Killing Jewels - ""Solving"" an Art History Mystery (for Games!)

 Abrus precatorius

It isn't bad scholarship if you call it a commentary on the colonial-archival roots of African art history as a discipline. 

I’m still working on the A Dance of Assassins readalong, but this sort of post is the real reason why I made this blog: things that would have (and maybe should have) otherwise stayed ugly half-formed pet theories have the space to grow into grosser and meatier forms than ever before!

Been thinking about abrus seeds a lot in my spare time, thanks to the wonderful work of African art expert Bruno Claessens. As a brief intro for the uninitiated: Claessens is a scholar and gallerist who maintains a really cool blog that used to run under the name...uh, Bruno Claessens’ Art Blog...that's now folded into the website for his Duende Art Projects gallery. Though I'm still firmly convinced that even his far-reaching reform project for the African art wing at Christie's couldn't save the institution, which should be firebombed along with all similar auction houses, I think his salvage attempt was the best effort anyone could muster while still working within the system. The knowledge of and deep love for African art history that comes through in his writing has been a consistent source of inspiration and comfort over the years. More to the point - in a two-year old post (def worth reading first, if only to see the pretty pictures) on the use of abrus seeds in precolonial African art, Claessens ends by asking if anyone has more information on the symbology of the abrus:

I have not been able to find much literature on the symbolic meaning of these specific seeds. In his writings about the Leopard society among the Bembe in Eastern Congo, Gossiaux wrote they were called also called ‘eye of the night’, and a pejorative right of Akanga initiates – who were informed about their poisonous properties. Surely, other African cultures must have been well aware of their toxic nature, which must have come with strong symbolic connotations. The color red itself obviously often had a strong ritual meaning. Kuddos to the African artists, as long before Duchamp, they were already working with ‘ready-mades’ to increase the power of their works. Please do get in touch if you have any more information about the use and symbolism of these seeds in African Art!

There hasn't been any academic analysis of abrus symbology since this was posted back in 2020, so the situation is as unclear as it ever was, but I think I have some answers that work for much of Central Africa. I expected my take to draw on the miombo-belt entirely, but it was surprisingly capable of expansion into E-C Africa with relatively little modification. While writing this, I came up with an idea for a related monster which I've attached to the end of the art history bit. Or maybe the monster was the point of writing this up, I don't even remember anymore, but it's there.

Shaking Fate's Basket

Abrus seeds from a Chokwe divination basket 

Part of the obscurity around the question might be a result of the fact that, especially when compared to the West African cultures that Claessens mentions, the abrus is typically important within Cent. African contexts as a divinatory tool - not a component of "permanent" pieces. The most striking example of this, at least to me, is the basket divination complex of the Luvale, the Chokwe, and the Lunda-Ndembu. Basket watching is a very popular divinatory method across the miombo-belt (that even shows up in E-C Africa in Sumbawa and Nyamwezi forms): to oversummarize, a basket filled with a variety of symbolic objects called the "revelatory treasure" is shaken and the contents read as they successively touch the upper edges which are designated red or white, and having to do with positive or negative influences. The individual miniature objects that make up the revelatory treasure typically include wooden images of people, animals and implements, as well as vegetable, mineral items, and parts of various animals. This particular style is very consistent in the western end of the basket shaking range, right down to cognate words for the tutelary spirit - the Luvale Kayongo, the Chokwe Kayungu, and the Ndembu Kayong'u.

The abrus - and red beads meant to symbolize abrus seeds - are staple components of basket divination sets, but there's not a huge amount of anthropological research conducted on their meaning...with one unusual exception. Victor and Edith Turner's (much like the Merriams and their Basongye work, Edith was as much a part of their studies of Ndembu ritual as Victor was) attempts to understand Ndembu basket divination are the first major anthropological forays into the topic, but they aren't exactly what I'd call bleeding edge.  The "Ndembu Set" has been built upon and surpassed by later work on related divination practices, like Sónia Silva's excellent Along an African Border: Angolan Refugees and Their Divination Baskets or René Devisch's Weaving the Threads of Life: The Khita Gyn-Eco-Logical Healing Cult among the Yaka or even Edith Turner's own later writings. If someone wanted an introduction to the practice, I would def point them to Silva; I'm going to return to her work in a later post on retrospective divination myself. As Werbner notes in Divination's Grasp: African Encounters with the Almost Said (an awesome book in its own right that I highly recommend): 

"Standing on the shoulders of a giant, Victor Turner, enabled Silva to go beyond Turner's celebrated study of divination (Turner 1975) among the Ndembu neighbors and cognates of the Angolan refugees. Where Turner relied on the expert's account and never observed either the ritual creating a prosthetic whole or its use in an actual séance, Silva documented both, albeit a single performance of the ritual and one closely observed séance. Most intriguing perhaps is her discovery that diviners do not put all their trust in one basket, so to speak. Instead, they resort to a whole set of remarkably distinctive devices over the course of a séance."

