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 GARDNER’S

A RT
T H RO U G H T H E

AGES
NON-WESTERN
PERSPECTIVES

T H I RT E E N T H E D I T I O N

Fred S. Kleiner

Australia • Brazil • Japan • Korea • Mexico • Singapore • Spain • United Kingdom • United States
Gardner’s Art through the Ages: Non-Western
Perspectives, Thirteenth Edition
Fred S. Kleiner
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About the Author
FRED S. KLEINER (Ph.D., Columbia University) is the co-author of the 10th, 11th, and
12th editions of Art through the Ages and more than a hundred publications on Greek
and Roman art and architecture, including A History of Roman Art, also published by
Wadsworth. He has taught the art history survey course for more than three decades,
first at the University of Virginia and, since 1978, at Boston University, where he is
currently Professor of Art History and Archaeology and Chair of the Art History De-
partment. Long recognized for his inspiring lectures and devotion to students, Profes-
sor Kleiner won Boston University’s Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching as well
as the College Prize for Undergraduate Advising in the Humanities in 2002 and is a
two-time winner of the Distinguished Teaching Prize in the College of Arts and Sci-
ences Honors Program. He was Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Archaeology
from 1985 to 1998.

Also by Fred Kleiner: A History of Roman Art (Wadsworth

2007; ISBN 0534638465), winner of the 2007 Texty Prize as
the best new college textbook in the humanities and social
sciences. In this authoritative and lavishly illustrated vol-
ume, Professor Kleiner traces the development of Roman
art and architecture from Romulus’ foundation of Rome in
the eighth century BCE to the death of Constantine in the
fourth century CE, with special chapters devoted to Pom-
peii and Herculaneum, Ostia, funerary and provincial art
and architecture, and the earliest Christian art.
Serpent Mound, Ohio, ca. 1070. 1,200
long, 20
wide, 5
high.
 A b o u t t h e C ove r A r t
Serpent Mound is one of the largest monuments surviving from the Native American cultures that flour-
ished in North America before the arrival of Europeans at the end of the 15th century. First excavated in the
1880s, this “effigy mound” represents one of the first efforts at preserving a Native American site from de-
struction at the hands of pot hunters and farmers. Scholars believe that the people known as the Mississip-
pians built Serpent Mound during the 11th century. Unlike most other ancient Native American mounds,
this one appears not to have been either a burial site or temple platform. The Mississippians, however,
strongly associated snakes with the earth and the fertility of crops, explaining why they would construct a
mound in the shape of a snake. A stone figurine found at one Mississippian site, for example, depicts a
woman digging her hoe into the back of a large serpentine creature whose tail turns into a vine of gourds.
Some researchers, however, have proposed another possible meaning, and assigned a date around 1070, for
the construction of Serpent Mound. The date corresponds to the years following the brightest appearance in
recorded history of Halley’s Comet in 1066. Scholars have suggested that the serpentine form of the mound
is not an effigy of a snake; rather, it replicates the comet streaking across the night sky.
The names of the artists and patrons responsible for conceiving and constructing Serpent Mound are
unknown. This is typical of most of the history of art worldwide, and although it has become standard
since the Renaissance for Western artists to sign and date their work, anonymous artworks remained the
norm in most of the non-Western world until very recently. Art through the Ages: Non-Western Perspec-
tives surveys the art and architecture of Asia, Native America, Africa, and Oceania from prehistory to the
present, and examines how artworks of all kinds, whether anonymous or signed, always reflect the di-
verse historical contexts in which they were created.
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 CONTENTS

PREFACE xi CHAPTER 3
CHINA AND KOREA TO 1279 47
IN TRO D U C T I O N China 47
WHAT IS ART HISTORY? 1 Korea 68
Art History in the 21st Century 2 T MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES: Sheng Bronze-Casting 49
Different Ways of Seeing 8 T MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES: Chinese Jade 51
T RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY: Daoism and Confucianism 52

CHAPTER 1 T MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES: Silk and the Silk Road 54

SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA T ARCHITECTURAL BASICS: Chinese Wooden Construction 55

BEFORE 1200 9 T MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES: Chinese Painting Materials

and Formats 56
India and Pakistan 9
T ARTISTS ON ART: Xie He’s Six Canons 57
Southeast Asia 26
T MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES: Chinese Earthenwares
T RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY: Buddhism and Buddhist and Stonewares 62
Iconography 13
T RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY Chan Buddhism 67
T WRITTEN SOURCES: Ashoka’s Conversion to Buddhism 14
THE BIG PICTURE 71
T ARCHITECTURAL BASICS: The Stupa 15
T MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES: The Painted Caves
of Ajanta 19 CHAPTER 4
T RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY: Hinduism and Hindu CHINA AND KOREA
Iconography 20
AFTER 1279 73
T ARCHITECTURAL BASICS: Hindu Temples 24
China 73
THE BIG PICTURE 31
Korea 84
T MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES: Chinese Porcelain 76
CHAPTER 2 T MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES: Lacquered Wood 78
SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA T MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES: Calligraphy and Inscriptions
AFTER 1200 33 on Chinese Paintings 80

India 33 THE BIG PICTURE 87

Southeast Asia 41
Contemporary Art 44
T MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES: Indian Miniature
Painting 36

THE BIG PICTURE 45

vii
 CHAPTER 5 T ART AND SOCIETY: The Mesoamerican Ball Game 152

T MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES: Andean Weaving 162

JAPAN BEFORE 1333 89
T ART AND SOCIETY: Serpent Mound 169
Japan before Buddhism 89
THE BIG PICTURE 171
Buddhist Japan 92
T RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY: Shinto 93
T ART AND SOCIETY: Heian Court Culture 99
CHAPTER 9
T ART AND SOCIETY: Heian and Kamakura Artistic
NATIVE ARTS OF THE AMERICAS
Workshops 101 AFTER 1300 173
THE BIG PICTURE 103 Mesoamerica 173
South America 178
CHAPTER 6 North America 180
JAPAN AFTER 1336 105 T RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY: Aztec Religion 176

Japan, 1336 to 1868 105 T ART AND SOCIETY: Gender Roles in Native American Art 183

Modern Japan 116 THE BIG PICTURE 189

T RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY: Zen Buddhism 106

T ART AND SOCIETY: The Japanese Tea Ceremony 110 CHAPTER 10
T MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES: Japanese Woodblock AFRICA BEFORE 1800 191
Prints 114
Prehistory and Early Cultures 192
THE BIG PICTURE 119
11th to 18th Centuries 197
T ART AND SOCIETY: Dating African Art and Identifying African
CHAPTER 7 Artists 193

THE ISLAMIC WORLD 121 T ART AND SOCIETY: Art and Leadership in Africa 195

Early Islamic Art 122 T ART AND SOCIETY: Idealized Naturalism at Ile-Ife 196

Later Islamic Art 132 THE BIG PICTURE 203

T RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY: Muhammad and Islam 123

