Masks

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MASKS

MASKS . This article will not attempt to establish a comprehensive inventory of masks and their various ritual uses because even larger works have only been able to do this imperfectly. Rather, as a general introduction to this field, it will concentrate on some of the general concepts and theories that have arisen from the study of masks. Its geographical focus will be Africa, Melanesia, and the Americas because these regions provided the data on which the theories discussed were based.

Historical Overview

Although the importance of descriptions by travelers, missionaries, and topographers from at least as early as the sixteenth century should not be overlooked, it can be argued that effective study of ritual masks began only in the nineteenth century. At this time the first interpretations and general theories about European folk traditions emerged, following (among others) the work of the Grimm brothers, Jacob Grimm (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859), for whom folktales revealed traces of beliefs and myths connected with ancient pagan gods. Later, Wilhelm Mannhardt (1831–1880) took an interest in the folk religion of his time, in particular that of the rural communities. Collecting vast amounts of data, Mannhardt underscored the predominance of beliefs in fertility spirits and in the existence of a connection between vegetal and human life. Under his influence, a number of mask rituals came to be understood as incorporating ancient beliefs dealing with fertility, and masks were interpreted as representing demons of the vegetal world.

At the same time, E. B. Tylor (1832–1917) began to establish anthropology as a science of human beings and their culture. He described the evolution of civilization from the first humans, who in his eyes were in large part represented by contemporary "primitive" peoples, up to the civilized human of his day. To this end he used a comparative method to organize an impressive number of facts and documents in support of his evolutionary perspective. He also analyzed the process whereby elements belonging to an older stage of evolution survive into later stages in which they do not function adequately.

Therefore, the various elements that formed the core of the study of masks by folklorists as well as anthropologists up to World War II were present as early as the last quarter of the nineteenth century. These elements are: (1) the evolutionist perspective, following which the history of Western society can be reconstructed by classifying all known societies according to the degree of civilization they have reached; from this point of view, the peoples studied by ethnology enabled modern humans to relive, as it were, stages experienced by the Western world thousands of years ago; (2) the notion of "survival," used to describe those remnants of ancient customs that resisted evolution and survived beyond the period in which they were truly meaningful; and (3) intensive use of the comparative method—on the basis of what ethnology reported on traditional communities of Africa, Oceania, or the Americas, it was thought possible to reconstruct the earlier stages in the evolution of a society and to recover the original meaning of a particular custom.

By the end of the nineteenth century, scholars were in possession of an ever-increasing amount of comparative data on masks. In 1883 Adolf Bastian wrote a general study on the role of masks. In 1886 Richard Andree published an overview and summary of far-ranging documents from various periods. He thus made a large database on masks available to other scholars while organizing it into categories that have been constantly taken up ever since. Finally, in 1898 Leo Frobenius linked masks, seen as representing spirits of the dead, to secret societies. From his perspective this relationship originated as a male reaction to matriarchy and provided an explanation for the exclusion of women from practically all mask rituals. These early theories of ritual masks marked the anthropological and folkloric study of masks for several decades.

In a well-known article published in 1933, Karl Meuli formulated a general theory of "primitive" masks that he then applied to European traditions. According to him, there is a close connection between masks and so-called matriarchal societies. Furthermore, the majority of primitive masks represent spirits, primarily spirits of the dead. Indeed, the strange appearance of masked figures indicates that they do not belong to the human realm. Their behavior reinforces this interpretation: the masks beg while threatening, they reprimand, and they punish, after which they distribute gifts and grant wishes of prosperity and then disappear. Meuli explains this behavior as the result of a primitive belief that no death is natural, every death being the result of the malevolence of a living person. At particular times during the transition from an end to a beginning (the passage from one year to the next, for example), the underworld opens up, allowing the dead to return among the living. The masked figures represent these dead, who first seek revenge. By letting them pilfer and chastise as they please, one gives them the opportunity to calm down, after which they again bestow benevolence.

This interpretation, applicable equally to the masks described by ethnology and to European folk masks, is a synthesis of the theories founded on evolutionism, the notion of survival, and the comparative method, to which it adds psychoanalysis. Influential both within and outside scholarly circles, Meuli's theory played an important role in the history of the study of masks. It appeared, however, at a time when anthropology itself was gradually turning away from the ambitious theories developed at the beginning of the century to focus instead on elaborate and detailed localized research, employing a more demanding method. A similar trend emerged somewhat later, after World War II, in the study of folk traditions.

Up until then, because of the survival theory, a given culture was not studied as a coherent contemporary phenomenon but rather as a patchwork of various elements that could be analyzed somewhat independently of each other. Critics noted, however, that a custom should not be considered as a mere relic: it survived because it still had a role to play in the society in which it was observed. From then on studies increasingly tended to consider each custom as part of a contemporary system, analysis of which would illuminate the function of each of its components. Similarly, comparison was no longer applied to isolated elements; rather, scholars compared systems of relationships. Finally, the problem of the continuity of culture and cultural traits was tackled on a new basis: the historic dimension was reintroduced into the analysis and replaced the notion of survival, which focused interest on the question of origins and, in effect, canceled out history.

For instance, earlier authors had interpreted Carnival as either an old agrarian rite of purification and fertility aiming at driving out the bad spirits of winter or as a survival of the Roman Saturnalia. However, as Suzanne Chappaz-Wirthner (1995) points out, integrating history into the study of Carnival reveals that the imagery linked to secular and religious power, as manifest in court festivals and liturgical celebrations, played a decisive role in the development of a repertoire of carnivalesque images unique to the Christian West; individuals as well as social groups resort to it to play out their conflicts and express their aspirations. Carnival therefore can be considered a language with cosmic resonance enabling a dramatization of social dynamics.

The traditional populations studied by ethnology were again placed in the historical framework that general theories considering them as "primitive" had somewhat obscured. Thus, anthropologists and art historians as well as folklorists came to carry on their research within concrete historical frameworks. They now deal with notions of identity, creativity, change, exchange, power, and politics among other elements that shape a particular mask ritual at a particular time.

Problems of Definition

Although everybody seems certain of what a mask is, the definition of the term poses important problems. In the narrow and usual sense of the word, a mask is a false face behind which one hides one's own face for purposes of disguise. In ethnology, mask also refers to headpieces that do not cover the face, as well as elements of costumes that are worn over the face (such as veils, fringes) and other full or partial adornments of the body or face. The term mask is also used to refer to any representation of a face, whether or not it is worn on the face of a dancer. Consequently this includes mannequins; effigies; faces painted, molded, or carved on buildings and boats; and pendant masks as well as finger or pocket masks. Finally, the definition is sometimes widened to include face or body paintings and tattoos. Since scholars do not agree on the denotation of the term, confusion permeates the literature on the subject. As M. C. Jedrej (1980) puts it, the word "mask" identifies no coherent class of institutions of any use to social anthropologists.

It is important to keep in mind this problem of definition when trying to understand some of the ideas frequently advanced on the subject of masks; for example, the claim for universality of the mask: it is only when makeup, paintings, and tattoos are included in the definition of mask that one can say that masks can be found in virtually all cultures. But is such a broad definition justified? No one can say, for this question has not yet been systematically investigated.

It is important to note that the focus on the face that museums, art galleries, and books on masks often maintain gives a distorted view of the ritual mask. This interest in the face has encouraged a tendency to relegate to the background the many masks that, lacking a face, are simple hoods or fringes of fibers or beads falling in front of the face of the wearer. Fascination with the face has also tended to minimize interest in the costume of the mask, which has often been hastily dismissed either as fundamentally designed to conceal the wearer or as merely accompanying the mask. The mask must, however, be considered from a larger perspective so as to include the costume, the headdress, and the possible accessories, as well as immaterial factors such as the behavior, the dance steps, and the songs or texts pertaining to the mask. As Eberhard Fischer (1980) points out, among the Dan of Liberia and the Ivory Coast it is the headdress, and not the face, that immediately signals a mask's type. Consequently, the first step in the transformation of a mask from one category to another is the alteration of the headdress. The Dan also have "night masks," which comprise no tangible face but may include feathered headdresses. In ancient Egypt the priests' masks were adorned only with animal heads. The priests playing the roles of anthropomorphic deities did not require masks: the headdresses and the specific emblems of the gods were enough to identify them.

