The Virtual Institute of Mambila Studies

The Virtual Institute of Mambila Studies seeks to collate and connect the different research and researchers with an interest in the Mambila people of the Nigeria - Cameroon borderland and their neighbours; their languages and the area in which they live. We take a broad view of Mambila, including other groups speaking related languages such as Kwanja, Vute, Wawa, Nizaa, Njerep (3 speakers at last count!) Twendi (35 speakers), Tep, and others. Our research is primarily of an anthropological and linguistic nature; abstracts or full texts of papers are available at the site. The currently available work includes reports on Zeitlyn's research on kinship and language and his annotated version of Meek's early ethnological work in the region, and Connell's comparative linguistic research and work on tone realization in Mambila, as well as a full bibliography of anthropological, linguistic, and related research on Mambila. VIMS was established by David Zeitlyn (anthropology) and Bruce Connell (linguistics). We would welcome your comments addresses below.

The following inline image acts as a link to photographs of the "Physical Institute of Mambila Studies" in Somié, Cameroon which has been the base for much of this research.

March 2020 Book on Mambila Divination. The image below links to the publishers website which includes a preview

A 2023 book review concludes that this is "essential for all social scientists studying divination."

Page for ADECANSO Association pour le Développement du Canton du Somié

The work of a cooperative group doing reforestation work in the area around Somié: REFOCASO

Photos from Atta 1980s Some of Riek van Koevorden's photos from Atta taken when working there as a lay missionary in the early 1980s.

Photos taken by Stuart Beare 1960/ 1961 when he was working on the second Plebiscite in what was then the Northern Cameroons, on the Mambila Plateau and in Chamba area.

Some videos shot around Somié in December 2013. These include communal work to make a new road and dancing at the Protestant Church Harvest festival.

At last a solution to all the problems planning Mambila ritual: A calendar showing the traditional ten day week and the phases of the moon

Online fulltext now available. With the permission of the publisher we now include the pdf of the following publication:
David Zeitlyn N. Mial & C. Mbe, Trois Etudes sur les Mambila de Somié, Cameroun, Groupe de Recherches sur l'Afrique Francophone, Boston, Mass., 2000. (download size 4.7 MB)

Obituary for Degah Francois by Jonas GNEMABE

Some Somié produced videos
"Women's sua in Somié 2012" now available online.
Video of Nggwun 2011 and a track from a 2014 album by Jean-Pierre Martino, released 2013. Placed online with the permission of the artist.

The Cameroon National Anthem in Mambila

Sua bo veh a Somié 2016 un film de DJ Ireno The dance of women's sua in Somié village Cameroon in 2016 La danse des femmes au Somié, Cameroun

The UNESCO Universal Declaration on Archives now in Mambila

Historical Sources

Linguistic Research

Online appendices to 'The Rhetoric of Kinship: "Doing kinship" - some Mambila cases'. 2021. In Rhetoric in Social Relations, 98-115 edited by J. Abbink and Shauna LaTosky. Oxford: Berghahn Books.

2006-2009 Documentation of endangered languages and cultures in the Nigeria-Cameroon borderland

A Kent Anthropology MSc in Ethnobotany, 2009 "Sharing Knowledge Intra-cultural variation of ethnobotanical knowledge and the factors that pattern it in a Mambila community in the Cameroon-Nigeria borderland"

Cameroonian Studio Photography

I have been undertaking research with several Cameroonian Studio Photographers (some covering Mambila villages but others in the Bamiléké area)

2003/4 Evans Pritchard Lectures

Words and Processes in Mambila Kinship

Contents

Other researchers known to be working on Mambila and related groups

• Roger Blench, Linguist, Cambridge Institute for the Study of Pacific and African Languages
• Rolf Theil Edresen, University of Oslo, Norway
• Raymond Boyd CNRS, Paris
• Jim and Marta Wade, formerly University of Maiduguri, Nigeria

Other researchers who have worked on Mambila and related groups

• Dr Quentin Gausset, University of Copenhagen.
• the late Mona Perrin Linguist, SIL.
• the late Professor Charles Frantz, U. Penn, Philadelphia
• Gladys Guarisma, LACITO, Paris

Some research projects currently underway or completed

• Digitised transcript with online sound files appendix to David Zeitlyn, 1993. "Reconstructing kinship or the pragmatics of kin talk". Man 28(2), 199-224.
• Mambila Nggwun - the construction and deployment of multiple meanings in ritual
• The Mambila riddle machine - an interactive introduction to Mambila riddles nb riddling not working July 2017
  
• Work on Mambila Divination, NB Including a Java-based simulation of Spider Divination
• A Day in the Life... Somié Village, Province de l'Adamaoua, Cameroon A series of video clips that were taken at approximately one hour intervals throughout the period 6am-7pm of Wednesday 21 April 1999.
• David Zeitlyn: Pilot Project: exploratory research on archival sources for Mambila demography. Period supported: 1 Sept 1997-30 Nov 1998 Funded by the Wellcome Trust (ref no. 051191).
  • Original proposal.
  • Draft paper on methods employed.
• David Zeitlyn Kinship and language: a computer-aided study of social deixis
  in conversation. A project funded by the ESRC (UK) R000 23 3311 Results of this project:
  • The final report of the ESRC funded part of this project.
  • Data from the project have been archived as part of the Child Language Data Exchange Scheme (CHILDES)

