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stylistic categories. Using the method of style
analysis, I have proposed a distinction between
a number of styles and substyles that derive
from a correlation of formal features and the
sparse information available on the geographic
origins of certain works in museum collections.
The two dominant styles that have been unanimously
identifi ed within the Luluwa sculpture
corpus are named after subgroups known as
Bakwa Mushilu and Bakwa Ndoolo, the fi rst
located in the northern part of Luluwaland
around the town of Demba
and the second in the southern region
around Dibaya, respectively (fi gs.
13 and 14). For Bakwa Ndoolo, a further
distinction within the Bakwa Ndoolo
style can be made between three substyles.
Thanks to primary fi eldwork conducted by
Albert Maesen in the mid-1950s and by Paul
Timmermans in the ensuing years, two of
these substyles have been associated with
individual artists or their workshops. One
was Mulumba Tshiswaka, an artist active
in the village of Mbumba, and the other
Luboyi Wandibu from the same village
(fi gs. 15 and 16).
The book’s next chapter sheds light on various
forms of decorative arts attributed to the
Luluwa and devotes special attention to the paraphernalia
that have been associated with the
consumption of tobacco and cannabis. Anthropomorphic
mortars and pipes in typical Luluwa
style are well known among art collectors and
afi cionados. Many of them incorporate a squatting
or crouching fi gure with the elbows resting
on the knees and the hands holding the cheeks
or chin (fi g. 17), sometimes with their faces and
chests bedecked with scarifi cation. While some
literary sources have connected such caryatid
mortars with the smoking of cannabis, it seems
more likely that they were primarily used for
the grinding and pounding of tobacco leaves
that were taken as snuff rather than smoked.
Claims by other scholars that both the smoking
of cannabis and the practice of decorating mortars
with anthropomorphic fi gures are imports
from the Tshokwe cannot be confi rmed. And
even though the ancestral connotations of cannabis
among the Luluwa are generally accepted,
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