Female Figure

In the early 20th century, when many objects were collected by Western museums, the documentation that accompanied their acquisition was often lost, or transactions went unrecorded. This carving illustrate the difficulty of reconstructing the original meaning and purpose of an object once it has left Africa and moved into a museum collection.

Among the Temne and Bullom of southern Sierra Leone, idealized figures are carved for a number of sacred purposes. The same type of figure might be a twin memorial figure, a representation of an ancestor, a diviner's aid, or a guide for male and female youth undergoing initiation to adulthood.