Significance Of Ethnographic Evidence
Through sustained and careful observation, anthropologists have long produced meticulous descriptions of societies’ practices, ceremonies, and beliefs at a given point in time. Ethnography provides valuable context and meaning to historical data and events. Anthropologists with local co-researchers have produced a large body of data for historians to make use of in analyzing Bantu-speaking regions from the emergence of colonization in the late nineteenth to the end of colonization in the later mid-twentieth century. Ethnographic research conducted in Bantu speaking communities in earlier decades serves as historical records for present day historians to search through to gather dates to help reconstruct late-precolonial histories.
How To Use Ethnographic Evidence
Many ethnographic studies have been critiqued as static presentations of societies, yet for the historian they are useful snapshots of observations at a particular moment in time. Ethnographies contain detailed descriptions of societies and cultures as they were at a particular moment in time. This is useful in multiple ways; as comparative ethnography we come to see how societies looked similar or different at a specific moment, but it also provided a point of contrast to both earlier centuries and later decades. Historians can analyze ethnographies comparatively to assess the historical connections across communities and the ways in which cultures shift over time and space. Historians can weigh ethnographic evidence against archaeological, oral, and linguistic data. This multi-method approach allows us to identify patterns of cultural activity in multiple layers of history. Making comparisons, sometimes called a comparative approach, can be a useful initial step in the research process. The comparative approach allows a researcher to make some preliminary observations and gives a researcher a chance to identify and compare sociocultural similarities (and differences) across distinct societies and geographical areas.
Sample Ethnographic Data
Examples of cultural and ethnographic ideas represented in vocabularies of speakers of many different Bantu languages are evidenced across sub-Saharan Africa. For example, culture and comparative ethnographic data reflect in many different ways the enduring importance of ancestors. Strong evidence exists in the ethnographic, oral, and linguistic data that relatives of previous generations continue to matter in abstract and tangible ways in the lives of the living. The many published ethnographies of speakers of Bantu languages feature the preeminence of ancestors. In works on Bioko Island (formerly Fernando Po), off the coast of Cameroon, the Buni, a Bantu-speaking people, recognize ancestors’ spirits playing a critical role in guiding newborn children into the lineage from the time of conception. (Ibrahim Sundiata, “Engaging Equatorial Guinea: Bioko in the Diasporic Imagination,” Afro-Hispanic Review 28, no. 2 (2009): 131–142, 468–469.) On the other side of sub-Saharan Africa, in modern-day Tanzania, the belief in ancestors intervening on behalf of the living is in play among Bantu-speaking Gogo. Through the assistance of trained diviners, discontented ancestors are supplicated to when children become ill. This kind of ritual exists very widely among Bantu speakers, not just the Gogo, because ancestors, who remain an active part of the lineage, can both cause and cure illness. In Bantu societies, ancestor spirits are ubiquitous in oral traditions, artistic forms like masks, sites of memory such as shrines, in political rhetoric and practice, to name a few aspects of life imbued with ancestors. Comparing the different societies’ ideas of the ancestor spirits, as captured in ethnographic records, shows that ancestors were hardly peripheral. They were a central concern to all Bantu societies. An important and widespread proto-Bantu root *-dImù refers to an ancient idea about spirits of deceased persons who lived long ago. Comparison confirms the implications of the proto-Bantu root word *-dImu meaning ‘ancestor spirit’ and that these beliefs trace back to a proto-Bantu society 3500 years ago.
Analysis
A spreadsheet of ethnographies is available on this site for other researchers to examine. The spreadsheet is organized by categories tabbed at the bottom of the sheet. Each entry has the reference, the location, a brief or longer description, language evidence from the ethnographic article. Where possible we have included those particular ethnographic readings. Where possible we have mapped similar ethnographic traditions using GIS.
Ancestors are critical in many societies across the globe. Bantu speakers often conceptualize ancestors as both the most senior and oldest elders in a community as well as those individuals who are deceased. One’s own ancestors ought to be honored to sustain functioning institutions. In addition, ethnographies repeatedly reference previous people — first-comers. The recurrence of Bantu speakers emphasizing the need to honor ancestors of first-comers in oral traditions, is evidence that they philosophically accepted ideas of ancestral precedence in land. In terms of language evidence, Bantu speakers do also make distinctions for other people’s ancestor who need to be honored with a term denoting territorial spirit which resides in a territory and is the relationship connection between current and previous inhabitants. While there are multiple word roots found in Bantu languages for the term ancestor spirit, *-dImu is widespread across the branches of Savanna Bantu, strong evidence of its antiquity. Historian linguists do believe this root is tied to early Bantu origins. Its semantic attestations suggest that *-dImu have been a critical part of people’s lives who retained the word stem and its core meaning, the linguistic evidence correlates well with oral traditions and ethnography regarding ancestral spirits coexisting with territorial spirits and each serving distinct roles.