All that being said, there's a section within Turner's Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual that provides invaluable descriptions of divinatory uses for the seeds (and bead analogues) in the region:

Red Beads: The red bead seeds, like the red cock's feathers, are said to stand for Kavula's blood….The Kayong'u spirit-manifestation, which "catches" a man with various asthmatic and bronchial troubles and which, when propitiated, becomes the tutelary of a diviner, is symbolized in ritual by red beads. Kayong'u is also a violent spirit capable of causing death…The winnowing basket itself stands for the sifting of truth from falsehood. The diviner is believed to be possessed by the spirit of a diviner-ancestor, in a particular manifestation known as Kayong'u. Kayong'u is also said to be a manslayer (kambanji) because people may be slain as a result of a divining decision. The Kayong'u spirit causes the diviner to tremble and thus to shake the basket. Before becoming a diviner, he must have been afflicted by this spirit, which causes asthmatic shortness of breath and makes him tremble violently while being washed with medicine. 

Turner later connects the seed, the color, and the violence of the spirit Kayong'u together, following a conversation with a diviner-doctor:

"In speaking to Muchona in another connection—about hunting rituals—I learned that 'to bring a doctor to perform Kayong'u they tie red seeds round an arrow and take it to him.' ...He went on to discuss the relationship between the Kayong'u manifestation of an ancestor spirit and the red blood symbolism. 'The Kayong'u spirit [ihamba daKayong'u] is regarded as a murderer. He is 'an elder of murder' [mukulumpi wawubanji]. A Kayong'u may cause a person to live in bad ways, to be noisy and quarrelsome. The spirit of a murderer comes through [wedikila] in [the manifestation of] Kayong'u. I received one of my Tuyong'u from my father; I am not yet free from it.' He said that a Kayong'u could 'help a diviner strongly and kill his enemies,' but that if it was not propitiated it could do much harm and illness to those it 'caught.'"

This is exactly the sort of thing we're looking for: among the Ndembu diviners Turner talked to, the red abrus seed was a direct representation of the troublesome tutelary spirit Kayong'u, which likely explains its presence within Ndembu revelatory treasures. Although Silva doesn't spend as much time on individual items within the toolkit of diviners, the profound similarities in her description of the Luvale Kayongo leads me to think that the symbology of the abrus treasure in Luvale baskets likely tracks with the Ndembu:

"People know that Kayongo, in addition to being violent, cruel, and altogether indifferent to the suffering wrought by historical contingency, is notoriously stubborn, so many songs are sung, drums played without rest, and substances repeatedly manipulated in an attempt to appease him during ritual. When at last the man's body begins to jerk and produce a deep guttural sound, the collective sentiment among the ritual participants is one of relief. Kayongo has conceded to "emerge" (kulovoka) or "rise" (kukatuka). The possessed man has been emptied of his subjectivity and turned into a vessel for Kayongo, a mere object. Sakutemba once told me that Kayongo is like the wind. Most of the time we do not notice the wind; but when it gains velocity and momentum, we can hear it and feel it. Who has ever seen Kayongo making a man stumble or whispering the right answers in the diviner's ear?...Thus Kayongo belongs as much to the ethereal world of the ancestors as to the embodied world of the living. The sound of special rattles, the diviner's invocation, certain songs, drumbeats, and medicines entice him to come out. It is also said that Kayongo is a red lihamba that both heals and kills, both exposes evildoers and has a foot in their world. Like ambivalence itself, Kayongo is red; and so are many of his elements: red clay, blood, the bloodwood tree, the lourie's wing feathers, the red-necked francolin, the red mongoose."

