Metals in Mandara mountains' society and culture

Africa World Press

2012

xii, 360 p.

9781592218899

Metals, and especially iron, are critical factors of production and destruction and deeply embedded in social relations and cultural life. In the Mandara Mountains of Cameroon and Nigeria, anthropological research over a period of six decades has generated a rich body of data that stimulates exploration of the multi-facetted and complex relationship between technology, society and culture. Metals in Mandara Mountains’ Society and Culture is the collaborative product of researchers from six nations, all with long and ongoing experience of the mountains and their multi-ethnic montagnard inhabitants. It is unique in that it explores the implications of metallurgy for society and culture from points of view that together add up to a regional and multidisciplinary mosaic in which the results of their various approaches—ethnographic, archaeological, ethnoarchaeological and social anthropological— throw light upon each other.

Английский