The face, therefore, is not necessarily the place where the meaning of the mask is concentrated. It follows that, when faced with an ensemble that includes all the elements of a mask (costume, headdress, dance), it is rather difficult to decide that there is no mask simply because the face of the dancer is painted rather than covered with a hood or false face. In any case, some scholars see a continuity between face paintings and masks because of the similarities between the two phenomena: both are temporary adornments, both appear on special occasions (initiation, marriage, death, or the lifting of a prohibition), and both seem to have comparable functions. On the other hand, the inclusion of tattoos in the definition of masks creates more problems than it resolves, for it is difficult to see how masks and paintings, which are temporary, could simply be classified with tattoos, which are permanent.

The Geography of Ritual Masks

A narrower definition of masks—one that takes as a fundamental criterion the existence of one element of costume (false face, hood) worn in front of the face—forces the realization that even in regions that are traditionally considered the privileged domains of masks there exist extensive zones in which masks are not used. In Africa, for instance, masks are found mostly along a strip that cuts across the center of the continent from west to east and curves toward the south. In the Americas, intensive use of masks is most frequent in the western heights of both North and South America. Finally, in Oceania the mask is practically absent from Polynesia. It is extremely widespread in Melanesia, although it is not used among most of the highland peoples of New Guinea, in the main part of Irian Jaya and in eastern Papua New Guinea, in parts of the Bismark Archipelago, in the central and Southeast Solomons and the Santa Cruz group, and in the Fiji group.

Several hypotheses have been put forward to explain the gaps in the distribution of masks. According to one, peoples without masks simply lack the wish to express themselves plastically and use other means to formulate and express their beliefs. Besides being an example of circular reasoning, this explanation runs against a number of exceptions that it cannot explain, particularly among peoples that have a statuary but no masks. The absence of masks in certain regions of Africa has also been attributed to the influence of Islam. However, anthropologists have demonstrated that the Islamicization of a given region did not necessarily lead to the elimination of the art of masks. On the contrary, as René Bravmann (1977) showed, some African societies created new masks after the advent of Islam in order to represent the jinn. Masks have also been said to be more characteristic of agricultural peoples. This hypothesis, however, accounts only imperfectly for the presence of masks among hunters in Asia and the Americas. The most successful general theory has been that of the historical cultural school, which explained the distribution of masks by arguing for their relationship with so-called matriarchal societies. An examination of the available data has, however, discredited this hypothesis as well. To date no global model is available to explain the geographic distribution of masks.

As a matter of fact, since being forced to abandon the broad theories of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, scholars have no longer shown much interest for the study of questions of this amplitude. Most have focused instead on the in-depth analysis of a particular society, avoiding any far-reaching comparative evaluation they consider responsible in part for those past mistakes.

Nevertheless, some interesting localized studies have attempted to specify the status of masks within certain populations. Some try to elucidate the relationship that may exist in particular societies between the mask and other religious and sociopolitical structures. Others look for the provenance of the masks of particular groups or even attempt to reconstruct its history. For instance, Jean Guiart (1966) showed that, in certain parts of New Caledonia, the development of the art of masks seems to have been linked to the development of chieftainships in the same region. And according to William Siegmann (1980), the use or nonuse of masks to manifest spiritual forces in West Africa seems directly related to the dominant features of social organization in particular areas, and especially to the role of lineages and political structures. But still lacking is a general model that explains the distribution of ritual masks, an extremely important element of this institution.

The Dating of Masks

How far back can one trace the appearance of the ritual mask? Many scholars do not hesitate to go as far back as the Early Stone Age, but this raises a number of problems. The documents on which they base their conclusions are far from clear and admit of various interpretations. A workable example is that of the well-known "Sorcerer" of Les Trois Frères cave (Ariège, France, middle Magdalenian Age; c. 12,000 bce). It is often presented as the oldest representation of a masked human, whereas paleontologists now prefer to see in it the portrayal of a mythical mixed being (half man and half beast). Such a figure may or may not be linked to the existence of masks; it may or may not constitute the inception or consequence of mask use. In any case, one cannot be categorical about it. This is true as well for an important number of the documents that have been interpreted as representing masked beings because they showed anthropomorphic figures with stylized or animal heads.

