Negotiating Local Tastes in the 19th and 20th Centuries Global Trade in Amedeka, Southeastern Ghana.

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This paper looks at local taste practices in southeastern Ghana during the 19th and 20th centuries, using Black feminist and Indigenous archaeology perspectives. Despite the end of the Atlantic Slave trade, the internal trade of enslaved people continued until the 1850s. During this time, the demand for botanical commodities like palm oil, palm kernel oil, and cocoa increased. Local people played a crucial role in forming and maintaining trade networks in these socioeconomic networks. In Amedeka, Southeastern Ghana, where this research is located, local tastes and their related performances are conceptualized as nkudzedze - ‘pleasing to the eyes.’ I trace the materiality of nkudzedze through the consumption of locally produced and imported pottery excavated from Amedeka to engender socioeconomic practices and decentralize the Western lens of taste and knowledge production in Ghana and West Africa. Centralizing local practices in trade networks challenge Western perspectives on taste and knowledge production.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow