Dress Noted

Fourie's notes and archive are intimately connected to the artefact material. The notes contain a lot of ethnographic information in general, with a strong focus on material culture and its production. At several points Fourie refers in his notes to his artefact collection. These notes inform and nuance the material analyses in chapter 5, and contribute information regarding the body modification aspects of dress, particularly tattoos and cut marks.

I present and discuss Fourie's notes according to four main categories of dress, similar to the approach used for the SWA notes of Dorothea Bleek in chapter 4. In Fourie's notes the information has been extracted from his headings, such as ‘Transition Rites’, ‘Childhood’, ‘Beadmaking’, ‘Running down Game’, ‘Menstruation’ and ‘Leather-Articles’. It will become apparent that the two researchers complement rather than contradict each other, although they seem to have had a different focus in their conversations with informants, just as they did in their agendas of collecting. The study of Fourie's notes in relation to his artefact and photograph collection sheds light on what he perceived Bushman material culture to represent. It also gives grounds for an increased understanding of dress as an embodied practice of significance among his informants.

OES beads and beadwork

‘ Notes on the Presentday Ostrich Eggshell Bead Industry in South West Africa’

Fourie was particularly interested in the production of beadwork. This is evident in all parts of the collection. In the paper archive, there are numerous drafts of what appears to be the beginning of an unpublished article written by him: ‘Notes on the Presentday Ostrich Eggshell Bead Industry in South West Africa’ (for example MMS40/69 BoxA/2/171). The draft includes the origin of OES beadwork among the different tribes, and repeats a lot of the information found in his book of compiled notes and other notes in the archive. The article is interesting when compared to the artefact collection and the group photographs discussed earlier. I therefore quote the full introduction: