white adornment and
white objects for healers was specifically linked to
the connection between the colour white and the ‘col-
our’of healing, fertility, ‘coolness’and the ancestors.
This form of adornment, including the use of white
shells, beads, ash and cloth, on one level served to
demarcate the liminal space a diviner occupied in
society.
However, white objects used in the adornment
of diviners and in divination practices were not
merely metaphors for ‘coolness’and ancestors.
Rather, the colour white was an active property
that served in the materialization of certain out-
comes. This is illustrated in Berglund’s(1976, 164)
description of the coming-out ceremony of
Nguni-speaking novices. Following the completion
of the initiation, the diviner emerges from their hut
wearing a large number of white beads strung in
her hair and around her neck and waist, as well as
gall bladders tied into her hair and white ash
smeared on face and body (Berglund 1976, 164). As
Berglund’s informant noted, ‘The white says,
“Today she is a servant of the shades.”Everybody
who sees that person knows something and says,
“That is ithwasa”, knowing the colour of the diviners
and shades. That is the colour white and its work’
(Berglund 1976, 167).
This description of the ‘colour white and its
work’is particularly apt in articulating the way in
which ‘white’objects actively work to produce ‘cool-
ness’. These objects ‘worked’not only as ornamental
representation of ancestral power, but as embodi-
ments of the ancestors (Berglund 1976, 118; Hirst
1997, 236). The ‘work’of white objects, as well as
other objects associated with ancestry and divination,
is also noted elsewhere (Hammond-Tooke 1981, 135–
9). Tumise Maledimo, the diviner interviewed by
Eiselen (1932, 3), noted this quite aptly when he sta-
ted that the bones were an extension of his person
and were to be consulted in decisions. Stayt (1931,
249) recorded the importance of old objects, which
were widely prized and curated. These were not
merely considered to be heirlooms, but were used
and conceived of as the physical spaces in which par-
ticular ancestors resided, the word for these objects,
tshitungula, likely derived from tungula [to throw
the bones], ‘suggesting that the heirlooms are
mediums through which the living are able to
come into contact with the dead’(Stayt 1931, 249).
In this sense various objects associated with divin-
ation, from the adornment of the diviner to the
objects used in divination, may be understood as
having not only metaphoric potential, but also meto-
nymic potential. One may also go a step further and
suggest that these objects, as the physical manifest-
ation of ancestors, not only acted as metaphor or
metonymy for ancestry, but were also animate
objects (after Brown & Walker 2008). As animate,
white objects engendered the qualities that ancestors
were able to accord; those of fertility, coolness,
health.
Inseparably linked to the valuation of cowries
within the ancestral realm was their origin in water.
This is expressed in the central and submerged pos-
ition of cowries in Venda divining bowls, and the
ancestral realm of the ‘pool’. While not as explicit,
similar associations between white things, water
and ancestry can be gleaned in the origin stories of
Nguni diviners where rivers/pools are filled with
white clay and stones, objects in which the ancestors
‘reside’. In the face of the giant snake/python that is
often in their way, diviners must return with these
objects for their divination sets. Through understand-
ing the symbolic process associated with the use of
cowries, we begin to see that the attributes of origin
and distance associated with cowries appear to have
been understood and interpolated in relation to an
ancestral realm.
The idea that cowries were valued in a particu-
lar way because of their origin from the world of
ancestors reveals a particular biographical ontology
of ‘distance’that varies from the concept of distance
often evoked in studies of global commodities. This
has been somewhat explored by Mary Helms (1988)
in her seminal review of the ways in which goods
from afar are valued in pre-industrial societies.
Helms indicated that objects from long-distance
trade networks were often imbued with specific
values and power related to culturally specific con-
cepts of distance. In Helms’analyses, she concluded
that ‘distance’is not measured as a constant or a
standard, but is relative to a context and is a socially
constructed concept. Things traded from ‘afar’accrue
political and ideological value because in the absence
of direct knowledge about their actual origin they are
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given a relevant biography that contextually ‘mysti-
fies’exotica within local understandings. In the
southern African context, the biography associated
with cowries was somewhat different. In particular,
the ‘distance’related to the ancestral realm is a place
‘underwater’. However, this ancestral ‘distance’was
ambiguous, both accessible and omnipresent, yet
beyond the reach of the ordinary individual and
only traversed by the diviner.
