African women in traditional societies enhanced their natural beauty with scarification and cosmetic preparations. For example, they applied black kohl to their eyes, painted their faces and bodies with a reddish powder or paste, and moisturized their skin with shea butter.

This memorial figure represents an important woman whose name has since been lost. She wears an upswept hairstyle or royal headdress, has filed teeth, and wears no fewer than five bracelets on her left arm, all indications of an extraordinary, spiritually imbued woman, perhaps a great healer and protector of children.

Dogon blacksmiths also served as sculptors carving wooden doors for houses, granaries, and shrines and decorating them with symbolic motifs drawn from Dogon mythology and religious beliefs, including depictions of primordial ancestors (nommo) and ani

African women in traditional societies enhanced their natural beauty with scarification and cosmetic preparations. For example, they applied black kohl to their eyes, painted their faces and bodies with a reddish powder or paste, and moisturized their skin with shea butter.

Mintadi (sing. ntadi) funerary figures were carved in soft gray steatite (soapstone) as well as wood and placed on graves or in memorial houses in Mboma cemeteries, where survivors could consult them. This ntadi portrays a chief.

The Hemba peoples memorialized distinguished ancestors (e.g. chiefs, warriors, and heads of lineages) in sculpted wooden figures (sing. singiti; pl. lusingiti) that served as vessels for their spirits.

The precise context in which this kneeling male figure was used is not clearly understood, but it can be assumed that it was associated with ancestor veneration.

African "pillows" are traditionally made of wood, ivory, or fired clay. The basic form of two platforms separated by a vertical post is consistent throughout Africa, from Egypt to South Africa, and throughout time, from antiquity to the present. Still used, this "pillow" is called a headrest because of the way it is used.

The Dogon peoples used wooden bolt locks (ta koguru) to secure the doors to houses, interior rooms, granaries, and some shrines.