T ARCHITECTURAL BASICS: The Mosque 125 CHAPTER 11
T ARTISTS ON ART: Sinan the Great and the Mosque of AFRICA AFTER 1800 205
Selim II 134
19th Century 205
T MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES: Islamic Tilework 137
20th Century 211
T ART AND SOCIETY: Christian Patronage of Islamic Art 142
Contemporary Art 220
THE BIG PICTURE 143
T ART AND SOCIETY: Gender Roles in African Art Production 212
T ART AND SOCIETY: African Artists and Apprentices 213
CHAPTER 8
T ART AND SOCIETY: African Masquerades 215
NATIVE ARTS OF THE AMERICAS
T ART AND SOCIETY: Mende Women as Maskers 217
BEFORE 1300 145
THE BIG PICTURE 223
Mesoamerica 146
Intermediate Area 159
South America 160
North America 167

viii Contents
 CHAPTER 12 GLOSSARY 242

OCEANIA 225 BIBLIOGRAPHY 248

Australia and Melanesia 226 CREDITS 253

Micronesia 232 INDEX 255
Polynesia 234

T ART AND SOCIETY: Women’s Roles in Oceania 233

T MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES: Tongan Barkcloth 235
T ART AND SOCIETY: Tattoo in Polynesia 237

THE BIG PICTURE 241

Contents ix
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 PREFACE
hen Helen Gardner published the first edition of Art through
W the Ages in 1926, she could not have imagined that more than
80 years later instructors all over the world would still be using her
textbook in their classrooms. Indeed, if she were alive today, she
would not recognize the book that long ago became—and re-
mains—the most widely read introduction to the history of art and
architecture in the English language. During the past half century,
successive authors have constantly reinvented Helen Gardner’s
groundbreaking global survey, always keeping it fresh and current,
and setting an ever-higher standard in both content and publication
quality with each new edition. I hope both professors and students
will agree that this 13th edition lives up to that venerable tradition.
Certainly, this latest edition offers much that is fresh and new
(enumerated below), but some things have not changed, including
the fundamental belief that guided Helen Gardner—namely, that the
primary goal of an introductory art history textbook should be to fos-
ter an appreciation and understanding of historically significant
works of art of all kinds from all periods and from all parts of the
globe. Because of the longevity and diversity of the history of art, it is
tempting to assign responsibility for telling its story to a large team of
specialists. The Gardner publishers themselves took this approach for
the first edition they produced after Helen Gardner’s death, and it has
now become the norm for introductory art history surveys. But stu-
dents overwhelmingly say that the very complexity of the global his-
tory of art makes it all the more important for the story to be told
with a consistent voice if they are to master so much diverse material.
I think Helen Gardner would be pleased to know that this new edition
of Art through the Ages once again has a single storyteller.
Along with the late Richard Tansey and my more recent collabo-
rator, Christin Mamiya, with whom I had the honor and pleasure of
working on the 10th, 11th, and 12th editions, I continue to believe
that the most effective way to tell the story of art through the ages, es-
pecially to someone studying art history for the first time, is to orga-
nize the vast array of artistic monuments according to the civiliza-
tions that produced them and to consider each work in roughly
chronological order. This approach has not merely stood the test of
time. It is the most appropriate way to narrate the history of art. The
principle that underlies my approach to every period of art history is
that the enormous variation in the form and meaning of the paint-
ings, sculptures, buildings, and other artworks men and women have
produced over the past 30,000 years is largely the result of the con-
stantly changing contexts in which artists and architects worked. A
historically based narrative is therefore best suited for a global history
of art because it permits the author to situate each work discussed in
its historical, social, economic, religious, and cultural context. That is,
after all, what distinguishes art history from art appreciation.
In the first (1926) edition of Art through the Ages, Helen Gardner
discussed Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso in a chapter entitled “Con-
temporary Art in Europe and America.” Since then many other artists
have emerged on the international scene, and the story of art through
the ages has grown longer and even more complex. More important,
perhaps, the discipline of art history has changed markedly in recent
decades, and so too has Helen Gardner’s book. In fact, although
Gardner was a pioneer in writing a global history of art in the early
part of the 20th century, even she would be surprised that so many
college courses now include only the arts of non-Western cultures.
That is why Wadsworth introduced Art through the Ages: Non-Western
Perspectives in 2006.
This new edition fully reflects the latest art historical research
emphases while maintaining the traditional strengths that have
made previous editions of Art through the Ages so popular. While
sustaining attention to style, chronology, iconography, and tech-
nique, I also ensure that issues of patronage, function, and context
loom large in every chapter. I treat artworks not as isolated objects in
sterile 21st-century museum settings but with a view toward their
purpose and meaning in the society that produced them at the time
they were produced. I examine not only the role of the artist or ar-
chitect in the creation of a work of art or a building, but also the role
of the individuals or groups who paid the artists and influenced the
shape the monuments took. Further, I devote more space than previ-
ously to the role of women and women artists in societies worldwide
over time. In every chapter, I have tried to choose artworks and
buildings that reflect the increasingly wide range of interests of
scholars today, while not rejecting the traditional list of “great” works
or the very notion of a “canon.” Consequently, the selection of works
in this edition encompasses every artistic medium and almost every
era and culture in the non-Western world, and includes many works
that until recently art historians would not have considered to be
“art” at all.
The 12th edition of Art through the Ages was the number-one
choice for art history survey courses and the best-selling version of
the book in its long history, and for this 13th edition I have retained
all of the features that made its predecessor so successful. This non-
Western version of the global survey contains the chapters on the art
xi
and architecture of South and Southeast Asia, China and Korea,
Japan, the Islamic world, Native North and South America, Africa,
and Oceania. It boasts roughly 300 photographs, plans, and draw-
ings, virtually all in color and reproduced according to the highest
standards of clarity and color fidelity. Included are many new or up-
graded photos by a host of new photographers as well as redesigned
maps and plans.
The captions to the illustrations in this edition of Art through the
Ages, as before, contain a wealth of information, including the name
of the artist or architect, if known; the formal title (printed in ital-
ics), if assigned, description of the work, or name of the building; the
provenance or place of production of the object or location of the
building; the date; the material(s) used; the size; and the current lo-
cation if the work is in a museum or private collection. As in previ-
ous editions, scales accompany all plans, but for the first time scales
now also appear next to each photograph of a painting, statue, or
other artwork. The works illustrated vary enormously in size, from
colossal sculptures carved into mountain cliffs and paintings that
cover entire walls or ceilings to tiny figurines and jewelry that one
can hold in the hand. Although the captions contain the pertinent
dimensions, it is hard for students who have never seen the paintings
or statues in person to translate those dimensions into an apprecia-
tion of the real size of the objects. The new scales provide an effective
and direct way to visualize how big or how small a given artwork is
and its relative size compared with other objects in the same chapter
and throughout the book.
Also new to this edition are the Quick-Review Captions that stu-
dents found so useful when these were introduced in 2006 in the first
edition of Art through the Ages: A Concise History. These brief syn-
opses of the most significant aspects of each artwork or building il-
lustrated accompany the captions to all images in the book. They have
proved invaluable to students preparing for examinations. In the 13th
edition I have also provided two new tools to aid students in review-
ing and mastering the material. Each chapter now ends with a full-
page feature called The Big Picture, which sets forth in bullet-point
format the most important characteristics of each period or region
discussed in the chapter. Small illustrations of characteristic works
discussed accompany the summary of major points. Finally, I have at-
tempted to tie all of the chapters together by providing with each copy
of Art through the Ages a poster-size Global Timeline. This too fea-
tures illustrations of key monuments of each age and geographical
area as well as a brief enumeration of the most important art histori-
cal developments during that period. The timeline is global in scope
to permit students to compare developments in the non-Western
world with contemporaneous artworks produced in the West. The
poster has four major horizontal bands corresponding to Europe, the
Americas, Asia, and Africa, and 34 vertical columns for the successive
chronological periods from 30,000 BCE to the present.
Boxed essays once again appear throughout the book as well. This
popular feature first appeared in the 11th edition of Art through the
Ages, which won both the Texty and McGuffey Prizes of the Text and
Academic Authors Association for the best college textbook of 2001
in the humanities and social sciences. In this edition the essays are
more closely tied to the main text than ever before. Consistent with
that greater integration, most boxes now incorporate photographs of
important artworks discussed in the text proper that also illustrate
the theme treated in the boxed essays. These essays fall under six
