Artifacts as Test and Completion of the African Ethnographic Record

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Periodical article

Title:	Artifacts as Test and Completion of the African Ethnographic Record
Author:	Mikell, Gwendolyn
Year:	1982
Periodical:	African Social Research
Issue:	34
Period:	December
Pages:	277-292
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Ghana
Subjects:	Akan anthropology archaeology Anthropology and Archaeology
Abstract:	A research approach which would create a synthesis between the study of African ethnographies and material artifacts would require subjecting such artifacts to analysis based on stylistic aspects, geographical and archaeological positioning, and utilitarian value, as well as contemporary ethnographic information. Such an analysis would be enhanced by the conceptualization of specific time frames within which certain major forces determine the direction of culture change: in West Africa, the Islamic contact and conquest, and European contact and colonialism. Using Akan ethnographies as an example, the author suggests some of the persistent problems of Akan culture history - the seeming contradiction between 'traditional culture' and the cultural legacy of Islam, the contradiction between the matrilineal base of Akan society and the patricentric focus of the Ashanti state, and the transformation of male and female social roles - and how they may be illuminated through an analysis of Akan cloth and pottery. The suggested investigative model might also be useful in the resolution of cultural puzzles among the Lozi and the Tonga in south-central Africa. Bibliogr.