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An Archaeology of Elmina

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... While Elmina served as a primary export site for the Dutch slave trade, the settlement supported a diverse population of free Africans, as well as enslaved Africans living in their households. The population of Elmina grew increasingly heterogeneous during the Dutch period with immigrants arriving from adjacent areas of the coast and hinterland (Baesjou, 1979;DeCorse, 2001;Feinberg, 1989;Yarak, 1990). Population figures for West Africa in general are limited until the late 19th and 20th centuries (DeCorse, 2001(DeCorse, , 2008. ...
... The population of Elmina grew increasingly heterogeneous during the Dutch period with immigrants arriving from adjacent areas of the coast and hinterland (Baesjou, 1979;DeCorse, 2001;Feinberg, 1989;Yarak, 1990). Population figures for West Africa in general are limited until the late 19th and 20th centuries (DeCorse, 2001(DeCorse, , 2008. However, at Elmina the population expanded from a village of a few hundred people in the 15th-century to a settlement of fifteen to twenty thousand inhabitants by 1870. ...
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Objectives: Stable isotope values for historic period human remains from Elmina, Ghana, are compared to isotope data from 18th- and 19th-century North American sites as a test case for examining African origins and identifying first generation Africans in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Materials and methods: Stable carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen isotope values were measured in skeletal remains. Values from the cosmopolitan port city of Elmina provide the first available reference data from Africa during this time period and region. These values serve as a proxy for West African groups in general which are statistically compared to Euro-Americans and African Americans. Results: Elmina carbon isotope values are relatively higher than those of North Americans, and African Americans show greater statistical similarity to West Africans. Elmina nitrogen isotope values are higher than those of North Americans. Elmina oxygen isotope values are notably higher than those in all Mid-Atlantic North American sites in this study. Discussion: Similarity in carbon isotope values between Elmina and African Americans suggests commonalities in food availability or food preferences between these groups. Elevated nitrogen isotope values in Elmina individuals support the documented reliance of the local population on marine dietary resources at this coastal port. While carbon and nitrogen isotopes provide insight into foodways, oxygen isotope data, sourced from drinking water, provide better geographical information. The higher oxygen values from Elmina not only differentiate this group from North American Mid-Atlantic sites, but also make it possible to identify outliers at these sites as potential recent arrivals from West Africa.
... Ile-Ife was an active partner in the early long-distance commerce, first the trans-Saharan and later trans-Atlantic trade and exchange. Ile-Ife HLHA glass beads have been found in important West Africa trade entrepot such as Gao (Mali) as well as in the early European settlement and slave entrepot of Elmina (Ghana; Decorse, 2001;Brill & Stapleton 2012;P. Robertshaw, personal communication, June 2014). ...
... 53). Archaeology evidence of the occurrence of the Ile-Ife type of glass beads at the slave-trading post of Elmina in the 16th century, Ghana (Decorse, 2001), strongly support the trans-Atlantic distribution of the Ife beads. Although this assertion is hypothetical, it is a logical one to make while we wait for composition studies of glass beads from African American sites. ...
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The technology of glassmaking is complex. This complexity has been cited for the exclusion of the development of ancient glass technology from certain regions of the world, especially Africa, South of the Sahara. Thus, much of the existing scholarship on the technology of ancient glass has focused on the Middle East, Mediterranean, and Southeast and South Asia. Although the discourse on indigenous African technology has gained traction in Black studies, the study of ancient glass seems to have been left mainly in the hands of specialists in other disciplines. Drawing from archaeological and historical evidence from Ile-Ife, Southwest Nigeria, in tandem with the result of compositional analysis, this article examines the first recognized indigenous Sub-Saharan African glass technology dated to early second millennium ad or earlier. The development of the local glass recipe and the making of beads not only ushered in a social, religious, and economic transformation in Yorubaland as well as the other West African societies but also redressed the place of Sub-Saharan African in the historiographical map of ancient global technology and commerce.
... The forced immigration of millions of enslaved Africans has rightly received considerable attention, whether via the study of African American culture in the Americas, both North and South (Ferguson 1992;Kelly 2008;de Souza and Agostini 2012;Symanski 2012), the material remains of the slave trade in Africa itself (DeCorse 2001), or the use of enslaved labor in European colonies in Africa (Markell et al. 1995). Because of the convict system, the impact of forced immigration and forced labor has also been an important theme in Australian historical archaeology (Lawrence and Davies 2011:17-41), and this too has been explored through a global perspective (Casella 2005). ...
