BEADED COIFFURES 117 FIG. 9 (above): Profi le portrait of standing adult Latuka male. Photo by Major Percy Powell- Cotton, Binoc, South Sudan, 1933. Gelatin silver print. 16.3 x 11.9 cm. Inscribed on reverse: “Latuka Death Dance Costume 15/4/33 Sudan, Binoc VI. 5.” British Museum, inv. Af,B8.17. © The Trustees of the British Museum. The Lur (or Alur), who are related to the Acholi and live south of the Mahdi area, wore “wigs and cowrie caps from the eastern Schúli area, the towering coiffures of the Western Lango, with corkscrew curls wound up in spirals.”12 Emin Pascha and Baker both emphasize that at this time beads were still an important trade item,and that women also wore strings of beads of varying sizes and colors around their waists or necks. In the 1880s and 1890s, there was an interruption in the European exploration of the region, because the Mahdi Revolt was underway in Sudan, making any access to the region impossible. Dealing with the uprising required a tremendous British military effort, cost the former governor general Charles Gordon his life, and entirely isolated the province of Equatoria while it was under the sway of the ultra-orthodox Mahdist regime. After the defi nitive British victory over the Mahdists occurred, in 1902, Major Charles Delmé-Radcliffe undertook an expedition to northern Uganda and southern Sudan and brought back a varied collection of Acholi objects, which are now in the British Museum. The Acholi had a type of head covering the felt-like part around the rim of which included bone chips and a wooden stick, and the neck area had a bead-covered cone of hair crowned with an empty cartridge. In 1904, Albert Bushnell Lloyd described this Acholi head covering: This consists of a curiously worked cone of matted hair, with beads neatly stitched in a pattern round it, and an empty cartridge-case stuck in at the top. Old gun-caps are also fastened into the base of the cone, and are polished bright .... This hair cone is held on to the head by a string of cut shells, round the back of the head, and a long iron pin.13 Other hair helmets among the Acholi were more conventional, composed of strips of leather and decorated with sewn-on spirally arranged glass beads, usually white and red (fi g. 5). These designs were undoubtedly based on timeless and ubiquitous models. A large expedition primarily focused on hunting was undertaken by Percy Powell-Cotton in 1902 and 1903. It crossed from what is now Kenya through Uganda and Sudan to the Kongo, and along the way encountered groups that had had no prior contact with Europeans. Powell-Cotton’s interest in collecting and his keen powers of observation make his book In Unknown Africa14 interesting from an anthropological point of view as well as a travel account. It makes for an exciting read, even if many of his conceptions cannot nowadays be recognized as politically acceptable. He saw the striking—though not beaded—decorated coiffures of the Suk (Pokot), Turkana, and Karamajong in northern Kenya, before he arrived in Uganda among the Toposa (Topotha). Even then, changing fashions existed. The older men still wore the sack-shaped hanging chignon that was decorated with beads, while the younger ones were starting to wear smaller helmet-like creations made of hair and clay. Some of these were decorated with beads, others with pompoms or ostrich feathers.
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