Dolls of Southwest Angola

Inês Ponte

This book accompanies the theme «Dolls of Southwest Angola» of permanent exhibition The museum, many things of the Museu Nacional de Etnologia. Displays a diversified range of eighty-three artefacts that come from various different cultural groups (18 Kwanyama okana, 2 Kwanyama body; 19 Corncob, 42 Log, 2 Mwila clay). «Southwest Angolan dolls, which from an early date began to be collected by missionaries, government officials, explorers, adventurers and later on by trained ethnographers and anthropologists, are marked by a triple sense of belonging: to a feminine dimension, to a childhood dimension and to a ritual dimension. Some migth serve as fertility amulets, used by women and girls in the hope of a materialization of maternity, while others are girls’ playthings».

Coedition with the National Museum of Ethnology