ABSTRACT
In Native American art many different types of body decoration were found at the time of early contact with European explorers. Many contemporary scholars of Native American, African, and South Pacific art tend to be experts on a small region or a specific art-making group, rather than generalists. Virtually all the peoples of the Northwest Coast of North America organized their villages according to social rank around a central position in the center of a beach settlement, with rank descending outward toward the edges of the village. Sculptures larger than life, modeled in clay, are found among the Ibo peoples of southeastern Nigeria, particularly within the context of a large-scale display of architectural sculpture known as an mbari house. Technologically, the architecture of this house is parallel to the basket-like structure of the palace at Foumban, although the size, context, and iconography of the architectural sculpture and paintings are very different.
