Small anthropomorphic head in steatite, also known as soapstone, a compound of manganese silicate that is easier to carve than wood. These interesting type of objects, known as nomoli, were produced by the Sapi peoples of Sierra Leone in the 15th century, or earlier.Three-dimensional, they portray unusual oval-shaped male heads, of accentuated, or even distorted physiognomy that stands out for its singularity of intentional distancing from reality. Featuring prominent forehead and evident microcephaly, with no suggestion of hair or hair styling, large globular bulging eyes and broad flattened nose of distended nostrils, these figures acquire remarkable, almost monstruous, expressiveness.
Stone sculptures are very rare in Sub-Saharan Africa as, in their making were used the same tools as in the production of wooden figures. It is possible that both heads were originally part of full-bodied figures of emphasized heads and ornaments, as was the case with carvings from elsewhere in the African continent, namely those from modern-day Nigeria. Of identical iconographic themes and similar shapes, but evidencing alternative sculptural styles, it is possible to set a parallel between these objects and the Luso-African, or Afro-Portuguese, export ivory production from Sierra Leone.Upon careful observation, it becomes apparent that our sculptures were produced by distinct peoples or subgroups but, on account of their stylistic variations, they both originate from coastal Sapes societies or kingdoms. Generally, these objects have been found in agricultural and mining fields and, although they are considered very ancient and endowed of supernatural powers, their exact chronology remains unclear. In the early 16th century, the Portuguese explorer Duarte Pacheco Pereira (Esmeraldo Situ Orbis, 1505-1508), alluding to the generality of peoples that inhabited Sierra Leona, referred that the Sapes peoples were found between the River Buba and Cape Verga. Sierra Leone stone sculptures were first named nomoli by one of Sierra Leone’s peoples , having been compared by William Fagg to ivory carvings from that same region. This British Museum conservator, referring the Portuguese trading contacts in the area of modern-day Freetown – the Mitombo trading outpost - identifies variations in sculptural styles and iconographic motifs, highlighting the similarities between stone (nomoli) and ivory carved human heads.The Sapi origin of nomoli was confirmed in 1970 by John Atherton and Milan Kalous , when Sierra Leone ivories became known as Sapi-Portuguese, replacing the previous designation of Sherbro-Portuguese. The adoption of this term was based on two aspects that remit to origin and chronology – the similarities with the nomolisia and the identification of the Sapi peoples, ancestors of the Bullom, Temne, Kissi and others. According to Kathy Curnow , some Sapi-Portuguese salt cellars (that the author categorises as workshops A and B) feature depictions that are similar to nomoli, allowing for differentiation of the peoples involved in their production.These stone sculptures have been found in a vast area of modern-day Sierra Leone and Liberia, mainly the southwest, and their original function would not be identical to that of images produced by the peoples inhabiting the region today. Stylistically they are not similar either, alluding instead to recent Guinean Baga people imagery, or to that of their linguistic relatives, the Temne, that is used in rituals by the Mende, Bullom and Kono peoples. Frederick Lamp considers that the figures were part of Temne ritual practices, a people descended from the ‘Sapi’, a denomination that included the Baga, the Temne and the Bullom who, at that time, occupied the same area of present-day Guinea. In his essay House of Stones: Memorial Art of Fifteenth-Century Sierra Leonne (1983), Lamp draws attention to close iconographic and stylistic similarities between Sapes stone sculptures (nomoli, ithom or pomdo ) and Luso-African ivory carvings, which would have the same origin, and puts forward some thoughts on their likely roles and meanings, as well as on carving techniques similarities in both materials. Nomolisia are portrayed as standing, seated or crouching people, but also as semi-human, semi-animal, or animal figures. Many figures are distorted or even of undetermined shape. Despite their differences, the herewith described figures evidence “extra-human” formal definition and characteristics. The physiognomies of these sculptures, particularly the larger, are comparable to other full body nomoli, and similarities are also noticeable regarding the figure carved on the tip of a Sapi-Portuguese ivory oliphant at the Musée Calvet, in Avignon (Figs. 3-5). Some elephant riding nomoli have also been identified, such as one portrayed on another oliphant (Fig. 5), or on the cover of a Sapi-Portuguese salt cellar (Fig. 6), both symbols of local power and status.The crossing over of iconographic motifs may also be related to the functions performed by these objects, independently of being stone or ivory. Valentim Fernandes (1507-1510) refers that a Sapes practice consisted in honouring the dead with sculptures placed in small houses, to which they made sacryfitial offerings, a practise maintained to the present day by the Temne and the Bullom. Some of Sierra Leone’s export salt cellars, evidencing the intercultural flow between the Sapes and the Portuguese that resulted in cultural hybridization, integrate religious and local political authority symbols.
Seen as material documentation, these objects contain in themselves sociocultural and artistic aspects of the peoples that created them and are, as such, a major asset for historical knowledge. From the earliest Portuguese contacts with Sierra Leone, in 1460, the comparisons that have been made with Sapi-Portuguese ivories, have instigated the perception of sculptural production continuity in this region. This relation has contributed to ascertain a chronology – based on the identification of figurative and decorative motifs – that enabled the understanding of these idiosyncratic stone artworks, that precede the arrival of the Europeans, and which may have been the models for some Sapi-Portuguese ivory artworks.Would it not be for their early dating, as archaeological artifacts from the 15th century or older, and our sculptures would convey a modern character, by the coexistence of interesting and evident formal stylisation and expressiveness with human beings of rather unrealistic configuration. In fact, the characteristics of African art point to the outset of artistic modernism in European vanguards, reminding us that the knowledge of what was then known as “primitive art” or “tribal art” did not happen until the late 19th century, when numerous such objects arrived in Europe from western Africa and Oceania, and that its true appreciation and valorisation only happened towards the mid 20th century.