broad categories, one of which is new to the 13th edition.
Architectural Basics boxes provide students with a sound founda-
tion for the understanding of architecture. These discussions are con-
cise explanations, with drawings and diagrams, of the major aspects
of design and construction. The information included is essential to
xii Preface
an understanding of architectural technology and terminology. The
boxes address questions of how and why various forms developed,
the problems architects confronted, and the solutions they used to
resolve them. Topics discussed include the form and meaning of the
stupa, the origin and development of the mosque, and the construc-
tion of wooden buildings in China.
Materials and Techniques essays explain the various media artists
employed from prehistoric to modern times. Since materials and
techniques often influence the character of artworks, these discus-
sions contain essential information on why many monuments ap-
pear as they do. Hollow-casting in bronze in Shang China, Japanese
woodblock prints, and Andean weaving are among the many sub-
jects treated.
Religion and Mythology boxes introduce students to the principal
elements of the world’s great religions, past and present, and to the
representation of religious and mythological themes in painting and
sculpture of all periods and places. These discussions of belief systems
and iconography give readers a richer understanding of some of the
greatest artworks ever created. The topics include Buddhism and
Buddhist iconography, Muhammad and Islam, and Aztec religion.
Art and Society essays treat the historical, social, political, cul-
tural, and religious context of art and architecture. The subjects ad-
dressed include the Japanese tea ceremony, the Mesoamerican ball
game, art and leadership in Africa, and tattoo in Polynesia.
Written Sources present and discuss key historical documents il-
luminating important monuments of art and architecture through-
out the world. The passages quoted permit voices from the past to
speak directly to the reader, for example King Ashoka explaining his
conversion to Buddhism, which initiated a new era in Asian art.
A new category is Artists on Art in which artists and architects
throughout history discuss both their theories and individual works.
Examples include Sinan the Great discussing the mosque he designed
for Selim II, and Xia He’s exposition of the six canons of Chinese
painting.
Rounding out the features in the book itself is a Glossary con-
taining definitions of all terms introduced in the text in italics and a
Bibliography of books in English, including both general works and
a chapter-by-chapter list of more focused studies.
The 13th edition of Art through the Ages is not, however, a stand-
alone text, but one element of a complete package of learning tools.
In addition to the Global Timeline, every new copy of the book
comes with a password to ArtStudy Online, a web site with access to
a host of multimedia resources that students can employ throughout
the entire course, including image flashcards, tutorial quizzes, pod-
casts, vocabulary, and more. Instructors have access to a host of
teaching materials, including digital images with zoom capabilities,
video, and Google Earth™ coordinates.
A work as diverse as this history of non-Western art could not be
undertaken or completed without the counsel of experts in all areas
treated. As with previous editions, the publisher has enlisted dozens of
art historians to review every chapter of Art through the Ages: Non-
Western Perspectives in order to ensure that the text lived up to the
Gardner reputation for accuracy as well as readability. I take great plea-
sure in acknowledging here the invaluable contributions to the 13th
edition made by the following for their critiques of various chapters:
Charles M. Adelman, University of Northern Iowa; Kirk Ambrose,
University of Colorado–Boulder; Susan Ashbrook, Art Institute of
Boston; James J. Bloom, Florida State University; Suzaan Boettger,
Bergen Community College; Colleen Bolton, Mohawk Valley Com-
munity College; Angi Elsea Bourgeois, Mississippi State University;
Lawrence E. Butler, George Mason University; Alexandra Carpino,
Northern Arizona University; Hipolito Rafael Chacon, The University
of Montana; Catherine M. Chastain, North Georgia College & State
University; Daniel Connolly, Augustana College; Michael A. Coronel,
University of Northern Colorado; Nicole Cox, Rochester Institute of
Technology; Jodi Cranston, Boston University; Kathy Curnow, Cleve-
land State University; Giovanna De Appolonia, Boston University;
Marion de Koning, Grossmont College; John J. Dobbins, University of
Virginia; B. Underwood DuRette, Thomas Nelson Community Col-
lege; Daniel Ehnbom, University of Virginia; Lisa Farber, Pace Univer-
sity; James Farmer, Virginia Commonwealth University; Jerome
Feldman, Hawaii Pacific University; Sheila ffolliott, George Mason
University; Ferdinanda Florence, Solano Community College; William
B. Folkestad, Central Washington University; Mitchell Frank, Carleton
University; Sara L. French, Wells College; Norman P. Gambill, South
Dakota State University; Elise Goodman, University of Cincinnati;
Kim T. Grant, University of Southern Maine; Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis,
Silk Road Project; Sandra C. Haynes, Pasadena City College; Valerie
Hedquist, The University of Montana; Susan Hellman, Northern Vir-
ginia Community College; Marian J. Hollinger, Fairmont State Univer-
sity; Cheryl Hughes, Alta High School; Heidrun Hultgren, Kent State
University; Joseph M. Hutchinson, Texas A&M University; Julie M.
Johnson, Utah State University; Sandra L. Johnson, Citrus College;
Deborah Kahn, Boston University; Fusae Kanda, Harvard University;
Catherine Karkov, Miami University; Wendy Katz, University of
Nebraska–Lincoln; Nita Kehoe-Gadway, Central Wyoming College;
Nancy L. Kelker, Middle Tennessee State University; Cathie Kelly, Uni-
versity of Nevada–Las Vegas; Katie Kempton, Ohio University; John F.
Kenfield, Rutgers University; Monica Kjellman-Chapin, Emporia
State University; Kathryn E. Kramer, State University of New York–
Cortland; Carol Krinsky, New York University; Lydia Lehr, Atlantic
Cape Community College; Krist Lien, Shelton State Community Col-
lege; Ellen Longsworth, Merrimack College; Dominic Marner, Univer-
sity of Guelph; Jack Brent Maxwell, Blinn College; Anne McClanan,
Portland State University; Brian McConnell, Florida Atlantic Univer-
sity; Amy McNair, University of Kansas; Patrick McNaughton, Indiana
University; Cynthia Millis, Houston Community College–Southwest;
Cynthia Taylor Mills, Brookhaven College; Keith N. Morgan, Boston
University; Johanna D. Movassat, San Jose State University; Heidi
Nickisher, Rochester Institute of Technology; Bonnie Noble, University
of North Carolina–Charlotte; Abigail Noonan, Rochester Institute of
Technology; Karen Michelle O’Day, University of Wisconsin–Eau
Claire; Allison Lee Palmer, University of Oklahoma; Martin Patrick,
Illinois State University; Jane Peters, University of Kentucky; Julie
Anne Plax, University of Arizona; Donna Karen Reid, Chemeketa
Community College; Albert W. Reischuch, Kent State University;
Jonathan Ribner, Boston University; Cynthea Riesenberg, Washington
Latin School; James G. Rogers Jr., Florida Southern College; Carey
Rote, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi; David J. Roxburgh, Har-
vard University; Conrad Rudolph, University of California–Riverside;
Catherine B. Scallen, Case Western Reserve University; Natasha Sea-
man, Berklee College of Music; Malia E. Serrano, Grossmont College;
Fred T. Smith, Kent State University; Laura Sommer, Daemen College;
Nancy Steele-Hamme, Midwestern State University; Andrew Stewart,
University of California–Berkeley; John R. Stocking, University of Cal-
gary; Francesca Tronchin, Ohio State University; Kelly Wacker, Univer-
sity of Montevallo; Carolynne Whitefeather, Utica College; Nancy L.
Wicker, University of Mississippi; Alastair Wright, Princeton Univer-
sity; Michael Zell, Boston University.
I am also happy to have this opportunity to express my gratitude
to the extraordinary group of people at Wadsworth involved with the
editing, production, and distribution of Art through the Ages. Some of
them I have now worked with on various projects for more than a
decade and feel privileged to count among my friends. The success of
the Gardner series in all of its various permutations depends in no
small part on the expertise and unflagging commitment of these
dedicated professionals: Sean Wakely, executive vice president, Cen-
gage Arts and Sciences; P. J. Boardman, vice president and editor-in-
chief, Cengage Arts and Sciences; Clark Baxter, publisher; Sharon
Adams Poore, senior development editor; Helen Triller-Yambert, de-
velopment editor; Lianne Ames, senior content project manager;
Kimberly Apfelbaum, assistant editor; Wendy Constantine, senior
media editor; Nell Pepper, editorial assistant; Cate Rickard Barr,
senior art director; Scott Stewart, vice president managing director
sales; Diane Wenckebach, senior marketing manager; as well as Kim
Adams, Heather Baxley, William Christy, Doug Easton, tani hasegawa,
Cara Murphy, Ellen Pettengell, Kathryn Stewart, and Joy Westberg.
I am also deeply grateful to the following for their significant
contributions to the 13th edition of Art through the Ages: Joan Keyes,
Dovetail Publishing Services; Ida May Norton, copy editor; Sarah
Evertson and Stephen Forsling, photo researchers; Pete Shanks and
Jon Peck, accuracy readers; Pat Lewis, proofreader; John Pierce,
Thompson Type; Rick Stanley, Digital Media Inc., U.S.A; Don Larson,
Mapping Specialists; Anne Draus, Scratchgravel; and Cindy Geiss,
Graphic World. I also wish to acknowledge my debt to Edward Tufte
for an illuminating afternoon spent discussing publication design
and production issues and for his invaluable contribution to the crea-
tion of the scales that accompany all reproductions of paintings,
sculptures, and other artworks in this edition.
Finally, I owe thanks to my colleagues at Boston University and to
the thousands of students and the scores of teaching fellows in my
art history courses during the past three decades. From them I have
learned much that has helped determine the form and content of Art
through the Ages and made it a much better book than it otherwise
might have been.
Fred S. Kleiner
Preface xiii
 1 in.

