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Type:
Articles
Place:
Cameroon
Centre Province
Date:
1989
Notes:
The Eton are a Beti-speaking people in southern Cameroon belonging to the Pahouin group. Their material culture is little known, but Swartz fills in the lacunae as far as pottery is concerned.
At Nkol-Nguele, one of five Eton pottery villages, he studied the entire pottery making process with particular emphasis on the roulette patterns which embellish the pots. He offers a classification of Eton pottery based on indigenous terminology and on morphological and functional criteria.
An excavation at the site of the village, abandoned by the present-day inhabitants of Nkol-Nguele during the German colonial period, revealed shards with identical or similar roulette patterns, thus suggesting a continuity in pottery making tradition over the last century.