Abstract
The Konso of southern Ethiopia are agricultural people, skilled at cultivating fieldson stone terraces. They also have excellent techniques of cotton weaving, metalwork, pottery and other handicrafts. This paper focuses on Konso pots in an attempt toclarify their meaning, not simply in their important everyday role as utensils for cook-ing, storage or alcohol-making, or as commercial items to be traded on the market, but as symbolic objects that demonstrate the structure of society.
The Konso place the pots on the roofs of their houses. There are several socialnorms concerning pots, and the rank of each family in Konso society is shown by thepresence or absence of a pot on the roof and by the type of pot. By understanding whatsort of norms govern the use of pots in Konso society, I was able to deduce four normswhich demonstrate the relation between the pot on the roof and their social structure.