I-1 King on horseback with attendants, from Benin, Nigeria, ca. 1550–1680. Bronze, 1
7 –12  high. Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York (Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller).
This African artist used hierarchy of scale to distinguish the relative rank of the figures, making the king the largest. The sculptor
created the relief by casting (pouring bronze into a mold).
 I N T RO D U C T I O N :
W H AT I S A RT
H I S TO RY ?

xcept when referring to the modern academic discipline, people do not often juxtapose the words
E “art” and “history.” They tend to think of history as the record and interpretation of past human ac-
tions, particularly social and political actions. Most think of art, quite correctly, as part of the present—
as something people can see and touch. Of course, people cannot see or touch history’s vanished human
events, but a visible, tangible artwork is a kind of persisting event. One or more artists made it at a cer-
tain time and in a specific place, even if no one today knows just who, when, where, or why. Although
created in the past, an artwork continues to exist in the present, long surviving its times. The first
painters and sculptors died 30,000 years ago, but their works remain, some of them exhibited in glass
cases in museums built only a few years ago.
Modern museum visitors can admire these objects from the remote past—and countless others hu-
mankind has produced over the millennia—without any knowledge of the circumstances that led to the
creation of those works. The beauty or sheer size of an object can impress people, the artist’s virtuosity
in the handling of ordinary or costly materials can dazzle them, or the subject depicted can move them.
Viewers can react to what they see, interpret the work in the light of their own experience, and judge it a
success or a failure. These are all valid responses to a work of art. But the enjoyment and appreciation of
artworks in museum settings are relatively recent phenomena, as is the creation of artworks solely for
museum-going audiences to view.
Today, it is common for artists to work in private studios and to create paintings, sculptures, and
other objects commercial art galleries will offer for sale. Usually, someone the artist has never met will
purchase the artwork and display it in a setting the artist has never seen. This practice is not a new phe-
nomenon in the history of art—an ancient potter decorating a vase for sale at a village market stall prob-
ably did not know who would buy the pot or where it would be housed—but it is not at all typical. In
fact, it is exceptional. Throughout history, most artists created paintings, sculptures, and other objects
for specific patrons and settings and to fulfill a specific purpose, even if today no one knows the original
contexts of most of those works. Museum visitors can appreciate the visual and tactile qualities of these
objects, but they cannot understand why they were made or why they appear as they do without know-
ing the circumstances of their creation. Art appreciation does not require knowledge of the historical
context of an artwork (or a building). Art history does.
 Thus, a central aim of art history is to determine the original con-
text of artworks. Art historians seek to achieve a full understanding not
only of why these “persisting events” of human history look the way
they do but also of why the artistic events happened at all. What unique
set of circumstances gave rise to the erection of a particular building or
led an individual patron to commission a certain artist to fashion a sin-
gular artwork for a specific place? The study of history is therefore vital
to art history. And art history is often very important to the study of
history. Art objects and buildings are historical documents that can
shed light on the peoples who made them and on the times of their cre-
ation in a way other historical documents cannot. Furthermore, artists
and architects can affect history by reinforcing or challenging cultural
values and practices through the objects they create and the structures
they build. Thus, the history of art and architecture is inseparable from
the study of history, although the two disciplines are not the same.
The following pages introduce some of the distinctive subjects art
historians address and the kinds of questions they ask, and explain
some of the basic terminology they use when answering these ques-
tions. Readers armed with this arsenal of questions and terms will be
ready to explore the multifaceted world of art through the ages.
ART HISTORY
IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Art historians study the visual and tangible objects humans make and
the structures humans build. From the earliest Greco-Roman art crit-
ics on, scholars have studied objects that their makers consciously
manufactured as “art” and to which the artists assigned formal titles.
But today’s art historians also study a vast number of objects that their
creators and owners almost certainly did not consider to be “works of
art.” That is certainly true for many of the works examined in this
book. Art historians, however, generally ask the same kinds of ques-
tions about what they study, whether they employ a restrictive or ex-
pansive definition of art.
The Questions Art Historians Ask
HOW OLD IS IT? Before art historians can construct a history
of art, they must be sure they know the date of each work they study.
Thus, an indispensable subject of art historical inquiry is chronology,
the dating of art objects and buildings. If researchers cannot deter-
mine a monument’s age, they cannot place the work in its historical
context. Art historians have developed many ways to establish, or at
least approximate, the date of an artwork.
Physical evidence often reliably indicates an object’s age. The
material used for a statue, painting, or vase—bronze, stone, or
porcelain, to name only a few—may not have been invented before a
certain time, indicating the earliest possible date someone could
have fashioned the work. Or artists may have ceased using certain
materials—such as specific kinds of inks and papers for drawings—
at a known time, providing the latest possible dates for objects made
of those materials. Sometimes the material (or the manufacturing
technique) of an object or a building can establish a very precise date
of production or construction.
Documentary evidence can help pinpoint the date of an object
or building when a dated written document mentions the work.
Internal evidence can play a significant role in dating an art-
work. A painter might have depicted an identifiable person or a
kind of hairstyle, clothing, or furniture fashionable only at a certain
time. If so, the art historian can assign a more accurate date to that
painting.
2 Introduction WHAT IS ART HISTORY?
Stylistic evidence is also very important. The analysis of style—an
artist’s distinctive manner of producing an object—is the art histo-
rian’s special sphere. Unfortunately, because it is a subjective assess-
ment, stylistic evidence is by far the most unreliable chronological cri-
terion. Still, art historians find style a very useful tool for establishing
chronology.
WHAT IS ITS STYLE? Defining artistic style is one of the key
elements of art historical inquiry, although the analysis of artworks
solely in terms of style no longer dominates the field as it once did.
Art historians speak of several different kinds of artistic styles.
Period style refers to the characteristic artistic manner of a spe-
cific time, usually within a distinct culture, such as “Classic Maya” in
Mesoamerica or “Southern Song” in China.
Regional style is the term art historians use to describe varia-
tions in style tied to geography. Like an object’s date, its provenance,
or place of origin, can significantly determine its character. Very of-
ten two artworks from the same place made centuries apart are more
similar than contemporaneous works from two different regions.
The different kinds of artistic styles are not mutually exclusive.
For example, an artist’s personal style may change dramatically during
a long career. Art historians then must distinguish among the different
period styles of a particular artist.
WHAT IS ITS SUBJECT? Another major concern of art histo-
rians is, of course, subject matter, encompassing the story, or narra-
tive; the scene presented; the action’s time and place; the persons in-
volved; and the environment and its details. Some artworks, such as
modern abstract paintings, have no subject, not even a setting. The
“subject” is the artwork itself. But when artists represent people,
places, or actions, viewers must identify these aspects to achieve com-
plete understanding of the work. Art historians traditionally separate
pictorial subjects into various categories, such as religious, historical,
mythological, genre (daily life), portraiture, landscape (a depiction of a
place), still life (an arrangement of inanimate objects), and their nu-
merous subdivisions and combinations.
Iconography—literally, the “writing of images”—refers both to the
