Tête stylisée en pierre

Monolithic Limestone Head

Everything in this monolithic limestone sculpture of great stylistic purity has been reduced to the essential: a triangular face with the nose descending below the chin and two small hemispherical eyes in relief completing an apparently ‘inner’ portrait. The neck and conical trunk are resting on a cylinder carved from the same stone. One can also see it as a stylised bird with the nose becoming a beak and the collar wings. This object could have been part of the superstructure of a sepulchre stylistically (the triangular face) closer to the Karey Gorou site, nearer to Niamey than the Bura-Asinda-Sikka site of the Bura culture.

It is impossible to date when it was carved by physical methods, despite the stone’s profound alteration. However, given the dating of charcoal unearthed at Karey Gorou, one can roughly date this object to between the fifth and twelfth centuries.

The archaeological site at Bura-Asinda-Sikka is in the middle Niger valley, near the border of the Republic of Niger. This vast necropolis was discovered in 1975 and excavated in 1983 by the team of an archaeologist from Niger, Professor Boubé Gado. This art, first shown in Europe at the Vallées du Niger exhibition in Paris in 1993, is mainly funerary. The complex three-tiered tombs have a terracotta anthropomorphic or zoomorphic sculpture at the top, placed on a vase containing a few human bones (skulls or limbs), very probably the remains of an ‘accompanier in the beyond’, a servant or companion sacrificed during the funeral. Beneath, in the grave itself, the skeleton was laid on its back, head facing north and resting on a clay neck rest, and dressed in finery (quartzite beads, nose rings) and sometimes with cuprous metal or iron weapons.