The valuation of seashells in relation to the
ancestral realm, fertility and ‘coolness’appears not
to have been limited to cowrie shells only. A particu-
lar shell that shared a similar symbolic potential to
the cowrie was the ndoro shell. The ndoro was used
across regions of Zimbabwe and northern South
Africa as a symbol of status and spiritual power
from at least the seventeenth century until the early
twentieth (Ellert 1984; MacGonagle 2007; Pwiti
1996). The ndoro is an ivory-coloured pendant
between 4 and 6 cm wide made from the flattened
end of a Conus virgo shell, with one end polished
smooth while the other is whorled. The shell was
perforated in the middle and fastened to the string
with a bead on the concave side of the shell
(Gelfand 1956, 111), and its use was noted among
Venda- (Stayt 1931, 26), Tsonga- (Junod 1927),
Valenge- (Earthy 1933) and Shona-speaking groups
(Ellert 1984), where they were important symbols of
political/ritual power. Cowries and the ndoro were
sometimes worn together, and appear to have been
valued for sharing similar properties (Gelfand 1956,
96). Another seashell that appears to have been of
importance for healers and in divination was the
ndumbi (Nerita albicilla) shell. These black-and-white
mottled shells were primarily worn by
Nguni-speaking healers, who threaded the shells on
to cotton and wore them around their wrists
(Bryant 1949, 162).
The association between cowries, ndumbi and
ndoro shells suggests that, along with the colour
white, their origin from water, the ancestral realm,
imbued the shells with qualities that were used in
contexts of healing and ancestry. However, the uses
of the ndoro suggest that it was a more potent object
than the ndumbi or cowrie in the realm of fertility,
healing and ancestry. In the case of the ndoro, ances-
try, healing powers and political power merged, a
combination that underpinned political leadership
in some southern African communities historically
(Hammond-Tooke 1993). The potency of the shells
may also have been heightened by their use together,
either worn alongside each other or as part of com-
posite sets in the adornment of healers. A healer’s
‘bandolier’(Fig. 5) from the ethnographic collections
at KwaZulu-Natal Museum further indicates the sig-
nificance of the inter-artifactual domain and use-
context in creating value associations. In this bando-
lier, annulus cowrie shells are strung alongside Oliva
shells and other larger cowrie species, along with
fragments of tortoise bone and white glass beads.
The different shells in the bandolier may also
have individual accumulated biographies, some of
which are evident in their material modifications.
Certain cowries were clearly collected from the
shore and retained their dorsal aperture. Other cow-
ries were modified, with sharp dorsal breaks facilitat-
ing their stringing together with other shells, while
others, with polished dorsal breaks, suggest they
have been previously modified for adornment
(Fig. 5). These modifications may reflect a unique
part of each individual shell’s biography, which
may have further shaped the ways in which they
articulated particular values within a use context.
Along with these modifications, how the prop-
erties of whiteness and the shell’s derivation from
the sea articulated meaning within healing contexts
was activated and shaped by a host of tangible and
intangible factors, such as memory, beliefs, smells,
sounds, temperature, and of course the performance
of the healing practice, itself an essential component
to the process. As Peek (1991, 195) emphasizes,
‘Divination never results in a simple restatement of
tradition to be followed blindly. It is a dynamic
reassessment of customs and values in the face of
an ever-changing world’. Thus, the use of cowries
in divination practices was not merely the reflection
of a static association between the shell and ancestry,
but reflects the use of things that continue to remain
meaningful. These associations continued to be con-
figured in changing contexts of use. This sentiment
is aptly illustrated by the remarks on cowries by a
contemporary South African artist, Nana Ngcobo,
whose tapestries illustrate the significance of water
and shells in healing today. She remarked, in relation
to a necklace of cowrie shells she was wearing, that
‘The shells I am wearing are connected to my ances-
tors but anyone can wear shells as protection’(Hobbs
& Leibhammer 2011, 14).
Conclusion
Recent research into the distribution and consump-
tion of globally traded ‘commodities’has empha-
sized the importance of exploring why different
objects were taken up by different communities
and how their value was recontextualized within
changing contexts (Gosden & Marshall 1999;
Prestholdt 2004;2008;Thomas1991). Yet fewer
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studies have explored how, within this framework,
the properties of objects are materialized in different
use contexts, and the ways in which these shape the
valuation process. This paper has sought to explore
the potential ways in which the properties of cow-
ries, along with their origin, articulated with the
material and conceptual universes of its users in
southern Africa.
Our review of cowrie use in divination practices
indicates how the white colour of the cowrie shell
facilitated the ability of the cowrie to articulate
fertility, healing and coolness associated with the
‘whiteness’of the ancestral ream. This property facili-
tated the use of cowries within the realm of healing
and divination, where they were variously used as
part of the adornment of healers and as part of
objects in divination sets. While observing this pro-
cess indicated that the ‘agency’of this material prop-
erty, the colour white, was central to shaping its
valuation, it also brought into relief another dimen-
sion to the agency of the colour white in the valu-
ation of cowries, in the form of the agency of the
ancestral realm through which certain objects
became animate objects. To this end the agency
embodied in these white objects arose not from the
material properties alone, but rather ‘from sentient
qualities possessed by the object, such as conscious-
ness or a life-force’(Brown & Walker 2008, 298).