To this list, we may safely add the red abrus seed. Silva elaborates a bit on color elsewhere in her book - there's some parts here that will come up again in a big way later on:

"We know from Victor Turner that red is the color of ambivalence in the red-white-black color classification of south Central Africa (1967/1965:59- 92). Because in divination rituals the black color is absent, red assumes a myriad of negative meanings in conjunction with or in opposition to white. Hence the fact that the lipele is marked with red clay and white chalk, the minenge poles are often painted in red and white bands, and, in the past, on the occasion of a consultation into the cause of death, the diviners danced to the sound of divination songs, their bodies colored in red and white stripes (Baumann 1935:233, White 1948c:94). On one side, in association with anthills and the underworld, red evokes death. We have seen that one burial site for dead divination baskets, signaled by a bloodwood pole, are thorny anthills; the other site is the riverside, which is also associated with death (White 1948b:29-30). The term hungu, meaning a pit dug up in the forest during the diviner's original initiation ceremony, is etymologically related to kalunga, or the underworld. After the diviner 'steals' the basket, the basket maker curses him and wishes him death while she hits the 'red ground' with a mukenge stick."

I think the good doctor was right to point out the redness as a salient factor; most people who are into Central Africana are v. familiar with the red-white-black triadic system. Blackout, a friend of the blog and masterful writer, actually pointed this out himself in a recent email discussion! The most important treatment of this is Jacobson-Widding's classic Red--white--black as a Mode of Thought: A Study of Triadic Classification by Colours in the Ritual Symbolism and Cognitive Thought of the Peoples of the Lower Congo which we'll return to on this blog at some point for sure. Both Chokwe and Ndembu divination baskets also feature a red pole and a black pole painted in bands, btw, and the only element of the revelatory treasure itself (as opposed to other items used separate from the basket) that is red in all three groups is the abrus seed. 

Dog Dreams

Tabwa mask depicting a basenji-type dog

Heading all the way over to Lake Tanganykia and its enviorns for this next part. In an interesting coincidence, considering my recent obsession with A Dance of Assassins, Roberts' book with Carol Thompson on animal symbolism - Animals in African Art: From the Familiar to the Marvelous - mentions the abrus seed.

"If a Tabwa person dreams about dogs, it is a sign that Kabwangozi , a personal spirit, has come to council the dreamer. An amulet (erizi) will be made that includes red and black minkinke seeds (Abrus precatorius)"

Christopher Davis' own book on the Tabwa, the instant classic Death in Abeyance: Illness and Therapy among the Tabwa of Central Africa, also ties the abrus seed to the personal tutelary spirit Kabwangozi (familiar, huh?) and dogs:

"Kabwangozi: This spirit is made of a split, pear-shaped seed onto which beeswax (bupula) is pressed and studded with the red seeds of the minkeke vine (Abrus precatorius L. ssp. africanus Verdc.). Kabwangozi is a dog (kabwa means dog, in KiTabwa), and appears in dreams as such. He is the punishing agent of Mukalaye, and it is he who is dispatched by Mukalaye to bring illness. It is said that a person who has already acquired Mukalaye and Kiungu can be certain that Kabwangozi is sure to follow."

Even more connections to the basket diviners way over on the other side of the central belt appear here - Kabwangozi is not just a tutelary spirit, but a kinda ambivalent one who punishes and harms through illness. Similar to the Bembe “eyes of the night,” Roberts writes that the Tabwa considered abrus seeds to be “eyes of the dog” - in a culture where dogs were deeply connected to divinatory powers specifically for their keen spiritual senses, the significance of this description is p obvious when considered alongside the previous discussion on use of the abrus seed in basket divination.

The Triumphant Return of the Pangolin

"Bi'o'o insignia of a Mwamè wa 'Akanga (Pangolin)....On the back of the skin are fixed two real leopard claws, cowries and seeds of abrus precatorius." - description from Goissaux's Le Bwame du Léopard des Babembe

Something I found particularly interesting about the bit from Claessens that I posted up at the top was his mention of the Bwami of the Bembe, which is a really great point. It's certainly true that Goissaux describes the use of the abrus as the special reserve of the Akanga rank within the Leopard Society.  Very much worth noting, though, that the animal associated with the abrus seed in the internal symbology of the Leopard Society was not the leopard itself but…the pangolin! Akanga straight up means "pangolin" in both Kilega and Kibembe. I've already talked about the pangolin in Central Africa at some length and they def have connections to both spirit and divination. The Bembe variant goes even deeper than the Lega and Komo pangolin-tales discussed in the post linked above, tbh, and you'll see some psychotic connections to the previous section on basket divination - the following is from Goissaux's Le Bwame du Léopard des Babembe:

"Exclusively nocturnal, the tricuspid pangolin lives only in the forest. It usually lives in small burrows or galleries. It is therefore an animal of shadow and death, as evidenced in particular by the dark gray, sometimes greenish, color of its scales. This is why it is the companion of the black civet, m'hala (one of the little brothers of the leopard, whose skins and teeth are preserved by the Bamè ba 'akanga). What confirms above all the passion with which the pangolin delights in death is the nature of its food. This is essentially made up of termites, miswa, these small insects that will dialogue with the corpses and perhaps the souls of the dead."

