Material Culture and Indigenous Spiritism: the Katamansu Archaeological “Otutu” (Shrine)

Abstract

Through the integration of oral history and ethnographic and historical data with archaeological evidence, attempts have been made to understand and reconstruct the settlement history of Katamansu, a late eighteenth-century historic town located on the Accra Plains of Ghana. Two seasons of archaeological excavations at the Koowule site of the town yielded some evidence of the 1826 Battle of Katamansu, a battle that was fought on the site between the Asante and the Ga and their coastal allies of the Gold Coast. The excavations also yielded two spectacular features, whose configuration and content appear to be the remains of a shrine of the Ga people. The features correlate well with ethnographic parallels described by Margaret Field, an anthropologist, in her research on the religion and medicine of the Ga in the 1930s. This paper presents the historical and material evidence of the 1826 battle as well as the analysis of the shrine contents. The shrine features provide insights into an archaeological shrine's mundane materiality. They also expose how local (Neolithic and historic) and European artifacts were recrafted and imbued with medicinal, magical, and spiritual properties to possibly cure and impress patients and supplicants in shrine ritual practices.Résumé A travers l'établissement de liens entre l'histoire orale, les données ethnographiques et historiques et les témoignages archéologiques, plusieurs tentatives ont été menées pour comprendre et rétablir l'histoire du peuplement de Katamansu, ville historique du 18e siècle dernier située dans les plaines d'Accra au Ghana. A deux reprises, des fouilles archéologiques ont été entreprises sur le site Koowule de la ville. Ces fouilles présentent des traces de la bataille de Katamansu, bataille qui a eu lieu entre les Asante et les Ga, alliés de la côtière de Gold Coast. Les fouilles ont également révélé des aspects spectaculaires dont la configuration et les implications montrent qu'il s'agit des vestiges d'un lieu de culte du peuple Ga.

Spiritual Pawning: “Mad Slaves” and Mental Healing in Atlantic-Era West Africa

“…44 Some shrines were ephemeral, created to commemorate a person, an encounter with a spirit, or even a battle. 45 Others were cultivated over the course of decades by shrine priests who gained notoriety for their connection to specific spirits. Priests presided over large compounds that contained a sanctified space-often marked by an assemblage of objects placed at the base of a rock formation or tree-where dozens of people lived and worked for the shrine priest.…”

Climate change and the mitigating tool of salvage archaeology: The case of the Fort Kongensten site at Ada Foah, Ghana

“…After these terms were agreed upon by Korley, he and the people of Ada settled at the Okor forest and were given custody of the Songoor Lagoon and its environs. Interestingly when the Ada forces became victorious after the 1826 Katamansu War, they exchanged their gold spoils, gained from the defeated Asantes, for food before marching back to base (Apoh, 2001;Apoh & Gavua, 2010). This was probably because of their covenant with the mystical lady of the Songoor Lagoon.…”

‘The Spirit of the Plant’: Exotic Ethnopharmacopeia Among Healers in Accra, Ghana

“…A guiding principle was achieving a 'thick text' approach to describing therapeutic materiality, whilst moving beyond abstracted, reductionist analogical frameworks (Insoll 2011: 162). To place the study within broader recent trends, it is part of a growing body of archaeological research recognising the need for richly contextualised considerations of medicine provision in sub-Saharan Africa (Esterhuysen 2008;Apoh and Gavua 2010;Insoll 2011: 145-146). These works reengage with the voices of contemporary healing specialists to contribute ethnographic narratives and case studies, adding nuance to interpretive possibilities concerning residues of related activities.…”