Ofer Bar-Yosef (1985) reports that, in a cave at Nahal Hemar in the Judean Desert, archaeologists have discovered fragments of several stone masks dating back to the pre-pottery Neolithic B period (seventh millennium bce). It seems unlikely that these stone masks were affixed to the face of a wearer during ceremonies. They might be funerary masks or the facial part of effigies, or even masks that were hung from poles. Nothing allows a decision in favor of one or the other of these hypotheses. Nevertheless, these stone artifacts are the oldest reliable dated documents testifying to the existence of masks in the seventh millennium bce. One cannot conclude from this find that there existed at the same time masks worn by living human beings during ceremonies. The oldest document from this point of view seems to belong to Egypt, where the representation of a masked figure appears on a fragment of a wall of the funerary temple of King Sahoure (fifth dynasty, c. 2500 bce). From a general point of view, however, it may be assumed that the plausibility of the existence of ritual masks increases with the advent of the Late Stone Age, particularly in parts of the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.

What Does the Ritual Mask Represent?

Throughout the principal regions in which ritual masks are found—Africa, Melanesia, and the Americas—the majority of the figures depicted in masks are primordial beings, mythical ancestors, culture heroes, and gods. In fact, in most cases the mask is not limited to representing a particular figure: it evokes the events in which said figure played a role. These events are not necessarily enacted as on a theatrical stage; they can be recalled by a dance, by a song or chant, by a piece of costume, or by the recital of a text that accompanies the performance of the mask. They can even be implicit: the mask intervenes in certain circumstances, because the figure it represents was implicated in similar circumstances at the time of origins—a fact known to the initiates at least.

Among the Senufo of Ivory Coast, for instance, the kponiougo (head or face) of the Poro, the men's secret society, recalls the original state of the world as it is described in mythological narratives. Among the Dan the mask of the toucan recalls the events that led God to create the earth. Although knowledge of Melanesian myths is only fragmentary, many masks of that part of the world seem to strive to recall paradigmatic events. For instance, the performance of the Mai masks of the middle Sepik of New Guinea is accompanied by the recital of totemic names and mythical texts through a bamboo megaphone. Another mask represents a feminine spirit, who, along with a masculine being often represented in the form of a crocodile, is the protagonist of events that accompanied the creation of the present world.

On the northwest coast of North America, Bill Holm (1972) has noted that the great majority of Kwakiutl masks are worn in representations, in stylized dance form, of incidents from hereditary family myths. In some cases the dance dramatizes the mythical adventure of the ancestor, whereas in others it re-creates a dance given to the ancestor by a mythical being with whom he came in contact. And according to Frank G. Speck (1949), among the Iroquois, at the beginning of each reunion of the False Faces, the chief recalls the confrontation between the original False Face and the Great Spirit, in memory of which the False Faces wear masks with crooked noses. Before entering the home of sick people to minister to them, the False Faces produce weird noises. These nasal sounds are said to be in imitation of the utterances the original False Face made during one episode of his challenge of the Great Spirit.

In the southwest United States the masked dances of the Zuni represent various episodes of their mythology. In the Shalako ceremony, for instance, some dances consist of a mimetic representation of the actions of the kachinas when they want to send rain to the Zuni.

In South America the mask rituals and their symbolisms often have an elementary character. However, careful analysis of the ceremonies reveals that many commemorate the principal episodes of the tribal mythology. The Carajá, who live along the middle course of the Araguaia River, have masks that portray a pair of supernatural parrots whose descent to humankind is related in myth. The Aruana, a dance performed in the same region, bears the name of a fish whose form the Carajá bore before they became human beings.

The use of masks may reflect the will to enact certain events as much as the desire to portray certain figures. At times, masks represent no particular character at all but only events. For instance, Carl Laufer (1970) reports that, among the Mali-Baining of the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain, the main purpose of the Mandas festival is to represent the events that took place in the primordial mythic time. While a choir of women chants the story of creation, eighty masks enact its various phases: the birth of the sea, the appearance of the earth, the primordial forest, the flora, the winds, the animals and birds, and, when the stage has thus been set, the appearance of the first human couple and their sons. In this festival the ngoaremchi masks portray whirlpools and explain thereby the birth of the sea, which swirled forth in all directions, and the ngavoucha masks show how the earth was separated from the waters.

