Introduction
Ghana has a long tradition of bead culture dating back over the last 4000 years. Some Ghanaian ethnic groups, past and present have a record of both bead production and use. For example, the Akyem‑Abompe area, in the hills of the Kwahu Plateau, is noted for its bauxite bead production and use. In this chapter, I will discuss the main types of beads found in Ghana, and explain what the archaeological record can tell us about these beads.
Stone and Shell Beads
The very earliest archaeological evidence of bead production comes from stone beads found in the excavation of two rock shelters in the Kwahu escarpment, that were used in the period of the Late Stone Age huntergatherers, around 3000‑2000B.C. (Anquandah 1982:29). The earliest well authenticated evidence of production and use of beads in Ghana, however, is found in early agricultural village settlements dated from 2000‑500B.C. Archaeological digs have revealed numerous beads made from such materials as quartz, porphyry, shells and bone (Stahl, 1993:267; Anquandah 1982:72). Recent research at Boyase hill, near Kumasi, revealed an early agricultural village settlement extending over eleven hectares. Test excavations conducted alongside granite boulders with multiple, broad, artificial hollows and grooves revealed rough‑outs, or unfinished stone beads, as well as finished beads associated with pottery. Also found were rough‑outs of stone axes and/or hoes, suggesting that the granite boulders were workshop sites for production of stone industries, including bracelets, beads, and milling equipment (Anquandah 1993a). Similarly, artifacts excavated from another early agricultural settlement site at Daboya in the Gonja traditional area dated by radio carbon method to around 2000B.C. included seven white quartz beads (Shinnie and Kense 1989: 179180; fig.79) and abundant evidence of locally manufactured stone and shell beads covering the period 2000B.C.‑A.D. 1800.
Bauxite Bead
Most common stone beads found in Ghana today are bauxite beads. e British archaeologist, Thurstan Shaw, collected ethnographic and archeological data on the production, trade and use of beads in Ghana.
Shaw became Curator of the Achimota College Museum of Anthropology in 1937. In the 1940s, he carried out field studies into the production of bauxite beads in Ghana. He surveyed a number of villages in the AkyemAbompe area noted for traditional bauxite mining and production of bauxite beads (Shaw 1945).
In 1942, Shaw excavated a large midden 8.3 metres in height at Adukrom, in the Akuapem hills, and uncovered a large corpus of beads made of stone, shell and glass. The excavation also produced over 500,000 indigenous pottery sherds, some terracotta figurines, moulds and crucibles for brass‑casting, various artifacts of brass/copper and iron, ivory combs and bracelets, cowry shells, spindle whorls, and smoking pipes. The site's age was estimated to between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on the basis of the distribution of smoking pipes.
Shaw noted that locally manufactured shell beads and local stone beads including bauxite beads, quartz cylinders, schist discs, and hornblende granite beads were found distributed throughout the deposit. On the other hand, polychrome striped beads and Venetian mosaic long cylinder 'eye' beads were confined to the middle levels, and Venetian chevron barrel beads and perforated cowry shell beads were confined to the upper levels (Shaw 1961). As the levels are time related, this provides evidence for the continual attraction of natural material beads, including bauxite.
In 1993 Bredwa‑Mensah undertook a survey of traditional bauxite mining and bauxite bead manufacture in the Akyem‑Abompe area, to build on Shaw's work (Bredwa‑Mensah 1996a). Shaw had recorded oral traditions in the 1940s at Akyem‑Abompe demonstrating that the bauxite bead industry 'was already flourishing a century ago. The oldest people now living declare that the oldest people who were engaged in the industry in their youth found large digging pits already excavated and this suggests a greater antiquity than a hundred years' (Shaw 1945). Bredwa‑Mensah recorded a large number of hand‑dug shafts used to dig bauxite which is also evidence of centuries of bauxite mining.
From the ethno-archaeological standpoint perhaps the most interesting aspect of Bredwa‑Mensah's survey relates to data on typology and functions of beads and market distribution. Present‑day Akyem‑Abompe manufacturers produce a variety of bauxite beads which are purchased for use by women not only for general body ornamentation and beautification, but also to facilitate participation in special functions such as rites and celebrations related to child‑naming, attainment of puberty, marriage, funerals, and local festivals. Akyem‑Abompe bead products are marketed not only within Ghana, (particularly in the Central, Eastern, Asante and Volta Regions), but also as far afield as Togo, C6te d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso. In addition, the Akyem‑Abompe industry has engendered minor to significant off‑shoot domestic industries elsewhere in Ghana. Dealers and bead manufacturers in Accra and the Krobo traditional area, for ample, purchase half‑finished or pre‑formed beads at a cheaper rate from ‑yem‑Abompe manufacturers, and then send these beads to their own dustrial annexes' for the final stages of grinding and polishing (Bredwaensah 1996a).
Bauxite beads have been found in urban sites near Shai Hills, at Yawaso, the Great Accra Capital Site, and in the Fante traditional area range in date from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. A fourteenth to fifteenth century Shal Hills site excavated in 1978 revealed reddish‑brown pottery with elegant, modeled animal and human shrine attachments, associated with indigenous bauxite beads, and bauxite ds were also found at the fourteenth to fifteenth century level in the escavation of the old La site at Ladoku.
Brass Beads
Brass beads come from one of three sources; either from the Middle East r the trans‑Saharan trade route or from other West African countries; or m Europe via the ocean and the coast; or from Ghana itself. As one ht predict, inland archaeological sites such as Daboya, Banda and ,ho have the greatest number of glass beads from ' the trans‑Saharan de, whereas the coastal sites such as Elmina, Shai and the Danish settlements in the Akuapem foothills, contain more glass beads from the european trade. The earliest evidence of local glass bead production es from the northern trading city of Begho, but there is also evidence local bead production from Elmina and the Danish sites. A description these sites and their significance follows:
Daboya: excavations at Daboya in the northern part of Ghana produced a collection of 63 imported glass beads, the majority of which e from contexts with radio carbon dates between A.D.700‑1800. Sixty ‑per cent of these glass beads came from contexts that also produced signgn‑painted 'Silima Ware', as well as local pottery forms imitating stern Sudanic polymorphic ceramics commonly found in medieval centres including Djenne, Gao, and Timbuktu, suggesting links to trans‑Saharan trade network. The beads include older, multi‑faceted, multi‑colored, and single‑colored, spherical, barrel‑shaped, and gated forms made by the cane technique. Also found were more cylindrical, unfaceted, short beads.