This knocked me out ngl. I'm not sure if I'm losing it or what but doesn't that dovetail super well with the Silva discussion of the redness + anthills + death connection for the diviner's spirit Kayongo?? Should emphasize that the Bembe are on the opposite side of Cent. Africa from the basket divination gang, it's crazy. Once we take into account the Lega discussion of the pangolin as a diviner that reads the future/past IN THE MOVEMENT OF TERMITES the whole thing falls into place. It's admittedly a bit of a reach to marry the Lega and Bembe concepts before comparing them to the W-C African positions above, but I think it's a reasonable reach, esp. considering that the mention of termite divinatory abilities for pangolins back in the relevant post came from the Bwami/Bwame Society - a shared Lega-Bembe institution, as Biebuyck describes in his Lega Culture Clusters: 

"The peoples that form the core group of this cultural cluster are the Lega and the Bembe, the southeastern neighbors of the Lega....Their segmentary lineage organizations are overbridged by a unique type of closed voluntary association, called Bwami, Bukota, Esambo, Lilwa. This hierarchically graded association has both male and female membership; access to Bwami is based on initiations that presuppose the right moral and social attitude, support of patrilineal and cognatic kin, acceptance by the pre-established membership, payment of fees, and distribution of gifts."

Queer Doctoring

Aawambo (Ambo/Ovambo) small doctors - described really blandly as "fertility dolls" on the site I got the pic on. Technically right, I guess? Kinda like calling a TV a "news-displaying box."

Disclaimer: Lorway's book Namibia's Rainbow Project: Gay Rights in an African Nation (excellent book, pair with Rodriguez's The Economies of Queer Inclusion: Transnational Organizing for LGBTI Rights in Uganda if you're in the mood to get extremely fucking angry about the monstrous neocolonial arrogance of international NGOs that hijack local queer rights movements in Africa and get actual people actually killed) talks a bit about the modern use of the word esenge among LGBTQ+ people in Namibia. The short version is - it's complicated? The most common way that youth use it makes it sort of equivalent to "queer", but older folks and the newspapers use it as a straight substitution for "homosexual." The word still carries strong overtones of gender-troubling, frex it's connected to intersexuality in popular culture. I'm gonna translate it as queer when I'm not quoting something, though I suspect that the precolonial usage described something closer to a third gender. It's a bit tricky to nail these things down, and it's honestly self-defeating to try sometimes, as I recently learned over the course of a very cool conversation with Marcia B of Traverse Fantasy fame.

Swinging back around to West-Central for this part, albeit a lil farther away from the miombo complex we described in the first section. Edwin and Ella-Marie Loeb’s** work on Kuanyama Aawambo magic - unimaginatively titled Kuanyama Ambo Magic - also mentions the abrus in some now-familiar ways:

“The homosexual (esenge) doctor uses a calabash rattle in order to cure insanity caused by spirit possession. This is filled with ‘red crab eye’ seeds (onghenanghera, pl. enghenanghera), Abrus precatorius.”

We have the connection between the abrus and possessing spirits that behave badly, plus a tantalizing mention of rattles which came up in one of the excerpts from Silva. In the Loebs' account, use of the abrus seed appears to be the sole province of these "homosexual doctors." That's all fine and dandy, you say, but where's the thread of vision and divination we've been following? Well, it's true that there isn't any further discussion on the topic from this work, but there's a wealth of Finnish missionary records + other Loeb journals to hunt through! I'm gonna be using Maija Hiltunen's Good Magic in Ovambo, which collects, translates, and summarizes a vast number of these records for Anglophone scumbags like me. Let's start with another Loeb bit:

"An informant called Moses told Loeb about the diviner institution in Uukwanyama. According to Moses diviners can be classified as follows...2. The second grade is the grade of diviners. They must have some homosexual experience. Ancestral spirits are in them."

