Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association : the MacKenzie Collection, a study of West African carved gambling chips

Abstract

Note: 'Supplement to American Anthropologist, Volume 42, No. 4, Part 2' [from title page]; Note: Alternative title from book spine;

The artistic products of African natives are becoming increasingly better known to anthropologists and contemporary artists. It is chiefly through the efforts of field ethnologists, however, that interest in primitive creative work is flourishing at the present time. Although the formal principles of primitive art received close scrutiny and analysis, too little attention was directed towards those facets of art which reveal, upon further examination, far-reaching social and cultural connections. This study is, in a sense, an attempt to indicate some of these lacunae by means of a demonstration of the genuinely functional nature of primitive art objects.