content, or subject of an artwork, and to the study of content in art. By
extension, it also includes the study of symbols, images that stand for
other images or encapsulate ideas. Artists also may depict figures with
unique attributes, such as a scepter, headdress, or costume that iden-
tifies a figure as a king (FIG. I-1). Throughout the history of art,
artists also have used personifications—abstract ideas codified in hu-
man form. Worldwide, people visualize Liberty as a robed woman
with a torch because of the fame of the colossal statue set up in New
York City’s harbor in the 19th century. Even without considering style
and without knowing a work’s maker, informed viewers can deter-
mine much about the work’s period and provenance by iconograph-
ical and subject analysis alone.
WHO MADE IT? Although signing (and dating) works is quite
common (but by no means universal) today, in the history of art
countless works exist whose artists remain unknown. Because per-
sonal style can play a large role in determining the character of an
artwork, art historians often try to assign, or attribute, anonymous
works to known artists. Sometimes they assemble a group of works
all thought to be by the same person, even though none of the objects
in the group is the known work of an artist with a recorded name.
Scholars base their attributions on internal evidence, such as the dis-
tinctive way an artist draws or carves drapery folds or earlobes. It re-
quires a keen, highly trained eye and long experience to become a
connoisseur, an expert in assigning artworks to “the hand” of one
artist rather than another. Attribution is subjective, of course, and
ever open to doubt. At present, for example, international debate
rages over attributions to the famous 17th-century Dutch painter
Rembrandt.
Sometimes a group of artists works in the same style at the same
time and place. Art historians designate such a group as a school.
“School” does not mean an educational institution. The term con-
notes only chronological, stylistic, and geographic similarity. Art his-
torians speak, for example, of the Kano School in 17th-century
Japan.
WHO PAID FOR IT? The interest many art historians show in
attribution reflects their conviction that the identity of an artwork’s
maker is the major reason the object looks the way it does. For them,
personal style is of paramount importance. But in many times and
places, artists had little to say about what form their work would
take. They toiled in obscurity, doing the bidding of their patrons,
those who paid them to make individual works or employed them
on a continuing basis. The role of patrons in dictating the content
and shaping the form of artworks is also an important subject of art
historical inquiry.
The Words Art Historians Use
Like all specialists, art historians have their own specialized vocabu-
lary. That vocabulary consists of hundreds of words, but certain ba-
sic terms are indispensable for describing artworks and buildings of
any time and place. They make up the essential vocabulary of formal
analysis, the visual analysis of artistic form. Definitions of the most
important of these art historical terms follow.
FORM AND COMPOSITION Form refers to an object’s shape
and structure, either in two dimensions (for example, a figure painted
on a silk scroll) or in three dimensions (such as a statue carved from
a stone block). Two forms may take the same shape but may differ in
their color, texture, and other qualities. Composition refers to how an
artist organizes (composes) forms in an artwork, either by placing
shapes on a flat surface or by arranging forms in space.
MATERIAL AND TECHNIQUE To create art forms, artists
shape materials (pigment, clay, stone, gold, and many more) with
tools (pens, brushes, chisels, and so forth). Each of the materials and
tools available has its own potentialities and limitations. Part of all
artists’ creative activity is to select the medium and instrument most
suitable to the artists’ purpose. The processes artists employ, such as
applying paint to silk with a brush, and the distinctive, personal ways
they handle materials constitute their technique. Form, material, and
technique interrelate and are central to analyzing any work of art.
LINE Among the most important elements defining an artwork’s
shape or form is line. A line can be understood as the path of a point
moving in space, an invisible line of sight. More commonly, however,
artists and architects make a line tangible by drawing (or chiseling) it
on a plane, a flat surface. A line may be very thin, wirelike, and delicate.
It may be thick and heavy. Or it may alternate quickly from broad to
narrow, the strokes jagged or the outline broken. When a continuous
line defines an object’s outer shape, art historians call it a contour line.
COLOR Light reveals all colors. Light in the world of the painter
and other artists differs from natural light. Natural light, or sunlight,
is whole or additive light. As the sum of all the wavelengths composing
the visible spectrum, natural light may be disassembled or fragmented
into the individual colors of the spectral band. The painter’s light in
art—the light reflected from pigments and objects—is subtractive
light. Paint pigments produce their individual colors by reflecting a
segment of the spectrum while absorbing all the rest. Green pigment,
for example, subtracts or absorbs all the light in the spectrum except
that seen as green.
TEXTURE The term texture refers to the quality of a surface, such
as rough or shiny. Art historians distinguish between true texture, or
the tactile quality of the surface, and represented texture, as when
painters depict an object as having a certain texture even though the
pigment is the true texture. Texture is, of course, a key determinant of
any sculpture’s character. A viewer’s first impulse is usually to handle a
piece of sculpture—even though museum signs often warn “Do not
touch!” Sculptors plan for this natural human response, using surfaces
varying in texture from rugged coarseness to polished smoothness.
Textures are often intrinsic to a material, influencing the type of stone,
wood, clay, or metal sculptors select.
SPACE, MASS, AND VOLUME Space is the bounded or bound-
less “container” of objects. For art historians, space can be the literal
three-dimensional space occupied by a statue or a vase or contained
within a room or courtyard. Or space can be illusionistic, as when
painters depict an image (or illusion) of the three-dimensional spa-
tial world on a two-dimensional surface.
Mass and volume describe three-dimensional objects and space.
In both architecture and sculpture, mass is the bulk, density, and
weight of matter in space. Yet the mass need not be solid. It can be the
exterior form of enclosed space. Mass can apply to a solid wood or
stone statue, to a mosque or a Buddhist temple—architectural shells
enclosing sometimes vast spaces—and to a hollow metal statue or
baked clay pot. Volume is the space that mass organizes, divides, or
encloses. It may be a building’s interior spaces, the intervals between
a structure’s masses, or the amount of space occupied by three-
dimensional objects such as sculpture, pottery, or furniture. Volume
and mass describe both the exterior and interior forms of a work of
art—the forms of the matter of which it is composed and the spaces
immediately around the work and interacting with it.
CARVING AND CASTING Sculptural technique falls into
two basic categories, subtractive and additive. Carving is a subtractive
technique. The final form is a reduction of the original mass of a block
of stone, a piece of wood, or another material. Wooden statues were
once tree trunks, and stone statues began as blocks pried from moun-
tains. All sculptors of stone or wood cut away (subtract) “excess mate-
rial.” When they finish, they “leave behind” the statue.
In additive sculpture, the artist builds up the forms, usually in
clay around a framework, or armature. Or a sculptor may fashion a
mold, a hollow form for shaping, or casting, a fluid substance such as
bronze (FIG. I-1).
RELIEF SCULPTURE Statues that exist independent of any
architectural frame or setting and that viewers can walk around are
freestanding sculptures, or sculptures in the round, whether the artist
produced the piece by carving or casting. In relief sculpture, the sub-
jects project from the background but remain part of it. In high-
relief sculpture, the images project boldly. In the Benin plaque illus-
trated on page xiv (FIG. I-1), the relief is so high that not only do the
forms cast shadows on the background, but some parts are even in
the round. In low relief, or bas-relief, the projection is slight. Relief
sculpture, like sculpture in the round, can be produced either by
carving or casting.
ARCHITECTURAL DRAWINGS Buildings are groupings
of enclosed spaces and enclosing masses. People experience architec-
ture both visually and by moving through and around it, so they per-
ceive architectural space and mass together. Architects can represent
Art History in the 21st Century 3
1 ft.

