Adoné (antelope funerary headdress)
Tall, painted antelope crest of the Kurumba of northern Burkina Faso, danced at the close of mourning to expel the soul of the deceased.
The adoné is the central masquerade object of the Kurumba (Koromba) of the Aribinda region, northern Burkina Faso. Carved from lightweight local softwood, it takes the form of a highly stylised antelope head and elongated neck mounted on a woven cap-base. The surface carries horizontal and diagonal register-bands of geometric motifs — lozenges, triangles, chevrons — executed in white kaolin, red ochre and black manganese pigment, giving the object a distinctive polychrome character documented in depth by Annemarie Schweeger-Hefel in the 1960s and 1970s and contextualised by Christopher D. Roy in Art of the Upper Volta Rivers (1987).
The adoné is performed at the end of the formal mourning period for a deceased community elder. Its ritual purpose is to sever the bond between the lingering soul of the dead and the living, enabling the community to resume normal life without spiritual risk. This specifically funerary function distinguishes it from the harvest or initiation roles that antelope masks serve in neighbouring traditions. The headdress is worn atop the dancer's crown, the tall crest rising dramatically above the crowd; vigorous movement during the dance produces the characteristic wear patterns — abrasion at the neck-base, occasional horn repairs — that help identify genuinely danced examples against the substantial number of decorative reproductions that have reached the market since the 1970s.