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This article examines the colonial discourse on populations living in the Mandara Mountains in Cameroon, and the way in which they practiced mimicry to appropriate symbols of the dominant culture, diverting them from their original significance and reinterpreting them to promote their own cultural experiences. It shows how the clichés of rebels and savages through which the colonial power strove to define them were reinvested to defend the image of the mountain dwellers as strong, hard-working people. This process of reappropriation continued during the big tourist boom that began in the 1950s and continued until the mid-2010s, which saw the first forays of Boko Haram in the region. During this period, people staged the supposed cultural authenticity of the Mandara Mountains to fuel the tourism industry. The article is based on archival data collected in various archives in Cameroon, notably in the National Archives in Yaoundé, as well as on data from oral interviews conducted with thirty-nine participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that changes in architectural practices related to the emergence of modern elites in the Mandara Mountains blur the relationship between them and the village's permanent residents. Probably because they spend much of their time in urban cities, modern elites prefer building their main houses in those locations. Villagers interpret their behavior as a message of rejection. In turn, this interpretation significantly affects the reciprocal relationships between modern elites and the villagers. Although the former would built houses in the village also, this practice does not remove the suspicion they attract from the latter. On the contrary, the massive character of the houses combined with their emptiness contribute to reinforce the villagers' belief that they are the fruit of occult practices. Relying on these observations, I argue that elites' houses are not only the sites of production of social relations, as Claude Lévi-Strauss theorized, but they are also the site of tensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Basketry is worthy of archaeologists’ attention for its own sake and because variations in techniques and typology complement those evident in pottery, stone tools and other domains of material culture. In this paper I first focus on the basketry of the Mandara Mountains of Nigeria and Cameroon where both men and women make and use baskets but employ different techniques of manufacture. This class of material culture correlates with gender and ethnicity very differently than in other artefact classes. A survey of other studies of African basketry suggests that in any region at any one time gender and basketry technique are highly correlated, although there is variability both across space and through time. There is also variation in the extent to which African basketry is charged with symbolism. The examination of these techniques, raw materials, tools, workspace, uses and related objects reveals the complexity of ‘the world according to basketry’. It is a world to which recent approaches to material culture and technology can profitably be applied and into which archaeologists have more access than they perhaps suppose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]