I-2 Claude Lorrain, Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, 1648. Oil on canvas, 4
10  6
4. National Gallery, London.
To create the illusion of a deep landscape, Claude Lorrain employed perspective, reducing the size of and blurring the most distant forms. Also, all
diagonal lines converge on a single point.

these spaces and masses graphically in several ways, including as
plans, sections, elevations, and cutaway drawings.
A plan, essentially a map of a floor, shows the placement of a
structure’s masses and, therefore, the spaces they circumscribe and
enclose. A section, like a vertical plan, depicts the placement of the
masses as if someone cut through the building along a plane. Draw-
ings showing a theoretical slice across a structure’s width are lateral
sections. Those cutting through a building’s length are longitudinal
sections. An elevation drawing is a head-on view of an external or in-
ternal wall. A cutaway combines in a single drawing an exterior view
with an interior view of part of a building.
This overview of the art historian’s vocabulary is not exhaustive,
nor have artists used only painting, drawing, sculpture, and architec-
ture as media over the millennia. Ceramics, jewelry, and textiles are
just some of the numerous other arts. All of them involve highly spe-
cialized techniques described in distinct vocabularies. As in this in-
troductory chapter, new terms are in italics where they first appear.
The comprehensive Glossary at the end of the book contains defini-
tions of all italicized terms.
DIFFERENT WAYS OF SEEING
Even a cursory look at the works illustrated in this book will quickly
reveal that throughout history, artists have created an extraordinary
variety of works for a multitude of different purposes. Despite this
diversity, the art produced by most non-Western artists differs from
art produced in the Western world by the absence of two of the most
characteristic ways that Western artists have used to represent peo-
ple, objects, and places since the Greeks pioneered them a half mil-
lennium before the Common Era—perspective and foreshortening.
PERSPECTIVE AND FORESHORTENING Perspective is
a device to create the illusion of depth or space on a two-dimensional
surface. The French painter Claude Lorrain (1600–1682) em-
ployed several perspectival devices in Embarkation of the Queen
of Sheba (FIG. I-2), a painting of a biblical episode set in a 17th-
century European harbor with a Roman ruin in the left foreground.
For example, the figures and boats on the shoreline are much larger
than those in the distance. Decreasing the size of an object makes it