Ok so there's at least some diviners who are esenge , and there's an interesting connection to the passing down of Kayong'u/Kayongo in family with the part about ancestral spirits, but it's not quite the smoking gun we're looking for. Lucky for us, we don't have to read much farther before we find it:

"If a person wants to become a second grade diviner, he must first go to the homosexuals. Earlier, they were scattered around Uukwanyama but later they stayed on the side of Angola, in Ohenda, close to the Kunene river. Both men and women had to have this experience...In the homosexual's kraal a dance related to the rite lasts two nights. The dance is accompanied by calabash drums (omakola). The novice must drink a hen's or dog's blood. During the dance the novice pretends to die and come back to life. The novice must also have sexual intercourse with a homosexual (as a fee for the rite)....In Uukwanyama a male diviner homosexual (esenge) initiates diviners. He is regarded as a female: he has women's clothing, a symbol of the female sex, and a basket, instead of a masculine throwing hammer. He is called mother. He lies with boys and men...Most male homosexuals are healers, but all healers are not homosexuals."

That's what we needed! The esenge/queer doctors are firmly connected to divination, as diviners in their own right and keepers of an entire stage of the healer's initiatory path. So we have our thread - the doctors that are the sole users of the abrus are a) diviners, b) containers of an ancestral spirit, and c) employ a rattle in their work. The first part is the most important for my "abrus seeds and vision/divination" theory but all of them are cool.

Stuff I should have looked into

There are some things that could probably refine/alter this position that I've either not yet read or don't know enough about:

• Chokwe basket divination, just to compare some things with the related Luvale and Ndembu forms.
• The use of the abrus seed in Afro-American religion, esp. where there are close connections to traditions on the Continent - there's some writing on the topic that mentions the abrus in art produced for Candomble services but my JSTOR access wasn't enough to get me in. (¬_¬)
• Cory's 1955 work on the Buswezi initiatory society of the Sumbawa, which features the abrus seed: "Though the main actors in the scene show no signs of fatigue, they take a short rest before the novice is again required to sit on a low stool and to drink a medicine called kalengo (bupande) mixed with water. The kalengo consists of the seeds of the butoke (katientye) plant (Abrus precatorius), the leaves of which are called mahunda. The novice is told that the use of this seed is a great secret known only to the Buswezi. Lyangombe himself imparted the secret to his children so that they might know when their last hour had come." I'm not familiar enough with the literature on Sumbawa ritual moieties to feel comfortable interpreting this, but there's a lot that intrigues me - the exclusivity within a society is reminiscent of the Bembe case and the kalengo drinking feels conceptually close to the poison ordeal, what with the death signal and all.
• This is a stretch but there’s another tempting connection between the abrus and vision in Werner’s old af (1915) folktale collection where she describes a “leguminous creeper (mpitipiti), with pale blue flowers and scarlet seeds (I think it is Abrus precatorius)” that the Pokomo people say is “supposed to be good for an affection of the eyes very prevalent during the north-east monsoon (kaskazi).” Wasn't sure where to stick this exactly but worth thinking about.

AN ELDER OF MURDER PRESIDES OVER A SILENT COURT

Truth-In-Blood, the Poison Oracle

"But even if one is not convinced by the arguments against the sort of free will required for basic desert, I argue that there remains a second strong Epistemic Argument against causing harm on retributivist grounds that is sufficient for the rejection of retributive legal punishment. This is because the burden of proof lies on those who want to intentionally inflict harm on others to provide good justification for such harm….Nor is it enough to say that the skeptical arguments against free will and basic desert moral responsibility fail to be conclusive. Rather, a positive and convincing case must be made that agents are in fact morally responsible in the basic desert sense, since it is the backward-looking desert of agents that retributivists take to justify the harm caused by legal punishment. " - Gregg Caruso, Rejecting Retributivism: Free Will, Punishment, and Criminal Justice

Binji-Kuba helmet mask, abrus seeds across the brow

Looks like: The host in an intimidating abrus-decorated mask and form-obscuring raffia cloak

Sounds like: The voice of His host amplified and vocoded. Funny to us but it sounds strange and probably terrifying to Creationmen.

Pollution Tolerance: Could not care less about your petty taboo-breaks beyond facts directly relevant to his current case. Mortal spiritual heat pales next to the core-of-the-sun levels of pollution radiating out of His host's every pore. Sensitives might become sick or go into shock just from being around Him.

