14 · Treasure · daily life

Oil in a calabash

Gourd container from Kaninya

According to the museum catalogue, this gourd was used to store oil or fat for use on the body.

Museum documentation · free public access, no account required.

Gourd vessel to scale with catalogue label for oil or fat use — **DECLARED VISUAL RECONSTRUCTION · AI-GENERATED IMAGE · TRACEKEEPERS**
Generated reconstruction · Declared visual hypothesis
AI RECONSTRUCTION · use according to catalogue, not chemical analysis

History and context

The British Museum record notes a gourd 18.5 centimetres in size from Kaninya.

According to the catalogue, it held oil or fat for the body. This use is recorded information, not the result of chemical analysis.

Evidence and interpretation

British Museum Af1948,08.205.

Catalogue facts

Narrative date: ca. 1947
Location: Kaninya, former Bugoyi district, Rwanda; today London
Material: gourd
Context: Object not on display; review vocabulary and acquisition conditions.
Curatorial reading: The documented fact and its interpretation appear separately in the evidence block.
Dossier axis: treasures
Research record: BATWA · treasure-kaninya-gourd
Documentary coverage: 1 museum source, heritage, primary corpus or research for this stop.

A SHARED TOPIC, DIFFERENT MOMENTS

Objects connected through time

Follow a topic across the collections. A shared tag is a way to compare objects, not proof that one culture influenced another.

The order uses the midpoint of each approximate date range; ranges can overlap. Spacing does not represent elapsed time. Swipe, scroll or use the arrows. With the sequence focused, use ← / →, Home or End.

THE CURRENT OBJECT

Its date is not sufficiently established to place it on the timeline. We keep it here, separate from the dated objects.

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ca. 1947

Oil in a calabash

Batwa / Twa histories

Ca. 1947 is an ethnographic record; individual manufacture is not known.

Current record

Gourds1 dated object

19th century
19th-century kora
Mande Worlds
The century of the surviving instrument, not the origin of the musical tradition.
Read the record

1 / 1In the centre: 19th-century kora

You can scroll the first group without JavaScript. The other topics are also available below.

Vessels

Current object, without a comparable date: Oil in a calabash.

Without a comparable date (not part of the chronological order):

A Kerma vessel deposited at Abydos · Second Intermediate Period · Ancient Egypt
A tradition that invents · collected in 1993 or 1995 · Batwa / Twa histories
A vase travels; the rite changes · No individual dating published on this record · Iberians
Early pottery · before ca. 9400 cal BCE · Mande Worlds
Liédena Flask · Roman period · individual chronology not published in the entry · Etruscans and Rome
Made in Garama · I millennium BCE–I millennium CE · Garamantes
The unfinished gesture · 1947 · Batwa / Twa histories
Travelling objects · Mainly Roman period · Garamantes
Urns from Adichanallur · Iron Age · samples towards 665 and 467 BCE · Vedic and later Indian worlds
Vessels without a language · Urewe, broad regional range ca. 800 BCE–650 CE · Bantu-speaking worlds

Storage

Current object, without a comparable date: Oil in a calabash.

Pithos · c. 1450–1375 BCE · Greek worlds

Without a comparable date (not part of the chronological order):

Liédena Flask · Roman period · individual chronology not published in the entry · Etruscans and Rome
Rice on stilts · Especially 1st–3rd centuries CE · Yayoi Japan
Tichitt walls · II–I millennia BCE · Mande Worlds

A closer look

About 1 min to read · 1 section. Further reading and sources · free access. Editorial review recorded: September 5, 2026.

The container within a broader domestic archive

The enquiry for the place Kaninya in the British Museum brings together sixteen records. Alongside the vessel Af1948,08.205 appear another container, a pipe and two fire-lighting instrument records, in addition to weapons and hunting equipment. This association allows widening the view towards storage, smoking and fire production: activities that a presentation centred solely on the hunter would leave out. The relationship derives from the geographical catalogue, not from an excavated dwelling; therefore it does not prove that all the objects belonged to the same person or originally formed a single domestic set.

Museum · British Museum · Kaninya, sixteen related recordsAccess recorded: September 5, 2026.

Where it is held

The British Museum

Item or group in the record · Documented collection

The holding institution is documented; public display may change. Check its official record before visiting.

Sources and references

Expand this information and consult its sources

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