Children’s Spinning Tops in North Africa and the Sahara

This chapter is related to a description and analysis of North African and Saharan children's play and toy cultures published on Academia.eduand Scribd under the author's name.After the introduction, text is divided into three parts: child made spinning tops with natural material, child made spinning tops with waste material, and children's spinning tops made by artisans.The information is based on fieldwork among Ghrib children from the Tunisian Sahara in 1975 and 1977, and among Moroccan Amazigh (Berber) and Arabicspeaking children since 1992.Other data were found in the consulted bibliography.These children aged between four and fourteen years belong to families and communities living in rural and urban environments during the 20 th and the beginning of the 21 st century.As the images are essential, the reader is provided with 14 illustrations in the text and a PowerPoint freely available on the Internet.Khalija Jariaa and Boubaker Daoumani, my two Anti-Atlas collaborators, this is done more in detail among Amazigh (Berber) children living near or in the Anti-Atlas Mountains of southwestern Morocco since 2002.Khalija Jariaa was born in 1974 in Ikenwen, a village 29 km from Tiznit, where she lived during her youth.Since 2005 she lives in a village on the outskirts of Tiznit, now a quarter of this town.Boubaker Daoumani, was born in 1973 in a village 30 km from Sidi Ifni but lived in that town from a young age.He is a primary school teacher who obtained in 2012 the diploma of Amazigh studies at the Ibn Zohr University in Agadir.This fieldwork is based on observation, unstructured interviews, making photographs and a few videos.When observing and photographing children during play, an ethnographer will get a quick reply, they relate or withdraw.Their consent is mostly indicated indirectly by accepting a discrete presence.Without being trusted by the children, their families, and neighbours, participant observation is impossible.However, the research is more accessible because the children like our interest in their toys and games.They feel respected and appreciated when seen as valuable informants and producers of objects and knowledge.When asking children how they prefer to be mentioned in writings, they say their real first name should be used, and the consulted adults found this no problem.When mothers, fathers, or other adult caretakers accepted research on their children, they almost always offered this permission verbally.Indeed, one cannot do such research without the adults' and children's approval, as it happens in families and public spaces.The reader can find more details on the ethical and methodological aspects of the research in two publications (Rossie 2008: 24-26, 45; Rossie et al. 2021: 454-465).The information on spinning top games covers the 20 th century and the beginning of the 21 st century.William Marçais described in 1911 the oldest ones and Khalija Jariaa observed the most recent in 2021.The written data were found in books and articles mentioned in a commented bibliography (Rossie 2021), in particular, Bernus (2003), Lambrugo (2013), Moscoso (2002), Rossie (2001, 2005, 2022).In the research, tradition as well as modernity are looked after.The evolution of this play culture shows the influence of local social and cultural changes, television and other media, emigration, and tourism, and is putting forward the growing impact of globalization and digitalization.Amazigh children, whose tops and spinning top games are described, inhabit mainly the Rif Mountains, Middle Atlas, High Atlas and Anti-Atlas Mountains, the Sous region, and the area near the Jbel Ayachi Mountain.The contacted Moroccan Arabic-speaking children were living in coastal towns, less often in inland towns.Boys created all the tops modelled in clay or with waste material mentioned in this chapter, but girls also twirl tops.They are aged between four and fourteen years.Throwing tops may be a solitary occupation especially as

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