There is a toxic sort of justice. Specially prepared emetic drinks can test for witchery or determine the accuracy of statements: hold it down easy and you're good, throw it up quick and you've got something to hide. There's no context here, no quest for reconciliation. Yes or no, true or false. That's all. The ordeals are always correct, incidentally, but nobody likes using them. To do so strengthens the power behind the rites. Poison drink trials are fueled by a great and terrible elder - the spirit of the killing jewel plant. 

Truth-In-Blood has many sons and daughters, collectively called the Little-Truths. These guys are kinda venal and lazy but can be helpful. More importantly, they're a lot closer to the rest of Creation's spirits in worldview and temperament when compared to their father. The womanmen diviners ally with Truth-In-Blood's clan, forging connections with a particular Little-Truth that guides their mantic endeavors. These relationships are often passed down in family lines, if the diviner has at least one child willing to learn how they might wield their gender as a weapon against fate. 

When mercy has been cast to the winds, a community may call upon the Poison Oracle directly.

- o -

Taking in Truth-In-Blood is a desperate act only considered during complete societal breakdown - towns where a successful witch cult has turned formal friends against each other, quilombos just before the king's army comes pouring through the mountain passes, families who have lost entire generations to feud. Even the threat of the Poison Oracle is typically enough to bring warring parties back to the negotiation table, so only the most hopeless or hate-driven actually go through with it. The diviner crushes red death between their molars and their first soul loosens its grip on the breath. A mask is donned, a dance is performed, and a god walks in the day. 

The Poison Oracle struggles to keep His mind fixed in the here and now - when He gets excited (never a good sign), He slips into old habits, addressing your deep time ancestors or your far future descendants when talking to you. 

Truth-In-Blood is not "harsh but fair" - a fair judge would at least consider mitigating circumstances. "Harsh and accurate about the course of events" might work better. He simultaneously believes in the righteousness of vengeance and the ennobling nature of suffering. In our world, He'd be called a retributivist, but to the men of Creation the spirit is just bloodthirsty. Truth-In-Blood is a hanging judge. There is always at least one execution when the Poison Oracle is summoned to court. Famous past incidents have seen thousands of deaths, entire imperial dynasties condemned to bondage, even the extinction of ancestral lineages through the True Cut. He does not implement plans or entertain appeals, all sentences are final and carried out immediately, though an argument that fits with His Old Testament sense of justice can sway Him before He makes His decision.

- o -

Some sorcerers, the oldest and strangest, say that Truth-In-Blood is from another Creation entirely. They whisper that the spirit was born of the filth leaking from a psychotic slaughterhouse world where the weak worship those who grind them whole like millet and philosophers teach that a man could somehow "deserve" punishment for a "sin." This blood was so incredibly impure that it congealed into the seeds of the killing jewel plant upon contact with this Creation. It's true that no diviner seems to know His lineage - and Truth-In-Blood is always a He, even when His body is feminine - though other spirits hide their family histories just as cleverly. 

Truth-In-Blood despises witches. While his concept of community is warped by most standards, the idea of inverting your soul and carving yourself hollow of human connection disgusts Him. He hates the Forest People almost as much as He hates witches, but He does nothing (or can do nothing) to them besides raving about the "little jungle rats and their lawless ways" whenever they are mentioned. Memorymen suggest that growing up in the Manner of the Forest keeps one from developing the bone-deep reflexive fear of the strong that Truth-In-Blood requires for His powers to function. 

**It really seems like there's a lot of power couples among the Golden Generation of Cent. African historians and anthropologists. Allen and Mary Nooter Roberts, Brunhilde and Daniel Biebuyck, Caroline and Jan Vansina, Alan and Barbara Merriam, Edith and Victor Turner, Edwin and Ella-Marie Loeb...and I feel like I'm forgetting at least one significant pair of researcher-spouses atm. The contributions of the women sometimes went largely unrecognized by the field - like with Barbara Merriam or Caroline Vansina - and sometimes they became the megastars (to Africana freaks at least) they deserved to be like the late great Mary Roberts, but all were critical to the work that defined the terminal colonial - early postcolonial renaissance period. Is this sort of thing normal in fields y'all are familiar with or is there something unusual going on here? My best guess is that the long-term fieldwork that programs demanded back during the 60s-80s had something to do with it, but I'm not sure.