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Darrera modificació: 2026-01-30
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat
Chouin, Gérard, "Snakes, Rashes, and Afflicted Bodies: Terracottas and Images of Disease in Medieval West Africa", dins: Jones, Lori (ed.), Materialities of Disease Across the Medieval World: Images, Objects, and Remains, Leeds, Arc Humanities Press, 2025, pp. 203-232.
- Resum
- This chapter examines how terracotta sculptures from medieval West Africa offer rare insight into past experiences and interpretations of disease, healing, and embodiment in societies long marginalized within global histories of health. Focusing on corpora from Nok, Koma, the Inland Niger Delta, and Ife, it argues that these objects functioned not merely as artistic expressions but as components of complex therapeutic and ritual systems. Some terracottas display realistic physical manifestations—pustules, swellings, deformities, paralysis—that invite cautious retrospective diagnosis, while others encode illness and healing symbolically, particularly through the recurrent motif of snakes as mediating spiritual forces. New analytical approaches, including CT-scanning and aDNA sampling, reveal internal cavities used for libations or medicinal substances, strengthening the case for their active role in ritual treatment. By integrating archaeological, anthropological, art-historical, and medical-historical perspectives, the chapter reframes these sculptures as material witnesses of healing practices that linked bodies, substances, ancestors, and spiritual agents. In doing so, it challenges narratives that portray medieval African societies as passive recipients of disease and instead emphasizes their agency, innovation, and cosmological sophistication. The chapter ultimately situates West Africa within the broader medieval global health landscape, demonstrating deep historical continuities in therapeutic thought and practice.
- Matèries
- Història de la medicina
Història de l'art
- URL
- https://www.academia.edu/118929497/2025_Snakes_Rash ...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/393166308_ ...
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