Why from the Ossaim’s steams sprout birds – even arrows sprout! –, but not leaves???!!!

Abstract

This article constitutes an exercise of interpretation of the “Osanyin fer”, or “ossaim iron”, a type of object of the Yoruba-nago material culture, in Africa, as well as of the Candomble in Brazil. It’s aided in the revision of descriptions of this type of object in the specialized literature, mirroring a methodology of treatment of ethnological and archaeological collections in museums, it is also related to the aesthetics questions and represents an contribution to the scientific and academic production of the African Ethnological department of the MAE-USP since 1998, so that it brings a synthesis of the researches on the relative metal collection accomplished in the period. It is ended, naturally, with the attempt to answer the question that gave motivation to the article and that gave name to its title, and, also, with the ratification of that we had of beginning: that an object should not be taken as mere illustration of social-anthropological or ethnoarchaeological problems, and that an object in collection should be treated as a source of knowledge, once that, as its own image, it shelters its content.