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James Ellison
Between 1987 and 1989, after completing undergraduate study in anthropology at MSU, I worked in southern Somalia with an international archaeological project researching changes in human ecology. We lived at the foot of a granitic inselberg (a large rock outcropping) called Buur Heybe, which was famous for its potters. Agriculturists, they traded their wares with sedentary hunters, and with nomadic hunters and camel pastoralists. In the 1980s their pottery was traded throughout southern Somalia, transported by camels and trucks.
The aashuun on display in the exhibition, part of a larger ethnographic collection I made, was a vessel for retrieving water. Women filled their aashuuns in the inselberg's natural cisterns to get fresh water for their homes.
I learned from friends that this area was devastated by forces fighting in Somalia's civil war, and that many of the people we had worked with were killed. I do not know whether the pottery tradition that this aashuun represents came to an end then.
The wooden comb that is in the exhibition was a gift to me by friends before I left Somalia in 1989. It is disturbingly evocative of the times. One side is adorned with attractive non-representational carving that was common on such items in this predominantly Muslim area. On the other side, an artist carved a representation of an AK-47 combat weapon. Later, above the image of the gun, someone engraved a symbol of one of the local lineages.
The comb is a tangible sign of a terrible irony that involves the aashuun and my whole collection. I made this collection for Michigan State University Museum because I believed that the people in this region were engaged in interactions that were unique and threatened by late-twentieth-century social and economic changes. I did not expect life there to change as suddenly as it did, nor in the manner it did, despite many clear signs of war.
Collector / Donor Statements
Virginia Artis . Nancy and George Axinn . Marsha MacDowell and Kurt Dewhurst . James Ellison . Robert Glew . Suzanne Miers . Simon Ottenberg . Barbara Porter-Spaulding . Raymond Silverman . Neal Sobania . Robert Zigler
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