Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 285
Plate 21e shows a hillside in Chikiɗe to the immediate north of Ghwa'a. I chose this picture
because it depicts a completely intact terraced hillside. We can see the terraces beautifully
maintained, also the clustering of farmsteads. For example, in the lower right we can see the
typical front with the two kitchens and smooth stonewalling, and the upper rooms behind the
foyer roof. We see a cluster of houses on various levels in the upper left corner of the photo,
and we also notice the intensive tree cultivation on the terraced hillside. Plate 21e shows only
a small section of this beautifully intact hillside in Chikiɗe.
We remember from Part Two that the Gwoza hills are geographically sandwiched between
the DGB complex to the south, and Kirawa, the ancient capital of Wandala, at its northern
foothills. I visited this part of Chikiɗe in 2004, as part of a wider comparative ethnographic
study of ceramics and architectural key traditions found at the DGB sites. I was particularly
interested in comparing types of smooth stonewalling, and was also in search of pots with
small apertures, which I found that day in Chikiɗe (Muller-Kosack 2004). Towards the end of
this chapter section there is a colour image of a Chikiɗe house shrine containing a type of
ritual beer pot with these small apertures. I subsequently found the same type of small
aperture pot not only among the Dghweɗe and the Guduf, but also among the Lamang, the
Glavda and the Zelidva, all around the foothills. However, Dghweɗe, Chikiɗe and Guduf
were the only groups of the Gwoza hills who not only had such pottery, but also had stone
architecture that in parts matched the distinctively smooth stonewalling of the DGB sites.
Unfortunately we did not find any ritual pottery with small apertures in Kirawa, and infer that
this had to do with the Islamic conversion of the Wandala rulers after they moved to Doulo.
Plate 21e shows how developed the landscaping of terraced hillsides must have been in the
past when it was much wetter. We remember the Tur and the Godaliy traditions discussed
earlier, and our attempt to compare the two in context of the emergence of first Ghwa'a and
then Korana Basa in relatively earlier and later pre-colonial times. That the much wetter 17th
century led to north migration, which formed Korana Basa, is a possibility we have been
considering, while we hypothesised that 'Johode' as an early arrival zone had existed
previously, which led to the formation of the Chikiɗe. We will return to the pots with small
apertures we found in Dghweɗe in Chapter 3.12, but will first of all focus on the actual
architecture of a traditional Dghweɗe house, and start with a standardised groundplan.
Standardised groundplan of a Dghweɗe house
Below is the standardised groundplan of a traditional Dghweɗe house for a nuclear family,
which I developed together with John Zakariya in 2005. Dghweɗe families of the past were
polygamous and patrilocal, meaning a new wife became initiated into her husband's local
patrilineage during the marriage ritual (see Chapter 3.20). We already explained that the first
wife of the father and owner of the house played a particular role, and in this chapter we
demonstrate how her special position is reflected in the architecture of the house. At the
beginning of the next chapter we will present a far more detailed 3D plan based on the same
groundplan presented here, and will describe how the house as a place of worship reflected
the social organisation across extended family connections.
We have already distinguished between the foyer area and the upper room complex of a
Dghweɗe house in architectural terms, of which the smooth front dry stone wall with the roof
above the house shrine (thala) and with a kitchen on each side was characteristic. In Figure 18
below we have simplified the actual house shrine (3) in the centre of the foyer area. The
dotted line around the back of the house signifies a thorny hedge, representing a boundary
with the adjacent infields.
The plan of our house adopts a particular left/right orientation, marked by the lower kitchen
(1) to the left, and the upper kitchen (2) to the right of the house shrine (3). The house shrine
of our model in reality consists of two parts, as we can see in our 3D model of the foyer area
(Figure 19c). The 'stomach' of thala to the left is the ritual centrepiece of the shrine. The left
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