TY - CHAP
T1 - Fragmentary Ancestors? Medicine, Bodies, and Personhood in a Koma Mound, Northern Ghana
AU - Insoll, Timothy
AU - Kankpeyeng, Benjamin W.
AU - Nkumbaan, Samuel N.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2012, Springer Science+Business Media New York.
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - Excavation of a single mound at Yikpabongo, Koma Land, northern Ghana, recovered a significant assemblage of ceramic figurines and figurine parts radiocarbon dated to the early second millennium ad. Rather than haphazard deposition of waste materials, the contextual arrangements suggest meaningful intention, and that the mound might have been a shrine, possibly linked in part to a medicinal or healing function. Potentially, significant statements were also being made about bodies and persons via the figurines, their fragmentation and selection, and their association with selected human remains—skulls, teeth, long bones—and other materials—pottery, lithics, iron, and glass beads. Complex beliefs seemingly underpinned these actions and this is explored in relation to the concept of the ancestors and how this might have helped structure past personhood and ontology.
AB - Excavation of a single mound at Yikpabongo, Koma Land, northern Ghana, recovered a significant assemblage of ceramic figurines and figurine parts radiocarbon dated to the early second millennium ad. Rather than haphazard deposition of waste materials, the contextual arrangements suggest meaningful intention, and that the mound might have been a shrine, possibly linked in part to a medicinal or healing function. Potentially, significant statements were also being made about bodies and persons via the figurines, their fragmentation and selection, and their association with selected human remains—skulls, teeth, long bones—and other materials—pottery, lithics, iron, and glass beads. Complex beliefs seemingly underpinned these actions and this is explored in relation to the concept of the ancestors and how this might have helped structure past personhood and ontology.
KW - Ethnographic Analogy
KW - Ethnolinguistic Group
KW - Human Remains
KW - Ritual Action
KW - Tooth Filing
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85145922709&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-1-4614-3354-5_2
DO - 10.1007/978-1-4614-3354-5_2
M3 - Chapter
AN - SCOPUS:85145922709
T3 - One World Archaeology
SP - 25
EP - 45
BT - One World Archaeology
PB - Springer Nature
ER -