Sierra Leone Nomoli Stone

Nomoli are small carved soapstone or steatite figures found throughout Sierra Leone and parts of Guinea, typically discovered accidentally during farming or road construction. Their origin is disputed: some scholars attribute them to the Sapi or Sherbro peoples who occupied the Sierra Leonean coast before Mende and Temne migration, dating them to the 15th-17th centuries. Others have proposed more ancient origins. What is certain is that the people who made them left no written record, and by the time European visitors began documenting Sierra Leonean culture in the 16th century, nomoli were already being found in the ground as mysterious relics of an unknown past.

The Mende and other contemporary peoples of Sierra Leone incorporated nomoli into their agricultural practice in a fascinating adaptation: figures found in fields were understood to be guardian spirits of the land and specifically of the rice crop. Farmers would keep nomoli found on their land in small shrine houses at the field's edge, making offerings of food and water to them before planting and harvest. A field with a happy nomoli was believed to produce abundant rice; a neglected nomoli would curse the harvest with drought, disease, or failure. The figures thus became integrated into an agricultural spiritual practice entirely different from their original context.

Nomoli come in a wide variety of forms: human figures seated, standing, or in complex postures; animals including crocodiles, snakes, and horses; and hybrid human-animal figures. Their stone material gives them a permanence and weight quite different from wooden figures, and their unknown age gives them an aura of mystery and deep time. They are among West Africa's most enigmatic sacred objects.