Shield
Zulu people, South Africa, d. late 19th/early 20th c.
Hide and wood
55” h x 24¾” w (139.70 x 62.87 cm)
Price: $1200
A classic example of a traditional Zulu shield. The Zulu are one of the few African peoples outside of eastern Africa who produced shields made of hide, and, contrary to most modes of precolonial African warfare, under the expansionist chief Shaka (r. 1816–28) Zulu shields served a distinctly military purpose as a tactical weapon: “when attacking, warriors formed closed ranks behind the large shields, thus providing themselves with optimal protection” (Plaschke and Zirngibl 1992: 17, 20). The famous martial valor of the Zulus—epitomized at the Battle of Isandlwana (1879), and later immortalized in the film Zulu (1964)—lends these shields a kind of metonymic power. In fact, the Zulu shield is arguably one of the more commonly known ‘images’ of ‘Africa’ in the popular imagination. Cf. Plaschke and Zirngibl (1992: 21, fig. 3).