The Dogon of Mali have a mask called sirige, a term that can be translated literally as "two-storied house." This mask consists of a rectangular face surmounted by a high sculpted mast sometimes over five meters high. Marcel Griaule (1938) was told that the sirige was recent and profane, a mere sculpture inspired by the view of a two-storied house, and that the wide movements traced by its mast served only to allow the wearer to show off the power of his jaw and neck. Later, French anthropologists were given a more complex idea of Dogon cosmology, and it appeared that both the mask and the house recalled the same series of mythical events.

When the masks are shown in the main square of a Dogon village, the rich ensemble of things, animals, and human figures is a reproduction of the world, a catalog of both the live and extinct fauna of the cliffs and the plains. This display recalls all of the public functions, the trades, the ages; it presents a host of strangers, friends, or enemies; it mimics a wide variety of essential activities, all in a specified order, at least theoretically. It is truly a cosmos. When the mask society gets under way in the public square, it dances the march of the world; it dances the system of the world.

In some cases the system within which a population lives may be represented not by the ensemble of masks but by one particular mask that summarizes the entire system. Among the northern Igbo of eastern Nigeria, the mask ijele is a lofty tableau of figures with trappings hanging from its bottom edge to conceal the performer, who carries the whole structure on his head. According to John S. Boston (1960), the theme of the tableau that occupies the upper section of the ijele is the life of a typical Igbo community. Marie-Claude Dupré (1968) also tells that, among the Bantsaya group of the western Téké, the mask of the Kidumu dancer is a true summary of the culture of the group.

Masks are thus closely linked to the founding events of a society and its institutions, as well as to its values. It is therefore easy to understand why among many peoples the mask is linked to conservative forces and plays an important role in social control, assuming even a quasi-police function. The few examples given above also show that the primary function of masks is to represent rather than to conceal.

Sometimes the masks lose their ritual value at the end of the ceremonies of which they have been a part. This widespread phenomenon has often surprised observers. For instance, Francis E. Williams (1940) wondered why the hevehe masks of the Elema of New Guinea had to be killed and destroyed at the end of the ritual cycle, only to be re-created in the next cycle, when they might pass from one cycle into the other as if living throughout. He was puzzled to see the products of years of industry and art so readily consigned to the flames. This surprise in the face of the abandonment or destruction of the masks once they have been used reveals the bias of Western interpreters. First, Western interest in the mask as an artifact highlights the finished product and underestimates the ritual value involved in its making. Further, the Western tendency is to consider the masked ceremonies as theatrical performances and to think that all the preparations that precede them find their meaning only in the performance itself. This is a distorted view of those ritual cycles; often the making of the mask is in itself a ritual that reproduces the various phases of the creation of the archetypal mask. Therefore it is vitally important that the following cycle start anew at the beginning; that is, with the making of the mask. This is probably the reason why masks can be destroyed or left to rot without regret at the end of a cycle.

The Mask and Its Wearer

The notion of a "primitive mentality" was prevalent among writers at the beginning of the twentieth century. One of the principal characteristics of this mentality was the supposed inability to truly differentiate between the being and its appearance, the thing and its image, the signifier and the signified. Influenced by this view, most of the books on ritual masks spread a theory according to which the wearer of the mask not only represented a certain figure (ancestor, culture hero, god) but actually became this figure. For these authors, therefore, to put a mask on was akin to undergoing a real transformation. Some scholars took this theory even further and claimed that it provided an explanation for the phenomenon of masking itself. According to them, masks stemmed from the possibility they gave people to liberate themselves, to repudiate their current personalities, to undergo metamorphosis.

The conditions of ethnographic fieldwork do not always lend themselves to an evaluation of the precise level of reality on which the presence of a mythical being is located in a given ritual. But in light of available knowledge, the range in which the various hypotheses mentioned above may apply is becoming narrower and narrower. The best studies show that cultures that utilize masks are perfectly capable of distinguishing between the thing and its image.

For instance, in 1938 Griaule wrote that the Dogon did not fit the prevalent assumption about the attitude of Africans toward the images they create. Far from being fooled by the appearances or the material effects of the ritual, they were definitely aware of the difference between the thing represented and its image. They even had a word, bibile, to express the concept of reproduction, image, resemblance, or double. A photograph was the bibile of the person it represented. The shadow of a living being was considered a bibile because it reproduced the silhouette, the posture, and the movements of that person. A masked dancer was called imina bibile, meaning appearance or reproduction of the mask. Similar findings have been made among numerous other societies of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.

Other factors also seem to reduce the applicability of the metamorphosis thesis. For example, masks are rarely associated with possession of the wearer, although that would be in the logic of the hypothesis. Also, the initiates in those communities in which masks are found constantly stress the fact that only the uninitiated believe they are actually in the presence of a spirit or a god. These statements are difficult to reconcile with the metamorphosis thesis. They have from the very first forced the proponents of that thesis to embark on often complicated explanations in order to bring their theory into harmony with the ethnographic data.

Similarly attempts to explain the ritual mask phenomenon by a desire, a need, even an instinct of the wearer were probably influenced by theories geared to explain the persistence of Carnival masks in the Western world. In one example of what Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard (1965) called the "if I were a horse" type of guesswork, the feeling of liberation experienced by Western mask wearers was projected onto African, American, or Melanesian mask wearers. Even if such a feeling may exist among some of these people, it cannot be used as a general explanation of the masked-ritual phenomenon.

Moreover, wearing a mask often carries social responsibilities that make it a service rather than a liberation. This service is often compulsory: reprobation, a fine, or worse await those who try to sidestep it. Either one particular person or a category of people is compelled to perform this service: one or several members of the family of the deceased, all members of a brotherhood, all circumcised males, and so forth. Although wearing a mask can bring honor and prestige, it also burdens the wearer with various duties, such as the payment of a tax to purchase the right to wear a particular mask or several months of preparation during which the mask wearers learn the dance steps, intensively rehearse combined movements, and may have to memorize complicated texts, sometimes in a secret language.

Among the Asmat of Irian Jaya, for example, it takes four to five months to prepare the masks for the ritual called Jipae. H. C. van Renselaar reports that, during all of that time, the mask wearers have to support the mask makers (van Renselaar and Mellema, 1956). The relatives of the deceased for whom the Jipae is celebrated must in turn give daily supplies of food to the mask wearers. Furthermore, the mask wearers must act as the surrogate for the dead and adopt and provide for the children of the deceased.

The Mask and the Dead

One mask has been constantly associated with the representation of the dead: the skull mask. Some experts, such as Hans Nevermann, have considered it the most primitive form of masking (Nevermann, Worms, and Petri, 1968). Those partial or complete skulls, worn on the top of the head or in front of the face, decorated, remodeled, or covered with tight skin, have provoked a number of speculations. Frobenius considered them part of a logical continuum of mask making that began with the use of a complete skull and moved to the use of a skull mask, concluding with the mask carved out of wood. Skull masks are found in the three main mask regions. In Africa such masks are sometimes tightly covered with skin in a manner peculiar to the Cross River region, where Keith Nicklin (1974) reports this same technique is used also to cover the wooden supports of masks. In Mesoamerica the Aztec often combined the techniques of remodeling and decorating the skulls (e.g., with turquoise).

However, as noted by Hans Damm (1969), the Melanesian masks have given rise to the most speculation. In Melanesia the skull is partially or entirely remodeled or molded over with a kind of wax; it is then painted and often adorned with human hair. These techniques are not, however, limited to the making of masks. They are also used in the making of funerary effigies (for example the rambaramp of Malekula) and in the remodeling of heads that are preserved in cult houses and in dwellings. The same techniques are also used to mold human heads on wooden supports.

Because of the radical changes these traditions have undergone, many of the assumptions made and questions raised about them may never be checked or resolved. However, an examination of some other Melanesian masks portraying deceased historical persons (as opposed to those that portray the dead as a class) help define a general context in which the skull mask can most probably be placed.

In the Jipae ceremony of the Asmat, for example, masked men represent the dangerous dead, especially children, great warriors, and the victims of headhunters. Beginning at dusk the masqueraders dance, imitating the waddle of the cassowary bird. At sunrise the dancers move toward the men's house followed by the women. Suddenly the men of the village attack the masks with sticks, forcing them to enter the men's house and thus ending the ritual. In the Jipae the mask represents a specific dead person, but several solar characteristics are also ascribed to it. This ritual begins at nightfall, when, according to the Asmat, the sun puts on its mask to descend into the land of the dead. The dancers imitate the cassowary, which the Asmat associate with the sun. Finally, the ritual ends at sunrise; that is, when the sun leaves the land of the dead and removes its mask.

To understand the meaning of a ceremony of this type one must keep in mind that for a large number of societies, in Melanesia as well as in other parts of the world, it is not death itself but ritual that opens the way toward the next life. This ritual fulfills several functions linked together: it prevents the spirit of the dead from wandering among the living; it allows deceased persons to enjoy the status due to their rank in the hereafter; it removes the risk that—in despair about their unresolved fate—the deceased might act against the living to force them to celebrate the appropriate ritual. This ritual may also mark the end of mourning, it may be the occasion of the redistribution of the land, or it may serve as a framework or a background for initiations. It is mostly during this kind of ritual that masks representing deceased individuals intervene.

Early-twentieth-century scholars were so preoccupied with the idea that the mask wearer was adopting a new personality that they overlooked one of the mask's main purposes—which may have been to identify the dead with his or her paradigm (the first dead human, a culture hero) and not just to associate the mask wearer with the spirit of the dead. This is nevertheless one of the important elements of such rituals as the Malanggan of New Ireland, the Ne-leng of Malekula, the Horiomu of the Kiwai, the Jipae of the Asmat, and the Mbii-kawane of Mimika (New Guinea).

This identification can take various forms that fall between two extreme poles. In some cases nothing is done to bring the appearance of the masked figure, as it is defined by tradition, closer to that of the deceased. In those cases it is mainly the attitude of kin that expresses this identification; they act toward the masked figure as they would toward the departed they are mourning. The ceremony called Mbii-kawane described by Jan Pouwer (1956) is close to this type. In other cases a considerable effort is made to ensure that the masked person will resemble the deceased as closely as possible. In this case the identification with the paradigmatic figure is made through the text, which is sung or recited, and through the dance steps. This seems to be the case with the Horiomu of the Kiwai as reported by Gunnar Landtman (1927).

The above remarks also pertain to a number of funerary masks. This term has been used to categorize various types of masks found on mortal remains, on mummies, on funerary urns, or among the funerary furnishings found in certain tombs. Some of these masks are realistic and seem like portraits, and they have on occasion been molded directly onto the dead person's face. Others, sometimes called "idealistic," reveal traits that obviously did not belong to the deceased. In between those two categories, variations such as idealized or stylized portraits are found. Others, finally, do not have a real face. In some cases the mask could have been worn by somebody during a burial ritual, whereas in other cases there is no evidence to support that interpretation.

Given the extensive variations that may be found from one tradition to the next, funerary masks seem to have two basic purposes: (1) to prevent the spirits of the dead from wandering among the living (by offering them a new support, by luring or forcing them away from the living); and (2) to insure that the deceased will safely reach his or her resting place in the hereafter. The identification with a paradigm should not be overlooked as a means to achieve this goal.

Masks, Women, and Secret Societies

According to the Viennese school of the "culture circles," in a former era women played a leading role in society, and in order to resist their economic, social, and religious supremacy, men created secret societies. The theory postulated a quasi-organic link between secret societies and masks, the latter being the means used by men to seize power from women and secure their own domination. This link was even noted by authors who did not necessarily accept the hypothesis of matriarchy. Here, summarized in four points, is how Felix Speiser (1923) expressed it: (1) the goal of secret societies is to terrorize the uninitiated, in particular women; (2) this is achieved through the use of masks representing spirits; (3) for masks to represent spirits the wearer must not be recognizable; and (4) it follows that originally masks must have disguised the wearer's entire body.