Similarly, the origin of cowries from water gave the
cowrie a particular biographical ontology linked to
the ancestral realm. This biography was central in
shaping the value and agency of the cowrie within
divination contexts.
This study brings to light the importance of a
full ontological inquiry into other people’sworlds
and relations to objects that may extend beyond
the framework of cultural biography or materiality
(cf. Alberti & Marshall 2009). In particular, observa-
tions related to the property ‘white’indicate that
although it may be a ‘material’property with agency
to shape its valuation, the full sense of its agency can
only be understood through an exploration of the
ontological framework in which ‘white’objects ‘do
work’. Similarly, concepts of ‘distance’,‘afar’and
Figure 5. A diviner’s bandolier. (KwaZulu-Natal Museum Ethnographic collection.)
Abigail Joy Moffett & Simon Hall
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‘exotic’must be carefully interrogated, and the
potential of accumulated biographies that extend
beyond exchange and use contexts must be
considered.
While archaeological contexts vary from ethno-
graphic contexts, archaeology nevertheless remains
well positioned to explore alternative ontologies
(Holbraad 2009). In particular, exploring anomalies
in the archaeological record can challenge and dis-
rupt our assumptions relating to value (Alberti &
Marshall 2009). Observations related to distribution,
deposition and use-wear patterns provide an oppor-
tunity to explore the biographies of cowries and the
complex ways in which objects from ‘afar’accumu-
late and re-accumulate meanings in new contexts of
use. For example, in the southern African ‘middle’
Iron Age (AD 900–1300), conventional arguments
have suggested that in their exchange and use con-
texts cowries, along with other ‘exotica’, functioned
as a form of ‘wealth’(Huffman 1982;2009;
Robertshaw et al. 2010). This interpretation is closely
linked to their derivation from burial contexts, in
which cowries have been recovered along with
other items such as glass beads, in burials at the
iconic sites of K2 (AD 1000–1220) and Mapungubwe
(AD 1220–1300) and in a large hoard at the site of
Great Zimbabwe (AD 1000–1700).
This specific cultural classification of exotica
inflects the more conventional links in which exotica
become prestige items simply because they are
traded over long distances. This actual physical pas-
sage has been seen as the factor that imparts value in
an object that is then used by elites and defined as
wealth and power, through, for example, selective
redistribution. However, examination the distribu-
tion and deposition of these objects in archaeological
contexts does not conform to a prestige-goods model,
with depositional patterns, and in particular the
placement of goods in burials and hoards, suggesting
complex underlying cultural processes (Hattingh &
Hall 2009; Moffett & Chirikure 2016). The above
exploration of the ancestral realm, while by no
means a direct analogy, provides an alternative
ontology from which to explore this archaeological
phenomenon, in which burial goods may reflect indi-
vidual relationships with an ancestral realm.
Otherwise put, they may reflect, not a ‘wealth in
things’, nor a ‘wealth in people’(cf. Guyer 1995),
but a ‘wealth in ancestors’. The ancestral scale may
vary, from burials articulating individual person-
hood to large burials articulating collective ancestry.
Thus, one cowrie in a juvenile burial at K2 may relate
to a child’s ancestral realm, while a cache of cowries
at Great Zimbabwe may reflect an ancestral scale of a
different level. Exploring the relationship between
burials and the ancestral further in archaeological
contexts may provide a deeper understanding of
how global trade items were given local meaning,
as well as the relationship between the sacred, ances-
tral scale and power.
Abigail Joy Moffett
Department of Archaeology
University of Cape Town
Private Bag 7701
Rondebosch
Cape Town
South Africa
Email: aj.moffett@uct.ac.za
Simon Hall
Department of Archaeology
University of Cape Town
Private Bag 7701
Rondebosch
Cape Town
South Africa
Email: Simon.Hall@uct.ac.za
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Author biographies
Abigail J. Moffett is a Claude Leon postdoctoral research
fellow in the Department of Archaeology at the
University of Cape Town. Her research addresses various
aspects of the pre-colonial political economy in southern
Africa, with a specific interest in the valuation of locally
made and imported objects.
Simon Hallis Emeritus AssociateProfessor in the Department
of Archaeology and an Associate Researcher in the interdis-
ciplinary Archive and Public Culture research initiative,
University of Cape Town. His research falls within the
domain of historical archaeology and focuses upon conjunc-
tures between southern African farmers, pastoralists,
hunter-gatherers and colonists over the last 500 years.
Abigail Joy Moffett & Simon Hall
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