4 Introduction WHAT IS ART HISTORY?


I-3 Ogata Korin, White and Red Plum Blossoms, Edo period, ca. 1710–1716. Pair of twofold screens. Ink, color, and gold leaf on paper, each screen
5
1 –58   5
7 –78 . MOA Art Museum, Shizuoka-ken.
Ogata Korin was more concerned with creating an interesting composition of shapes on a surface than with locating objects in space. Asian artists
rarely employed Western perspective.
appear farther away. Also, the top and bottom of the port building at
the painting’s right side are not parallel horizontal lines, as they are
in a real building. Instead, the lines converge beyond the structure,
leading viewers’ eyes toward the hazy, indistinct sun on the horizon.
These perspectival devices—the reduction of figure size, the conver-
gence of diagonal lines, and the blurring of distant forms—have
been familiar features of Western art for 2500 years. But it is impor-
tant to note at the outset that all kinds of perspective are only picto-
rial conventions, even when one or more types of perspective may
be so common in a given culture that people, including most read-
ers of this book, accept them as “natural” or as “true” means of rep-
resenting the natural world.
In White and Red Plum Blossoms (FIG. I-3), a Japanese land-
scape painting on two folding screens, Ogata Korin (1658–1716)
used none of these Western perspective conventions. He showed the
two plum trees as seen from a position on the ground, but viewers
look down on the stream between them from above. Less concerned
with locating the trees and stream in space than with composing
shapes on a surface, the painter played the water’s gently swelling
curves against the jagged contours of the branches and trunks. Nei-
ther the French nor the Japanese painting can be said to project “cor-
rectly” what viewers “in fact” see. One painting is not a “better” pic-
ture of the world than the other. The European and Asian artists
simply approached the problem of picture-making differently.
Artists also represent single figures in space in varying ways.
When the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) painted
Lion Hunt (FIG. I-4), he used foreshortening for all the hunters and
animals—that is, he represented their bodies at angles to the picture
plane. When in life one views a figure at an angle, the body appears
to contract as it extends back in space. Foreshortening is a kind of
perspective. It produces the illusion that one part of the body is far-
ther away than another, even though all the forms are on the same
surface. Especially noteworthy in Lion Hunt are the gray horse at the
1 ft.
left, seen from behind with the bottom of its left rear hoof facing
viewers and most of its head hidden by its rider’s shield, and the
fallen hunter at the painting’s lower right corner, whose barely visi-
ble legs and feet recede into the distance.
Like the Japanese painter (FIG. I-3), the African sculptor who de-
picted the Benin King on horseback with his attendants (FIG. I-1) did
not employ any of the Western conventions seen in the Rubens
painting (FIG. I-4). Although the Rubens painting and the Benin
plaque are of approximately the same date, the African figures are all
in the foreground, stand (or sit) in upright positions, and face the
viewer directly. The sculptor represented nothing at an angle. The
viewer even looks at the horse head-on and sees only its two front
legs and head. Once gain, neither approach to picture-making is the
“correct” manner. The artists’ strikingly divergent styles reflect the
significantly different societies of 17th-century Europe and Africa.
PROPORTION AND SCALE The Rubens painting and the
Benin relief also differ markedly in the artists’ treatment of porpor-
tion and scale. Proportion concerns the relationships (in terms of
size) of the parts of persons, buildings, or objects. People can judge
“correct proportions” intuitively (“that statue’s head seems the right
size for the body”). Or proportion can be a mathematical relation-
ship between the size of one part of an artwork or building and the
other parts within the work. Proportion in art implies using a mod-
ule, or basic unit of measure. When an artist or architect uses a for-
mal system of proportions, all parts of a building, body, or other en-
tity will be fractions or multiples of the module. A module might be
a column’s diameter, the height of a human head, or any other com-
ponent whose dimensions can be multiplied or divided to determine
the size of the work’s other parts.
In certain times and places, artists have formulated canons, or sys-
tems, of “correct” or “ideal” proportions for representing human fig-
ures, constituent parts of buildings, and so forth. In ancient Greece,
Different Ways of Seeing 5
1 ft.
I-4 Peter Paul Rubens, Lion Hunt, 1617–1618. Oil on canvas, 8
2  12
5. Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
Foreshortening—the representation of a figure or object at an angle to the picture plane—is a common device in Western art for creating the
illusion of depth. Foreshortening is a type of perspective.
many sculptors devised canons of proportions so strict and all-
encompassing that they calculated the size of every body part in ad-
vance, even the fingers and toes, according to mathematical ratios.
In other cases, artists have used disproportion to focus attention
on one body part (often the head) or to single out a group member
(usually the leader). These intentional “unnatural” discrepancies in
proportion constitute what art historians call hierarchy of scale, the
enlarging of elements considered the most important. On the Benin
plaque (FIG. I-1), the sculptor enlarged all the heads for emphasis
and also varied the size of each figure according to its social status.
Central, largest, and therefore most important is the Benin king,
mounted on horseback. The horse has been a symbol of power and
wealth in many societies from prehistory to the present. That the
Benin king is disproportionately larger than his horse, contrary to
nature, further aggrandizes him. Two large attendants fan the king.
Other figures of smaller size and status at the Benin court stand on
the king’s left and right and in the plaque’s upper corners. One tiny
figure next to the horse is almost hidden from view beneath the
king’s feet. In contrast, in the Rubens painting (FIG. I-4), no figure is
larger than any other.
One problem that students of art history—and professional art
historians too—confront when studying illustrations in art history
books is that although the relative sizes of figures and objects in a
painting or sculpture are easy to discern, it is impossible to deter-
mine the absolute size of the works reproduced because they all ap-
6 Introduction WHAT IS ART HISTORY?
pear at approximately the same size on the page. Readers of Art
through the Ages can learn the size of all artworks from the dimen-
sions given in the captions and, more intuitively, from the scales that
appear—for the first time in this 13th edition—at the lower left or
right corner of the illustration.
ART AND CULTURE The history of art can be a history of
artists and their works, of styles and stylistic change, of materials and
techniques, of images and themes and their meanings, and of con-
texts and cultures and patrons. The best art historians analyze art-
works from many viewpoints. But no art historian (or scholar in any
other field), no matter how broad-minded in approach and no mat-
ter how experienced, can be truly objective. Like artists, art historians
are members of a society, participants in its culture. How can scholars
(and museum visitors and travelers to foreign locales) comprehend
cultures unlike their own? They can try to reconstruct the original
cultural contexts of artworks, but they are limited by their distance
from the thought patterns of the cultures they study and by the ob-
structions to understanding—the assumptions, presuppositions, and
prejudices peculiar to their own culture—their own thought patterns
raise. Art historians may reconstruct a distorted picture of the past
because of culture-bound blindness.
A single instance underscores how differently people of diverse
cultures view the world and how various ways of seeing can cause
sharp differences in how artists depict the world. Illustrated here are
1 in.

