![]() A typological approach to medicine shrines would appear largely ineffectual, certainly archaeologically, where what might be constructed above ground will likely be rendered unrecognizable ( Insoll 2008). They can cross the boundaries of Colson's (1997) human-constructed ‘shrines of the land’ and natural ‘places of power’. As mentioned, they can become Gods, but also ancestor, or earth shrines ( Lentz 2009, 140), or be derived from these. Shrines ‘are not immutable’ ( Dawson 2009, xi) and medicine shrines seem to be able to mutate and develop into other ‘forms’ of shrines and entities. ![]() Dawson's (2009, vii) ‘vessel’ shrine definition would appear valid. This indicates difference, but also similarity, in relation to the recurrence of the container or vessel. This was probably common but remains under-researched, and indicates how ‘medicine’, especially if enshrined, can become a cosmological axis that transcends a concern with health. Field (1937, 113) refers to such a process amongst the Gã (Ghana). The problematic nature of ‘medicine’ as defined in English is also clearly indicated by the fact that medicines can become Gods. ![]() Rather than meaning ‘the science and art concerned with the cure, alleviation, and prevention of disease, and with the restoration and preservation of health’ ( Little, Fowler, and Coulson 1973, 1300), the Hausa concept of magani ‘includes much more’ ( Little, Fowler, and Coulson 1973, 1300) in that it can ‘refer to anything which corrects or prevents an undesirable condition’. Lewis Wall (1988, 211) similarly indicates the problem with the word ‘medicine’ in the Hausa (Nigeria) context. Almquist (1991, 103) describes how bebobe, ‘medicines’, was used by the Pagibeti (Congo) as a ‘favourite one-word explanation’ for ‘the unusual power of a chief, a witch, or a highly successful curer or hunter’. ![]()
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