Lukasa (Luba memory board)
Flat wooden board of the Luba *Mbudye* society densely covered with glass beads, cowrie shells and metal pins arranged in mnemonic patterns; encodes royal genealogies, migration routes, territorial maps and initiation knowledge, read aloud in performance.
The lukasa is a flat wooden memory board used by initiates of the Luba Mbudye society. Its surface is densely covered with glass beads, cowrie shells, metal pins and carved bosses arranged in mnemonic configurations that encode royal genealogies, territorial maps, migration histories and initiation knowledge. The board is not read silently. It is read aloud in performance by an initiate whose interpretation is part standardised, part improvised — each reading event is therefore a performance as well as a recitation.
No comparable object exists in the neighbouring Songye, Hemba or Tabwa material cultures, which makes the lukasa the single most diagnostically Luba object in any collection. The 1996 exhibition and catalogue Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History by Mary Nooter Roberts and Allen F. Roberts established the lukasa as the paradigm case of a purpose-built mnemonic device in African material culture.