Ghana (Other Keyword)
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This is an abstract from the session entitled "Maritime Archaeology in West Africa", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Manillas and cowry shells served as alternative currencies in the trans-Atlantic trade in West Africa. Cowries are marine snails native to the Indian Ocean whose shells were brought into West Africa by trans-Saharan traders and adopted as an everyday alternative currency exchangeable for anything from food to slaves. Manillas are brass...
Earthen dwellings from Banda, Ghana: Geoarchaeological analyses of archaeological and modern structures (2016)
West African earthen architecture is among the most elaborated in the world as recognized by the World Heritage site status of Asante buildings at Kumasi. However, its history is poorly known. This study begins to redress this gap by employing bulk sediment analyses and soil micromorphology to characterize building remains recovered at the Ngre Kataa site, in Banda, Ghana and a contemporary earthen compound in the region. The study was conducted in tandem with archaeological and...
What’s in a Label? Archaeological Taxonomies and Social Processes Past and Present (2015)
The Banda area of west central Ghana is a quintessential example of what Igor Kopytoff (1987) long-ago dubbed the Internal African Frontier—an ‘interstitial’ region between ‘established societies’ that is home to a dynamic composition of people, languages and practice forged by newcomers and autochthones alike. In presumed contrast with their ‘established’ neighbors, frontier societies are ones in which processes of improvisation and the negotiation of social boundaries seem more apparent. While...