... South strongly backed the need for an awareness of the work undertaken by South American colleagues long before it was fashionable (Funari 1997:196). Other North American colleagues-such as Kenneth Kelly and Chris DeCorse-are strongly involved in the historical archaeology of Africa (DeCorse 2001;Kelly 2002). As this introduction is being written, current SHA president Paul Mullins is temporarily based in northern Finland. ...
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Assuming that maritime archaeology conducted in Sri Lanka is new to most readers, the present paper has been written with a dual purpose. First, it tries to give some background to the birth and growth of the discipline in this country and shows its involvement in ICOMOS-ICUCH (International Council on Monuments and Sites-International Committee on the Underwater Cultural Heritage) activities. Second, it tries to deal with the focus of the 2013 SHA conference by addressing three sites, each of which can be developed into a case study relating to the conference themes. Sri Lanka was always a place where East/West shipping interacted, whether before or after A.D. 1500, and was also always conscious of the looming presence of India. This paper, however, deals only with material aspects in the period after 1500.
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Des fouilles archéologiques conduites en janvier 2002 sur une plantation située en un lieu appelé Brockman ont livré à la fois des objets fabriqués localement et des céramiques vernissées européennes, des bouteilles, etc. Les bouteilles et les céramiques européennes sont de la fin du xixe siècle et, pour quelques-unes, du début du xxe. Le secteur du site qui a été fouillé a probablement été occupé après 1850, année pendant laquelle les Danois vendirent leurs possessions de la Gold Coast aux Anglais, et un peu avant ou après, l’abolition du commerce interne des esclaves et du statut légal des esclaves, respectivement en 1874 et 1875. Les objets découverts en fouille peuvent par conséquent ne pas être liés au Danois Neils Brock, dont les documents écrits attestent qu’il a acheté la plantation en 1834. Les formes des récipients en céramique locale montrent une influence Akan qui peut aussi être identifiée sur d’autres sites des Accra Plains ; elles attestent de l’hétérogénéité de la population de la région des Accra Plains résultant de mouvements de populations dont les Akan vers la région d’Accra en raison du commerce lucratif qui y était possible, non seulement d’esclaves, mais aussi de marchandises telles que l’huile de palme et l’or.
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This chapter investigates the consequences of the English presence at Dixcove (Efiema) and how the encounter impacted the indigenous Ahanta who occupy Dixcove and the local economy from 1620 to 1900 A.D. Archaeological, historical and ethno-historical sources constitute the primary data sources used. The archaeological study discussed in this chapter revealed that prior to the advent of the English and their construction of Fort Metal Cross in 1692, fishing, palm oil and salt production constituted the mainstays of the economy. The period subsequent to arrival of the English, however, witnessed the development of vibrant commercial relations between the two groups and inland polities such as Wassa and Aowin involving the exchange of exotic European merchandise such as ceramics, glass beads, textiles, firearms, metal implements and tobacco for traditional African commodities such as gold, ivory, timber and “slaves”.
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This chapter gives an outline of the intertwined multiple cultural and social dynamics in the Danish enclaves and their hinterlands on the Gold Coast (Ghana) during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Similar to the other European ports of exchange, the Danish forts had been built next to African settlements. The interaction between the Europeans and the Africans had created a multicultural and transnational space where expressions of early modern protoglobalisation intermingled with local cultures of particular societies. Apart from discussing the multinational composition of the Danish personnel, the chapter highlights the African and Euro-African spaces at Danish Accra, focusing on how foreign cultural artefacts and ideas were combined with local ones.
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The 2013 Society for Historical Archaeology conference plenary session (sponsored by the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology) was held on the themes of "globalization, immigration, transformation." Representatives of all six permanently inhabited continents presented brief case studies derived from their work on those continents, before engaging in discussion of the conference themes from their different, complex, and multilayered international perspectives. The present issue of Historical Archaeology offers more detailed case studies from the original speakers (in one case with a coauthor). This introduction seeks to place these multifaceted approaches within a framework foregrounding the role of personal experience as an explanatory approach to understanding the differences within a global historical archaeology that is not just global and multicultural in theme, but also in practice.
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