This theory was immensely popular, for it offered a logical and unique framework for an array of puzzling facts. However, along the road taken by anthropology since the 1930s, every one of its elements was disputed and abandoned. Regarding secret societies, the apparent simplicity of the theory stemmed from the fact that its authors had amalgamated extremely diverse institutions under the term secret society (e.g., brotherhoods of men, age-group organizations, initiation societies, societies based on social rank, and more or less restricted cultic societies). Furthermore, later studies showed that masks could very well exist independently of secret societies and that many secret societies had no masks, while others had only recently adopted them. Therefore the concept of a primary and original link between masks and secret societies could no longer be taken uncritically.

As for secrecy, it is true that, in many societies with masks, the uninitiated must not speak of matters concerning masks, or they must only speak of them in a certain manner, or they are supposed to remain ignorant of certain things. However, the best-documented reports from Africa, Melanesia, and the Americas acknowledge that women in particular know the true nature of masks and that a large gap often separates that which they are supposed to know from that which they actually know. Secrecy, or the pretense of it, is but one element that helps delineate and maintain the identity of the various groups in a given society, but it cannot be taken literally.

The theory contended that masks were meant to terrorize women. However, because in many cases women were aware of the true nature of the masks, they could not be fooled by a ritual, the purpose of which would be to deceive them. Yet they display emotions, sometimes violent ones, during the performance of certain masks. If they are not fooled by appearances, then how can those feelings be explained?

When women express fear when confronted with the masks or when they recognize in them the deceased of their own families and implore them with cries and tears, one is forced to wonder if such a display of emotions is not an essential part of the ritual itself. There is no doubt that women are frightened in many societies. But they are afraid of the consequences that would follow if they did not behave as tradition requires or if they breached the prohibitions surrounding the masks. Depending on the situation and the society, a fine would be levied; a sacrifice would have to be made; the woman would become sick, sterile, or even die; the men might kill her; the mask wearer would die; or the entire community would disappear. But this does not mean that women act merely out of fright and that their emotions (for instance, their grief) are not genuine. Indeed this does not rule out sincerity in any way, but a sincerity that is addressed to what is represented in the ritual and a sincerity that cannot be understood unless one first accepts that all the participants may experience the ritual at the level of what is being represented while remaining perfectly aware of the means used to create the performance. The deeper meaning of masked rituals can only be perceived if one acknowledges that the behavior of everyone concerned is meaningful, the women's as well as the men's, both contributions being at once necessary to the ritual and constitutive of it.

The elegant "culture circles" hypothesis presented the relationship between masks and women as one of incompatibility, ignorance, and credulity. A detailed examination shows that the situation is more complex and differentiated. Indeed the prohibitions to which women are subject sometimes only cover a particular part of the mask or a special circumstance. It is also impossible to ignore the particular position that certain women occupy within the masking society (among the Dogon, the Kono, or the Mende, for instance). In certain cases women contribute to the preparation of masks or dancers or are entrusted with the care and preservation of the masks and other ritual objects otherwise prohibited to women. In addition, the wives of chiefs and the wives of the heads of initiation societies are sometimes initiated into the secrets of masks, and, from a more general point of view, numerous elderly women are exceptions to the "rule" that all women be excluded from masking rites. Last but not least, there are of course cases—attested in Africa, Melanesia, and the Americas—when masks are worn by women, often during women's initiations. Due to the anthropocentrism of early scholarship, little information was available on these ceremonies when the theory was proposed. Fortunately, since the 1970s this situation has been changing rapidly (for instance, see Sidney L. Kasfir and Pamela R. Franco [1998]).

However, even taking into consideration the numerous cases mentioned above, a simple statistical study will show that in most instances masks are worn by men, even though women are said to have discovered and owned them to begin with. Thus, if the masked ritual must be viewed in the context of a symbolism shared by men and women, the dialectic between the two sexes that the ritual reveals must not be neglected. It comes back to the sacredness peculiar to each sex and to the ambivalent attitude of men toward the extraordinary power of women: particularly with regard to women's ability to conceive and to self-regulate their uncleanness through their menstrual cycles.

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