C.- RITUAL STUDIES

THE TALLED PIETER The stone has also been used, but as a harder material it has required tools to be able to be worked, being therefore the origins of the stone carved very after the terracottas. Most African carved stones have a ritual and rather funerary value. The Mendi Country of Sierra Leone, the Kissi Guinea, the former Congo or the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria are the exponential sites of stone art in Africa. Stone has been a very little used material in Africa, both in architecture and sculpture. We highlight the most important areas in which stonework has appeared. In sculpture, in Rodesia, stones representing birds or cups have been found. KISSI SIERRA LEONE AND GUINEA CONAKRY The KISSI grow the land and mainly rice. The so-called kissi stones are steatite funeral statuettes that appear in a fetal position. The name of the stones in Kissi language is pomdo, in singular and pomta in plural, which means death or image of dead, because they represent the dead ancestor. The bare statuettes do not bear the name of the ancestor while the dressed statuettes have their own name, that of the ancestor they represent and in this case they are called Pom-Kandya. They are placed in the family altars, where they receive the offerings and honors of all descendants during ceremonies. They are offered the last seeds and the firstfruits of the harvests. During the ceremonies the depositary or guardian of the statuette, usually the fortune teller, carries it over his head and a kind of angarillas and holds it with both hands. Family members and relatives can ask questions to the statuette and if the answer is yes it will lean to the right and if it is negative to the left. They detect what person has committed an evil. They are considered divinities of rice by the population. They appear in the fields, where they were introduced in order to obtain good harvests and have not been able to date accurately. They have appeared for four hundred years and seem to date from nine hundred to two thousand years. Kissi call them pomdo and mende nomoli, or moonstones.