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Board games are tabletop games that typically use pieces. These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well.
Mancala refers to a family of two-player turn-based strategy board games played with small stones, beans, or seeds and rows of holes or pits in the earth, a board or other playing surface. The objective is usually to capture all or some set of the opponent's pieces.
Vodun is a religion practiced by the Aja, Ewe, and Fon peoples of Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Nigeria.
Spirit possession is an unusual or an altered state of consciousness and associated behaviors which are purportedly caused by the control of a human body and its functions by spirits, ghosts, demons, angels, or gods. The concept of spirit possession exists in many cultures and religions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Haitian Vodou, Dominican 21 Divisions, Hinduism, Islam, Wicca, and Southeast Asian, African, and Native American traditions. Depending on the cultural context in which it is found, possession may be considered voluntary or involuntary and may be considered to have beneficial or detrimental effects on the host. Spirit possession is often regarded as a reason in support of spirits, deities or demons. In a 1969 study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, spirit possession beliefs were found to exist in 74% of a sample of 488 societies in all parts of the world, with the highest numbers of believing societies in Pacific cultures and the lowest incidence among Native Americans of both North and South America. As Pentecostal and Charismatic Christian churches move into both African and Oceanic areas, a merger of belief can take place, with demons becoming representative of the "old" indigenous religions, which the Christian ministers attempt to exorcise.
A strategy game or strategic game is a game in which the players' uncoerced, and often autonomous, decision-making skills have a high significance in determining the outcome. Almost all strategy games require internal decision tree-style thinking, and typically very high situational awareness.
Papa Legba is a lwa in Haitian Vodou, Dominican Vodou, Winti and Louisiana Voodoo, who serves as the intermediary between God and humanity. He stands at a spiritual crossroads and gives permission to speak with the spirits of Guineé, and is believed to speak all human languages. In Haiti, he is the great elocutioner. Legba facilitates communication, speech, and understanding. He is commonly associated with dogs. Papa Legba is invoked at the beginning of every ceremony. Papa Legba has his origins in the historic West African kingdom of Dahomey, located within present-day Benin.
Oware is an abstract strategy game among the mancala family of board games played worldwide with slight variations as to the layout of the game, number of players and strategy of play. Its origin is uncertain but it is widely believed to be of Ashanti origin.
Bao is a traditional mancala board game played in most of East Africa including Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Comoros, Malawi, as well as some areas of DR Congo and Burundi. It is most popular among the Swahili people of Tanzania and Kenya; the name itself "Bao" is the Swahili word for "board" or "board game". In Tanzania, and especially Zanzibar, a "bao master" is held in high respect. In Malawi, a close variant of the game is known as Bawo, which is the Yao equivalent of the Swahili name.
Southeast Asian mancalas are a subtype of mancala games predominantly found in Southeast Asia. They are known as congklak, congkak, congka, and dakon in Indonesia, congkak in Malaysia and Brunei, and sungkâ in the Philippines. They differ from other mancala games in that the player's store is included in the placing of the seeds. Like other mancalas, they vary widely in terms of the rules and number of holes used.
Owela, also referred to by the Khoekhoe language loanword ǁHus, is the Oshiwambo name of a traditional mancala board game played by the Nama people, Herero people, Rukwangali speakers, and other ethnic groups from Namibia. It is related to the Omweso family of mancala games played in Eastern and Southern Africa. Although this is an abstract strategy game, the consequences of individual moves are so hard to predict that it can be considered, to some extent, a game of chance.
The Wariʼ, also known as the Pakaa Nova, are an indigenous people of Brazil, living in seven villages in the Amazon rainforest in the state of Rondônia. Their first contact with European settlers was on the shores of the Pakaa Nova River, a tributary of the Mamoré River. Many of the Wari' live within the Sagarana Indigenous Territory near the town of Rodrigues Alves.
The Saramaka, Saamaka or Saramacca are one of six Maroon peoples in the Republic of Suriname and one of the Maroon peoples in French Guiana. In 2007, the Saramaka won a ruling by the Inter-American Court for Human Rights supporting their land rights in Suriname for lands they have historically occupied, over national government claims. It was a landmark decision for indigenous peoples in the world. They have received compensation for damages and control this fund for their own development goals.
Pallanguli, or Pallankuli, is a traditional ancient mancala game played in South India, especially Tamil Nadu and Kerala. This game was later introduced to Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in India, as well as Sri Lanka and Malaysia. The game is played by two players, with a wooden board that has fourteen pits in all (hence, it is also called fourteen pits, or pathinālam kuḻi. There have been several variations in the layout of the pits, one among them being seven pits on each player's side. The pits contain cowry shells, seeds or small pebbles used as counters. There are several variations of the game depending on the number of shells each player starts with.
A social game or, less commonly, parlour game, may refer to tabletop, other face-to-face indoor or outdoor games, or video games that allow or require social interaction between players as opposed to games played in solitude, games played at tournaments or competitions or games played for money.
Harold K. "Hal" Schneider was an American seminal figure in economic anthropology. Born in Aberdeen, South Dakota, he attended elementary and secondary school in St. Paul, Minnesota, and did his undergraduate work at Macalester College and Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, receiving a bachelor's degree in sociology, with a minor in biology, from Macalester in 1949. He then went to Northwestern University, where he was a student of Melville Herskovits, basing his dissertation on field research among the Pokot of Kenya.
Oh-Wah-Ree is a mancala variant designed by Alex Randolph and published in 1962 by 3M as part of their bookshelf game line. The name "Oh-Wah-Ree" is taken from Oware, a typical West African game for which it is based on. It is played on a board with a ring of pits and stone playing pieces, distinguished from other mancala variants by the use of a second ring of holes to mark ownership of pits by the players, allowing play between more than two players at a time. The object is to capture the opponents' stones.
Alexander Johan de Voogt or simply Alex de Voogt is a Dutch researcher and associate professor at Drew University, who worked as a curator of African Ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History and best known for his work on the history and distribution of traditional mancala games. He is also editor of Board Game Studies, the main scientific journal on the history of board games.
Hoyito is a traditional mancala game played in the Dominican Republic. All the names it goes by are descriptive of elements of the game: "hoyito" means "little hole", "casitas" means "houses", and "mate" is the name of the tree whose seeds are used as counters. The game is very similar to Wari.
Dame Karin Judith Barber, is a British cultural anthropologist and academic, who specialises in the Yoruba-speaking area of Nigeria. From 1999 to 2017, she was Professor of African Cultural Anthropology at the University of Birmingham. Before joining the Centre of West African Studies of the University of Birmingham, she was a lecturer at the University of Ife in Nigeria. Since 2018, she has been Centennial Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics.
References
- M.J. Herskovits, Adjiboto, an African Game of the Bush-Negroes of Dutch Guiana. In «Man: A Monthly Record of the Royal Anthropological Institute», 1929,. 29 (90): 122–127.
- M.J. Herskovits, Wari in the New World. In «Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute», 1932, 62: 23–37.
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