ANTHROPOS
101.2006: 379-402
Order in a Disordered World
The Bertha House (Western Ethiopia)
Alfredo Gonzalez-Ruibal
Abstract. - The structuring of domestic space among the Bertha
P e °ple of the Sudanese-Ethiopian borderland is described. The
^ e rtha are one of the largest Nilo-Saharan groups currently liv-
ln g in Ethiopia, and they stretch out further west into Sudan.
The overwhelming majority of the population lives in traditional
r °und houses made with bamboo and straw. Despite their mas-
Slv e conversion to Islam, they still have a number of pre-Muslim
Practices, some of them clearly reflected on the use and or
ganization of the house. The relevance of domestic space for
Ordering the world and its relationship to the body are stressed.
'■ u dan-Ethiopia borderland, Bertha, Nilo-Saharans, domestic
s Pace]
fredo González-Ruibal received his Ph.D. in Prehistoric Ar-
^ aeology from the Complutense University of Madrid (2003).
e is now a MEC/Fulbright visiting scholar at the Stanford Ar-
aeology Center (California). - He has carried out archaeolog-
A an d ethnoarchaeological research on domestic architecture
11 (Alicia (Spain) and in Benishangul-Gumuz (Ethiopia). - His
hcations include: “Etnoarqueología de la emigración. Terra
j^ e ^°ntes (Galicia)” (Pontevedra 2003) and “The Need for a
paying p ast An Archaeology of Oblivion in Contemporary
Jcia (NW Spain)” {Home Cultures 2005), both focus on the
anings of the destruction of vernacular architecture. - See
s ° References Cited.
Int
r oduction
Rthropologists have pointed out on several occa-
n . s ^e enormous symbolic relevance of houses,
r hcularly in premodem communities. Houses are
, a simple reflection of social values; instead,
ue y play an active role in their materialization,
hxation
w hen i
and reproduction. This is especially clear
Se nse,
h comes to notions of order. Houses, in this
act as an organizing structure that allows
their occupants to sort out the world, to distinguish
the domestic and the wild, death and life, female
and male, clean and dirty by means of a few simple
principles, such as in/out, right/left, up/down, and
front/back (Bourdieu 1970: 746, 748). As Cunning
ham (1973; 204) states, “order concerns not just
discrete ideas or symbols, but a system; and the sys
tem expresses both principles of classification and a
value for classification per se, the definition of unity
and difference.” In some cases, buildings can en
capsulate very complex cosmological and mytho
logical meanings, such as origin myths and ge
nealogical information. Some of the best examples
explored to date come from sub-Saharan Africa 1
and, meaningfully, the most complex cases of space
organization come from equally complex societies:
the Swahili and many Madagascar peoples (Bet-
sileo, Sakalava, Merina) are paradigmatic. In this
article, a house of an egalitarian group of slash-
and-bum agriculturalists from western Ethiopia, the
Bertha, is studied. The main issues that will be dealt
with concern the regional variations of the Bertha
house, the rituals surrounding the house, and the
relevance of space and the human body for ordering
the world.
Between 2001 and 2005, four archaeological
and ethnoarchaeological fieldseasons were car
ried out in Benishangul-Gumuz National Regional
State, in western Ethiopia, along the Sudanese bor
derland (Map 1, Map 2), by the Department of Pre-
1 E.g., Feeley-Harnik 1980; Preston Blier 1987; Donley-Reid
1990; Beidelman 1991; Hahn 2000; etc.
