Questions not to Ask of Malagasy Carvings

This chapter is a cautionary tale or a short history of the attempts at interpretation of the carvings of a group of people in Madagascar: the Zafimaniry. It discusses the traditional carvings of the Zafimaniry. These are low reliefs or engravings of relatively elaborate geometrical patterns which cover the wooden parts of their houses — especially the shutters and, most beautifully, the three main posts. Since the 1920s, at least, professional and amateur anthropologists and archaeologists have bothered the Zafimaniry by asking them what these carvings ‘meant’. The carvings are the continuation of the process of human maturation and settling down, of marriage and house creation, of hardening, of growth, of acquiring bones. The carvings are not separate from this process, they are not representing, they are part of the finishing of a task which should never finish as it should grow forever.