FOR ANCESTORS AND GOD: RITUALS OF SACRIFICE AMONG THE CHAGGA OF TANZANIA

Abstract

This article discusses the rituals of sacrifice among the patrilineal Chagga people of northern Tanzania in terms of the historical context of double burial and related sacrifices. Despite more than a hundred years of Christianity in the area, ancestor veneration and sacrifices remain important elements in the rituals of kin groups, as when the relatively well educated, migrant Chagga return home at Christmas to commemorate their ancestors. The analysis draws from the classic studies of sacrifice as a gift, a communion, and an effective representation by focusing on sacrificial substances, participants, and spatio-temporal movement. It examines ritual cuisine, sequences of substances and their processing in the course of reconstituting the social community, and transforming the dead into ancestors. Rituals of sacrifice are part of a larger set of rituals that place both the living and the dead in ancestral lands.