Other material on Mambila

Data on Mambila can be found at the following locations:

• Gazeteer of Mambila villages. On the same site there is also a separate page about Gembu
• Mambila Transcript with digitised recording
• Introductory notes on Mambila shields by David Zeitlyn
• A late 1980s survey of Mambila by a Nigerian researcher: The Cross and the Gods [A Look at Adamawa and Taraba States, Nigeria] by Patience Ahmed CAPRO Research Office 1992
• A bibliography of works on the Mambila can be obtained in two forms:
  Click in Refer format (plain ascii) for import
  Click in JRAI format (HTML)
  NB these are no longer being updated, for a more updated bibliography see Mambila online bibliography

• Kinship and language: a computer-aided study of social deixis in conversation
• A mongraph on Mambila ethnography including both ethnographic introduction and transcripts of sacrifical oath-taking:
  David Zeitlyn. Sua in Somié. Mambila Traditional religion. Vol. 41 of the Collectanea Insitutii Anthropos. ISBN 3-88345-375-7. List price was originally DM 78 and it is available from:

  Academia Verlag, Postfach 1663
  D-53734 Sankt Augustin
  Germany
  Fax 02241/341528

Reviews of this book may be found in the following sources:

1. The journal Anthropos vol. 90 pp.657-8 by Bertrand Masquelier. With the kind permission of the editor, the text of this review is now available.
2. The Journal of the Royal Anthroplogical Institute Vol 2 No. 2 pp. 398-9 June 1996 by Anthony D. Buckley. With the kind permission of the RAI, the text of this review is also available.
3. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft Band 146 - Heft 2 1996 pp 728 by Jorg Adelberger
   An English translation of this review is also available
4. International Journal of African Historical Studies 30(1): 161-162 (1997) by P. Dekar.
5. Journal of Religion in AfricaXXVIII(1): 115-7 N. Lovell:

Other related material

• The works of Professor Farnham Rehfisch The late Professor Farnham Rehfisch was the first anthropologist to conduct protracted field work among the Mambila (in 1953/4), and with the kind permission of his widow, Mrs A. Rehfisch, his material on Mambila (published and un-published) is being made available. This starts with a short bibliography of his work from where you can find the full text of some of his articles. The articles and fieldnotes are now available online as part of the ERA project
• A work on a group near Mambila: the text of Chilver and Kaberry's 1961 'History and customs of Ntem'
• The text of a novella written by a Mambila author:
  Drink and the Innocent Policeman by Jonathan W. Mangbon
• The Paintings of Bolo Pierre, a Mambila artist
• The Gutowski's in Mambilla - an account and 137 photographs from Missionaries who were in Mambilla, Nigeria in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
• Photographs from Atta in the 1980s Some photographs taken by Riek van Koevorden while she was working in Atta Catholic Mission 1981-4.
• Locally authored report of the Eléphant club de Mafoulou (Somie) - a football club in the village of Somie.
• Doctorate on Mambila: From Mambila Marriage To Conjugal Networks: Toward A Redefinition Of African 'marriage' 1998
  Walter E. Pond The abstract is available online
• MC Tony Music

Work on Yamba

Full text of a monograph on Yamba religion: "Affliction and Moral Order: Conversations in Yambaland" by Hermann Gufler MHM First published 2003
in the CSAC Monographs Series, CSAC, Uninversity of Kent, UK

Other work on Yamba is listed in the Yamba online bibliography

Video by Samuel Finlak, photographer based in Atta:
View here or download from the following link

Intronisation de Chef du Village de Saah S.M. Mbebon Adamou. 7th Jan 2017 on Vimeo.
Camera Samuel Photo

Links to other related sites:

• Mama for Story: publications celebrating the work of Sally Chilver. Note added in July 2014. Sally Chilver died on 3 July 2014 shortly before her 100th birthday. The Langaa Press website has some tributes
  and a sound recording of the memorial service on 22 November 2014 at LMH is available here
• Grassfields studies page
• Antbase - this has information about West African Ants - a source so rare and prized that it has to be here!
• Material culture of twins in Cameroon by Rachael Ndi
• Borno Studies April 2015 The original link at http://afrika.univie.ac.at/Borno/MAIN.html is no longer working. So I am using the internet archive version from 2007
• Northern Mandaras Homepage
• Brian Oswald's photos from Nyamboya (and places nearby) taken in the 1990s are now online
.

Send Email to David Zeitlyn

Excursions in Realist Anthropology

Published in 2014, a book written by David Zeitlyn and Roger Just: Excursions in Realist Anthropology. A Merological Approach
ISBN-13: 978-1-4438-6403-9 ISBN-10: 1-4438-6403-X
A sample chapter is online at http://www.cambridgescholars.com/excursions-in-realist-anthropology

Reviewed in JASO 2016 p120-123
Reviewed by Thorgeir Storesund Kolshus in Social Analysis 61 (3) 2017

Special issue of History and Anthropology on Archives and Futures

Bibliography of David Zeitlyn NB this is no longer updated. For recent publications see the Oxford webpage above

Professor of Social Anthropology (research)

Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology,
School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography,
51 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6PE, UK

Accessibility Statement

Created July 1995, last modified 13 April 2024