I-5 Left: John Henry Sylvester, Portrait of Te Pehi Kupe, 1826. Watercolor, 8 –14   6 –14 . National Library of Australia, Canberra (Rex Nan Kivell
Collection). Right: Te Pehi Kupe, Self-Portrait, 1826. From Leo Frobenius, The Childhood of Man (New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1909).
These strikingly different portraits of the same Maori chief reveal how differently Western and non-Western artists “see” a subject. Understanding
the cultural context of artworks is vital to art history.

two contemporaneous portraits (FIG. I-5) of a 19th-century Maori
chieftain—one by an Englishman, John Sylvester (active early
19th century), and the other by the New Zealand chieftain himself,
Te Pehi Kupe (d. 1829). Both reproduce the chieftain’s facial tattoo-
ing. The European artist (FIG. I-5, left) included the head and shoul-
ders and underplayed the tattooing. The tattoo pattern is one aspect
of the likeness among many, no more or less important than the
chieftain’s European attire. Sylvester also recorded his subject’s mo-
mentary glance toward the right and the play of light on his hair,
fleeting aspects that have nothing to do with the figure’s identity.
In contrast, Te Pehi Kupe’s self-portrait (FIG. I-5, right)—made
during a trip to Liverpool, England, to obtain European arms to take
back to New Zealand—is not a picture of a man situated in space and
bathed in light. Rather, it is the chieftain’s statement of the supreme
importance of the tattoo design that symbolizes his rank among his
people. Remarkably, Te Pehi Kupe created the tattoo patterns from
memory, without the aid of a mirror. The splendidly composed in-
signia, presented as a flat design separated from the body and even
from the head, is Te Pehi Kupe’s image of himself. Only by under-
standing the cultural context of each portrait can viewers hope to un-
derstand why either representation appears as it does.
As noted at the outset, the study of the context of artworks and
buildings is one of the central concerns of art historians. Art through
the Ages: Non-Western Perspectives seeks to present a history of art
and architecture in Asia, the Islamic world, the Americas, Oceania,
and Africa that will help readers understand not only the subjects,
styles, and techniques of paintings, sculptures, buildings, and other
art forms created in those parts of the world from the earliest times
to the present but also their cultural and historical contexts. That
story now begins.

Different Ways of Seeing 7

1-1 Interior of the chaitya hall, Karle, India, ca. 50 ce.
An early example of Buddhist architecture, the chaitya hall at Karle is carved out of the living rock. It has a pillared ambulatory
that allows worshipers to circumambulate the stupa in the apse of the cave.
 1
SOUTH AND
SOUTHEAST ASIA
BEFORE 1200
outh and Southeast Asia is a vast geographic area comprising, among others, the nations of India, Pak-
S istan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and Indonesia (MAP 1-1). Not surpris-
ingly, the region’s inhabitants display tremendous cultural and religious diversity. The people of India alone
speak more than 20 different major languages. Those spoken in the north belong to the Indo-European
language family, whereas those in the south form a completely separate linguistic family called Dravidian.
The art of South and Southeast Asia is equally diverse—and very ancient. When Alexander the Great and
his army reached India in 326 BCE, the civilization they encountered was already more than two millennia
old. The remains of the first cities in the Indus Valley predate the palaces of Homer’s Trojan War heroes by
a millennium. Covered in this chapter are the art and architecture of South and Southeast Asia from their
beginnings almost five millennia ago through the 12th century. Chapter 2 treats the later art of the region
up to the present day.

INDIA AND PAKISTAN

In the third millennium BCE, a great civilization arose over a wide geographic area along the Indus River
in Pakistan and extended into India as far south as Gujarat and east beyond Delhi. Archaeologists have
dubbed this early South Asian culture the Indus Civilization.

Indus Civilization
The Indus Civilization flourished from about 2600 to 1500 BCE, and evidence indicates there was active
trade during this period between the peoples of the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia. The most important
excavated Indus sites are Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. These early, fully developed cities featured streets
oriented to compass points and multistoried houses built of carefully formed and precisely laid kiln-
baked bricks. But in sharp contrast to the contemporaneous civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, no
surviving Indus building has yet been identified as a temple or a palace.
 I R AN
East
AFG H AN I ST A N China
Peshawar CHINA Sea
GANDHARA H
i m T I B ET
Harappa
a l
a y
P AKI ST AN s R. P U N JA B Delhi N
E
a s S I KKI M
u Lumbini P A Philippine
Ind Mathura
Kushinagara L
Mohenjo- Ga
BHUTAN Sea
daro Yamuna R. n g es R. Patna (Pataliputra)
Khajuraho Sarnath
Udayagiri Barabar Bodh Gaya
G

Hills B I H A R
U

Sanchi
JA

M Y ANM AR
Deogarh
RA

(B U RMA )
T

INDIA O R I S S A BANGLADESH LAO S

Ajanta

Me
Dhauli

A
South

G
(Bombay) Mumbai Karle D e cca n P HILIP P I N E S

ko
IN
China

ng
W e s

AL
Elephanta R.
Plateau THAILAND
K
VIETNAM Sea
K rishna R. CAMBODIA
Angkor
t e

Badami Prasat Andet

Chennai Bay of
r n

Arabian (Madras) Bengal

Sea
Mamallapuram
G

Andaman
Celebes
ha

Thanjavur Sea BRUNEI

Sea
ts

Punjai
Polonnaruwa M A L A Y S I A

S RI L A NK A S Borneo Celebes
( C EY L O N ) u
m SINGAPORE
a
t
r
INDIAN OCEAN a I N D O N E S I A
South Asia Java Sea
Dieng
Southeast Asia 0 400 800 miles Plateau
0 400 800 kilometers Borobudur
J a va

MAP 1-1 South and Southeast Asian sites before 1200.

MOHENJO-DARO The Indus cities boasted one of the world’s
first sophisticated systems of water supply and sewage. Throughout
Mohenjo-daro, hundreds of wells provided fresh water to homes
that featured some of the oldest recorded private bathing areas and
toilet facilities with drainage into public sewers. In the heart of the
city stood the so-called Great Bath, a complex of rooms centered on
a sunken brick pool (FIG. 1-2) 39 feet long, 23 feet wide, and 8 feet
deep. The builders made the pool watertight by sealing the joints be-
tween the bricks with bitumen, an asphaltlike material also used in
Mesopotamia. The bath probably was not a purely recreational facil-
ity but rather a place for ritual bathing of the kind still practiced in
the region today.
Excavators have discovered surprisingly little art from the long-
lived Indus Civilization, and all of the objects found are small.

1-2 Great Bath, Mohenjo-daro, Pakistan,

ca. 2600–1900 bce.
The Indus cities of the third millennium
BCE had sophisticated water-supply and
sewage systems, which made possible
this brick complex used for ritual bathing
of a kind still practiced in South Asia
today.

10 Chapter 1 SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA BEFORE 1200

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 DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
 FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
 Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA

I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
 The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

 This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
 “We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
 Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
 BRAZIER

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

 FINISHING THE BOTTOM

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

 LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
 Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

 BEATING THE BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN