Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage
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Haggling over graves and shrines: The intersection
of archaeology, the community, and dam
authorities at the Bui dam area in Ghana
David Akwasi Mensah Abrampah
To cite this article: David Akwasi Mensah Abrampah (2021) Haggling over graves and
shrines: The intersection of archaeology, the community, and dam authorities at the Bui
dam area in Ghana, Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage, 8:4, 229-244, DOI:
10.1080/20518196.2021.1911122
To link to this article:  https://doi.org/10.1080/20518196.2021.1911122
Published online: 07 May 2021.
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JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY ARCHAEOLOGY & HERITAGE
2021, VOL. 8, NO. 4, 229–244
https://doi.org/10.1080/20518196.2021.1911122
Haggling over graves and shrines: The intersection of
archaeology, the community, and dam authorities at the Bui dam
area in Ghana
David Akwasi Mensah Abrampah
Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana
ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This article discusses the important roles that archaeologists can play in Bui Dam; relocation; BPA;
development projects that affect the history and culture of indigenous salvage archaeology;
people who live around a project site. It discusses the salvage ancestors; shrines; burials;
archaeology that was done at one site, the Bui hydro-electric dam in mediation
Ghana, even though dam authorities refused, at first, to allow it. The
article discusses how, through salvage work, archaeologists became
cultural brokers and successfully mediated the ‘conflict’ between the
Bui Dam Authority (BPA) and the affected communities. Community
members were threatening not to relocate until their shrines and
ancestral burials were relocated, which could have disrupted the
construction activities of the dam and the project schedule. The
relocation of the shrines and the burials revealed the importance of
community spaces shared by the dead and the living, and showed how
essential it is to be physically and spiritually invested in life and death.
Introduction
The construction of the Bui hydro-electric dam in Ghana began in 2007, after several years of plan-
ning and feasibility studies. The Bui Dam was meant to produce 400 megawatts of hydroelectric
power, and thus increase energy capacity and supply in Ghana. While the World Commission on
Dams (WCD) stipulates mandatory salvage archaeology/mitigation work before dams are con-
structed, archaeologists in Ghana had to face the arduous task of navigating a series of negotiations
and lobbying before the Bui Dam Authority (BPA) in 2009 gave permission to carry out the mitigation
work at the impacted areas (Bui, Akanyakrom, and Dokokyena). Although salvage archaeology was
originally excluded from all the activities involved in the construction of the Bui Dam, archaeologists
from the University of Ghana lobbied and sought the intervention of the Society of Africanist Archae-
ologists (SAFA), and eventually BPA allowed archaeologists to undertake this community/salvage
archaeology in the affected communities. As one of the archaeologists who was involved in early
advocacy efforts, I joined the project team that was eventually led by Wazi Apoh and Kodzo
Gavua to conduct salvage archaeology at this site (Apoh and Gavua 2016). This paper is one of
several that project participants have (and will continue) to publish, both as individuals and as a
team, about our experiences working with the residents of Bui Village. After providing the necessary
context with respect to the area’s cultural history, burials, and previous dam construction projects, I
will discuss the three components of the salvage archaeology conducted at Bui Dam between 2009
and 2013: ethnography, archaeology, and videography.
CONTACT David Akwasi Mensah Abrampah damensahabrampah@ug.edu.gh Department of Archaeology and Heritage
Studies, University of Ghana, P. O. Box LG3, Legon, Accra, Ghana
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
230 D. A. M. ABRAMPAH
The sociocultural landscape of the Bui area
As described in the project assessment, for which I was lead author (Abrampah et al. 2015) of which
the team members were David Akwasi Mensah Abrampah, Wazi Apoh, Kodzo Gavua, Mark Henry
Freeman, Samuel Amartey, David Adjartey Tei-Mensah & George Anokye as well as in Apoh and
Gavua (2016), the dam project initially required the relocation of three villages, all of which are
located in the Banda District of the Bono Region at the extreme mid-western section of Ghana.
The former settlements of the three communities (Bui, Akanyakom, and Dokokyina) were located
to the north and upstream of the dam, along the banks of Black Volta River in the northern part
of the Bono Region of Ghana. The distance between the new and the old settlements however,
differed because each community was differently located in relation to the new settlements. The
former Bui and Akanyakrom villages were located within 3 and 4 km respectively of the new settle-
ment, while the Dokokyina village was about 34 km from the resettlement township. The number of
contemporary Bui dwellings suggests that the settlement was small, and had been in existence for a
long time. Many of the dwellings of Bui village could therefore have spanned several generations,
evoking links with ancestors or founders of the village.
The people of these villages would not relocate unless their deities and ancestral burials were also
relocated to their new settlements. The community held these shrines in high regard because they
believe that the deities protect and guard the community against criminal activities and misfortunes
and promote good harvest. The seven ancestral community deities whose burials and shrines were
relocated were: Tion (the supreme deity), Budani, Nana Adr1 (the Black Volta), Tra, Puolo, Senyokupo,
and Gunli.
The fame of Bui was enhanced by a gorge, which had always been known as Bui gorge, which was
developed into the dam. Therefore, when feasibility studies began in 1966 for the construction of the
dam, the stakeholders agreed to use the name Bui Dam (Figure 1).
The elders of the Bui village asserted that their settlement was founded around 1500 BCE, and
that the original inhabitants were Mo people who speak the Mo language. However, the people
of Bui currently speak Nafaanra (a dominant nearby Banda language) as a ‘lingua franca’, and
speak nominal Mo to maintain their identity. The adoption of the Nafaanra language by the Bui
people is as a result of long periods of contact between the Bui and their dominant Banda neigh-
bours (Apoh and Gavua 2016). Indeed, the name Bui is a corruption of the word Booyi, which
comes from nearby Kulango linguistic group, meaning they have gone away, referring to migrants
who came to settle among the Bui people, but later left the area (Figure 2).
The Dokokyina settlement, which was also predominantly a Mo speaking community, was located
about 30 km north of Bui, and it consisted of 46 housing units. The Dokokyina people speak Mo
exclusively with no influence from the dominant Banda language. This is because of their relative
remoteness from the dominant Banda language group. During the relocation exercise most of the
inhabitants in Dokokyina refused to relocate to the new settlement and these people still live in
the village, which now has been surrounded by the deluge of the dam. The people of Dokokyina
had enjoyed leading isolated and nearly anonymous lives in their remote village for a long time,
some did not want to be forced to settle in places well within the state’s official gaze (Abrampah
2017, 297).
The inhabitants of Akanyakrom are principally Ewe speakers, and in narrating their settlement
history, the elders of the village recounted that the initial settlers were fisher folk who immi-
grated from Tefle in the Volta Region, located in the south-eastern part of Ghana. The founding
settlers arrived in the Bui area in the early 1920s. When they arrived, they negotiated with the
Bui people for land for their settlement and for farming. They then settled about 2 km west of
Bui community and in close proximity to the Black Volta. According to agreements reached in
the land negotiations, the Akanyakrom chiefs were enjoined to reimburse the Bui chiefs with
fish as land tribute. This agreement gave the Akanyakrom people the usufruct to parts of Bui
lands.
JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY ARCHAEOLOGY & HERITAGE 231
Figure 1. Map of Bui Dam landscape (drawing by author).
Archaeology of burials and shrines in the Bui area
Previous archaeological excavations in the Bui area were carried out 1965, when Richard York exca-
vated two types of burials/cemeteries (York 1965, 37–38). The first burial type was one in which the
decedent was haphazardly dumped in a shallow pit of ash. York (1965, 37) published details of that
particular burial, mentioning that ‘a skeleton lying in a crumpled attitude with the neck broken and
the ribs severely crushed’, noting that it had not been formerly been interred. As York noted, this
suggests murder during a period of violence in the Bui area during the nineteenth century. The
232 D. A. M. ABRAMPAH
Figure 2. Former Bui settlement now under water (photo by author).
second type of burial/cemetery were what York (1965, 38) described as ‘formal burials’, which were
carefully interred under three different mounds. While two of the mounds contained adult human
remains, the third one contained two child burials. York interpreted these child burials as evidence
that even though these were children, they were accorded the same respect as adults in death. The
fact that children were buried in similar features (mounds) as adults showed social inclusiveness and
that children were also not segregated even after death.
Ann Stahl (2001, 136) also recounted the discovery of child burials within the confines of the
Banda settlement. In most of these burials, the dead were interred with the top of the head oriented
to the southeast and the bodies resting on the left side. This ran contrary to the usual burial practices
of the Bui people, where the decedent directly faced east or west depending on the sex and social
roles. The discovery of these child burials, within the confines of the Banda community, suggests that
these pubescent individuals were celebrated and mourned after death. It also raised further ques-
tions of health and demography, in that several children had died on the brink of social adulthood.
Her work in the same nearby Banda area (Banda Research Project; Stahl 2001, 2008) has, in more
recent years, generally sought to produce Banda’s culture history since 1982. The Banda Research
Project made strong claims about burials, ancestors and shrines, the history of which span a
longer period in the Banda area (Stahl 2001, 2008). In Stahl’s project, human remains were not exca-
vated due to the reverence that living society accords the ancestors and the dead in general (Stahl
2001, 135). This contrasts significantly with the situation at Bui (during the relocation exercise) where
the community members (also out of respect) were eager to exhume their ancestors to avoid them
being submerged by the floodwaters. Stahl’s (2008) further work on shrines in the Banda area
suggests profound ritual practice in the form of sacrificed animals as well as associated materials
such as pots and beads. Even though these materials (animal bones, beads, and pots) are often inter-
preted as relating to utilitarian activities, Stahl’s (2008, 185) interpretation of the context and the
configuration of the objects was that they were components of shrines.
Dam constructions and salvage archaeology in Ghana
Ghana currently has three hydroelectric dams, of which the Bui Dam is the third to have been con-
structed. The Akosombo Dam was constructed in 1966, the Kpong Dam being the second was built
JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY ARCHAEOLOGY & HERITAGE 233
1982, while the Bui Damwas completed in 2012. In all three construction of all the three dams, varied
number of affected people were displaced and resettled. The Akosombo dam displaced almost
84,000 people, while 6,000 people were sent into resettlement during the Kpong Dam project
(Asthana 1996). In the case of The Bui Dam project, 1,216 people were displaced and resettled.
The resettlement experience at Akosombo and Kpong was essential for the planning and execution
of the Bui resettlement programme.
Posnansky (2000) describes the Volta Basin Research Project in Ghana (from 1963 to 1969) as the
largest and the most ambitious salvage archaeological project ever conducted in Ghana. The
purpose of this project was to salvage cultural remains from areas that were to be inundated by
the Volta floods following the construction of the Akosombo Dam. The project led to the recovery
of archaeological and historical data on the forest margins and some parts of the Middle Belt of
Ghana.
The Volta Basin Research Project also used ethnoarchaeological methods to analyse the salvaged
cultural materials, which are now preserved in both Ghana National Museum and Archaeology
museum of the University of Ghana. Researchers and scholars who participated in the project
made recommendations that dam archaeology must be improved in any future dam constructions.
The research was also meant to be integrated into broader practice of West African archaeology
involving dam projects. These recommendations subsequently provided the roadmap that guided
the Bui salvage work carried out by the archaeological team from the University of Ghana.
Agorsah (2003) has also examined the post-relocation living difficulties experienced by the
people of the Volta Basin. After broad ethnological, archaeological, and oral-historical studies of
some communities who were affected by the Akonsombo Dam project, Agorsah (2003) rec-
ommended that dam authorities and wildlife park planners pay special attention to sociocultural
issues of resettled people. Especially their settlement patterns, houses, roads, and other amenities
must be sited in such a way that they maintain their sociocultural importance for the resettled
communities.
It has become common knowledge that involuntary displacement, in most cases, is characterized
by cultural dissonance, creating a situation where previously stable and routine cultural practices are
undermined and become almost meaningless (Downing and Garcia-Downing 2009). The affected
people may survive, but their cultural systems and community identity may destabilize in the
event of forced resettlement. Clearly, the affected communities of the Bui Dam (Bui, Akanyakrom,
and Dokokyina) wanted to avoid this sort of damage to their socio-cultural systems. The commu-
nities initially protested the resettlement programme by demanding the relocation of the ‘souls’
of their communities, which included their deities and the remains (burials) of their ancestors
who founded their respective communities. This is where the salvage team from the University of
Ghana came in to the process – to resolve the impasse between the communities and BPA. In a
similar case concerning the Longuda tribe of Adamawa State, Nigeria, dam authorities refused to
compensate for the loss of traditional religious sites, ignoring the cultural and spiritual significance
of these sites to the community (Vanden Berg 1999). This happened because the communities did
not obtain the necessary voice(s) to intervene on their behalf. The stance of the Bui Dam commu-
nities indicated that negative attitudes towards indigenous traditional religious sites by entities
such as BPA would hamper successful dam resettlement programmes.
Data gathering processes
We gathered data for this article as part of salvage archaeological research conducted by the Depart-
ment of Archaeology and Heritage Studies (University of Ghana) in the three communities (Bui, Aka-
nyakrom, and Dokokyina) that were affected by the threat of flooding and relocation by the Bui dam
project. The three components (ethnography, archaeology, and videography) took place between
2009 and 2013. Concerning the ethnographic research, the salvage team studied the contemporary
lifeways of the people within the affected settlements, with particular focus on subsistence practices,
234 D. A. M. ABRAMPAH
day-to-day-activities, and ideologies. The team held community meetings with all the three affected
communities during which we asked questions and recorded the responses.
As part of our protocols regarding community entry, we first introduced ourselves to the commu-
nities’ leaders as a team of archaeologists, working to produce their culture history so that it would
still survive after the inundation and the imminent relocation. After this, the project leaders and the
community leaders mobilized the participants into groups. Each participant in the groups consented
to the interview process after we informed them of their right to withdraw their consent.
Twenty-one Bui community elders were present when the salvage team held the first community
meeting with Bui community. The second meeting took place at Akanyakrom with 13 community
members in attendance. During the interviews, we observed that both Bui and Akanyakrom commu-
nity elders expressed common concerns about their resettlement. In spite of the fact that the two
communities had agreed to the resettlement plan, they demanded that their ancestral burials and
shrines of community deities be removed and relocated to the new settlement – without which
they would defy the relocation order.
The team finally proceeded to Dokokyina (about 30 km from the two communities) where we
organized the third community meeting. At Dokokyina, 24 community members attended the
meeting. During deliberations, 13 of the group members agreed to be resettled, while 11 strongly
opposed the resettlement programme. On the actual relocation day, their dissenting voices
became louder, at which point these dissenting residents subsequently managed to influence
other residents to defy the resettlement order. As noted earlier, the Dokokyina people still live in
their village, which is now surrounded by dam waters. A number of Dokokyina residents had deter-
mined to resist the resettlement from the outset. After the initial attempts of resettlement had failed,
BPA on one occasion, sought the assistance of the police and stormed the Dokokyina village with the
aim of flushing out the remnants of the people who were still leaving in the remote inaccessible
Dokokyena village, but the inhabitants still defied the new evacuation order. When the trucks
arrived to convey the people to be resettled, some of them disappeared into the bush whilst
others also sat unresponsive to the BPA officers who had arrived there to evacuate them. BPA even-
tually gave up further relocation plans so far as the Dokokyina people were concerned and left them
to their fate.
The second method employed during the salvage research was archaeology, where we carried
out excavations at abandoned settlement sites and middens associated with the affected commu-
nities. The purpose of the excavations was to obtain material culture that would allow for the recon-
struction of their various occupational histories. At Bui village, the team excavated six trenches,
variously located on ancient middens and former settlement sites. Here, the recovered materials
included locally-made pottery, bones of different species, glass, and three human interments. The
three human remains were also accidental discoveries during the archaeological excavations at
the northern outskirt of the Bui village. The materials there, dating between eleventh and twentieth
centuries, have shed much light on the culture history of the people.
We carried out the archaeological excavations at Akanyakrom at the former settlement site at the
western end of the village. The excavated site was within the Bui National Park. According to oral
history, the site was prone to frequent flooding due to its proximity to the Black Volta River. Conse-
quently, in 1964 the people felt compelled to relocate to a safer area. Here the excavations com-
prised digging six trenches (2 × 3 metres each). The artefacts retrieved were mainly local pottery,
bottles, parts of fishing nets, fish remains (scales and bones), and numerous bones of terrestrial
and arboreal animals commonly found in the local environment. These artefacts offered understand-
ing into the occupation (as fisher folk) and food ways of the people of Akayakrom. At Dokokyina, five
units (2 × 3 metre trenches) were excavated, all located at the northern section of the settlement.
Artefacts included fragments of local pottery, glass fragments, and spindle whorls. Together,
these materials form an important component of cultural identities and history of the Bui dam area.
The third method we employed to obtain data for the salvage work was videography (also dis-
cussed later in this article), to provide another form of media to document and archive the
JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY ARCHAEOLOGY & HERITAGE 235
culture and history of the relocated communities. The video documentary that we produced still
contributes to the development of public archaeology in Ghana. This is because the public whose
history we documented have come to appreciate archaeology as important discipline that has
helped to project their archaeological resources. We recorded excavation processes, interviews, sub-
sistence practices, and the -to-day living conditions of the people in both the former and new settle-
ments. The documentary not only presents the subjective perspectives of people’s experiences, but
also challenges the conventional archaeological practice in the area, whereby archaeological reports
remain only on bookshelves, preventing those who were investigated from having access to the
results of the research. Therefore the video documentary comprising ethnographic and archaeolo-
gical practice is an attempt to make archaeology a medium of memory production and is particularly
essential to invoke or reconstruct social memory of the affected community members.
Getting archaeologists onto the project
It is undeniable that dams have helped many people by providing energy for domestic and industrial
purposes. However, as the by-products of development, they have also had devastating effects on
the cultures and landscapes of living communities (Cernea 1996, 1515). Dams, by their nature, inun-
date large areas of land, often submerging traditional lands, burial grounds, and sacred sites of
affected communities. The WCD has identified that the negative effects of dams include ‘archaeolo-
gical resources, cultural landscapes, and cultural practices and resources of current populations’
(Brandt and Hassan 2000; WCD Report 2000, 285).
Whereas archaeological resources have received little protection in general in Ghana, the frenzy
of Ghanaian dam construction has yet to produce a ‘movement’ toward salvaging archaeological
resources before they are destroyed by dam construction activities. The more archaeologists keep
silent, the more they contribute to the cultural and human rights abuses of dam affected commu-
nities (Schmidt 2000, 13). Archaeologists must independently assess the development projects
which negatively affect local people’s cultural heritage, because sometimes they cannot necessarily
oppose development projects or even the mitigation that occurred here. In spite of the apparent
hazards of dams (large or small) on cultural resources, dams will continue to be built, especially in
nations which have no alternative for hydroelectric power generation (Obeng 1977, 50). Therefore,
it is always crucial to salvage as much as possible quickly, before projects are fully executed (Welby
2008, 13). It must be noted, however, that in Ghana, consideration of and funding for the protection
of archaeological resources have never been included in the planning of either government or
private projects, and contract archaeology is only at a nascent stage. Moreover, legislation to regu-
late the protection of heritage resources is also lacking, leading to wanton destruction and looting of
some heritage resources by individuals and corporations. State institutions such as the Environ-
mental Protection Agency (EPA) and Ghana Museums and Monuments Board (GMMB), mandated
to protect the country’s heritage resources, lack the necessary legislation and means to protect heri-
tage resources and to prosecute violators (Treasure et al. 2016).
During the planning and the construction of the Bui Dam, for instance, archaeologists were never
invited. The salvage archaeological work described here was only made possible through the lobby-
ing activities of the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies of the University of Ghana.
When the idea of salvage archaeology at Bui was suggested by the Department of Archaeology
and Heritage Studies of the University of Ghana, the department initially approached and lobbied
Bui Power Authority (BPA) with the aim of conducting salvage work before the affected areas
were inundated. However, this initial encounter with the BPA was not fruitful, and led to long-
drawn-out haggling over the importance of the salvage archaeology at the dam’s catchment
areas. According to BPA’s initial submissions, the project’s budget had no provision for salvage
archaeology, and they were not in the position to fund the salvage work.
Since dam construction is a big business venture, salvage archaeology must also be conducted
with the same alacrity as engineering and environmental studies (Smith and Dixon 2000, 21).
236 D. A. M. ABRAMPAH
Elsewhere, some sensitivity to Native American culture in the USA has permeated national and state
archaeological resource laws. This has granted Native Americans greater (though still limited) rights
in determining the fate of their cultural artefacts and remains. Thus, protection of Indigenous archae-
ological resources in the US substantially meets the WCD’s suggested level of priority and consider-
ation (Lawrence 2006, 273; WCD 2000).
In the case of cultural resources, the WCD report suggests that the effect of dams on cultural
resources must be considered from the very early stages of the process. They must also receive as
much priority as economic and political concerns, including the allocation of funding and employ-
ment of experts in the field. If the decision is then made to proceed with the dam project, effects on
cultural resources should be mitigated through planning, preservation, and excavation. To this end,
the WCD report specifically suggests the incorporation of cultural heritage impact assessments
initiatives into dam development projects. These assessments are supposed to address impacts
on three vulnerable categories of cultural heritage identified by the WCD. These include archaeolo-
gical resources, cultural landscapes, and cultural practices and resources of current populations. In the
nutshell, the WCD recommends the inclusion of all affected indigenous people in the decision-
making process. It specifically addresses cultural resource protection and accords it the same
weight as all other factors in the dam building process. This disposition of the WCD motivated
the Ghana archaeology department to relentlessly push for the salvage archaeology to be carried
out before the impoundment of the Bui dam.
In one of our meetings, we drew BPA’s attention to information on their own website, which
stated that the project intends to ‘facilitate preservation of cultural element for the resettled com-
munities by the construction of palaces, community centers, memory centers among others’. We
further argued that, even though these goals are laudable, they cannot be accomplished without
professional salvage archaeology work. We further enlightened the dam authorities that the
project would benefit from positive press coverage, because the aforementioned video documen-
tary would air on all television stations in Ghana. We contrasted this with the negative publicity
that had been associated with the construction of the Ilisu Dam in Turkey, which suffered funding
problems before completion because it destroyed archaeological sites without any mitigations.
After several of unsuccessful meetings with BPA where we made these points, the Department of
Archaeology and Heritage Studies of University of Ghana decided to petition Society of Africanist
Archaeologists (SAFA) to get international intervention. SAFA responded swiftly, and wrote to BPA
to reiterate our earlier submissions about the importance of the salvage work. Immediately after
BPA received the SAFA letter, they quickly came to the department and held a meeting to discuss
how the salvage archaeology could be carried out smoothly. A few days after this meeting, BPA
made funds and logistics available for the salvage work to commence by archaeologists from the
University of Ghana and Ghana Museums and Monuments Board (GMMB).
This effort by archaeologists to make this salvage archaeology known internationally has enabled
others outside Africa to offer a voice in support of the salvage work. It also became clear that the
international interest in the salvage work contributed a great deal to the success of the work,
taking cognizance of the fact that international archaeologists, together with local people, and acti-
vists twice succeeded in halting the construction of the Ilısu Dam in Turkey, because it would (and
ultimately did) destroy archaeological sites in its catchment area. These agitations eventually slowed
the construction process, even though the dam was completed at later date. Moreover, majority of
Ghanaian archaeologists are members of Society of African Archaeologists (SAFA) which has its own
code of ethics (SAfA 2006). Thus, they and other archaeologists working in Africa are obliged to
conduct their work according to ethically set standards.
Archaeologists as mediators and cultural brokers
During the salvage work, we tried to better understand the lifeways of the impacted communities
from both archaeological and contemporary perspectives. Apart from the archaeological
JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY ARCHAEOLOGY & HERITAGE 237
excavations, we also documented the local technologies, cosmologies, ideologies, traditions, and
subsistence practices of the communities which were to be relocated. The role played by the
salvage archaeology team as cultural brokers was quite significant, because the affected commu-
nities had threatened not to relocate to the new settlement without their deities and ancestral
burials. This created tension between the communities and BPA, and the standoff had the potential
of delaying the entire dam project. After the archaeology team was commissioned in 2009 to under-
take salvage archaeology, the team successfully worked to reduce the tension between the commu-
nities and the BPA.
In the view of Wynne-Jones and Fleisher (2015), archaeologists must endeavour to capitalize on
what we can do which the community cannot. This way, archaeologists must act as mediators
between local communities and national/international organizations. As noted above, when the
salvage archaeology team arrived at the Bui Dam area to begin the salvage work, there was
already tension between BPA and the affected communities concerning relocation of their shrines
and ancestral burials. According to the community elders, the removal and relocation of the commu-
nity shrines and selected ancestral burials required the performance of different types of rituals, for
which they (the communities) wanted BPA to provide the required funds and logistics. BPA had
initially objected to this, which had created tension, and as noted above, the affected communities
had threatened not to relocate if their ancestral burial and shrines were not relocated to the new
settlement.
The elders of Bui and Akanyakrom had indicated that this would result in the grievous and irre-
coverable loss of their cultural landscape, and could linger across generations. One of the elders of
the Bui lamented this in the Twi language (during one of the community meetings organized by
BPA) that ‘s1 y1n mma ne y1n nananom biasa y1n s1 mpaninfoɔ a wɔdii kan kyekyeree kro yi wɔ he
na y1ka kyer1 won s1 wɔda nsuo ase a, wogyidi s1 eye as1m papa?’ In English, this says ‘If our children
and grandchildren ask us who and where our ancestors and founders of are our village and our lands,
and we tell them they are under the water, do you think it is a good answer?’ The relocation of the
burials and shrines was also meant to avoid what the elders termed as a second death if the ancestral
burials were left under water – the ancestors would die again. If this occurred, the feeling of guilt for
leaving their ancestors behind and under water would linger for a long time.
As a result, as members of the salvage archaeology team, we inserted ourselves in-between the
two ‘feuding’ parties (BPA and the communities) to mediate and make peace between them, both to
prevent this damage as well as do our salvage work smoothly and avoid disruption of the dam’s con-
struction activities. We engaged with BPA and explained the importance of salvage archaeology as
well as the need to respect the socio-cultural systems of the communities by facilitating the reloca-
tion of their deities and ancestral burials. Because this was early in the salvage work, we also empha-
sized to the communities that we were, as archaeologists, working to record their history and culture
as a neutral party, and that our presence was not to enforce the relocation programme. We felt that
these explanations were necessary because archaeologists in some parts of the world have not been
neutral, and have sometimes connived with developers and governments, using salvage archaeol-
ogy to legitimize the destruction of cultural landscapes (Hafsaas-Tsakos 2011; Shoup 2006).
The salvage archaeology team at Bui was thus guided by the ethical aspects of archaeological
fieldwork. We therefore did not capitalise on scientific objectivity to push our agenda. This is in con-
sonance with the admonition given by Hafsaas-Tsakos (2011) and Marquardt (1994) that archaeolo-
gical research should not be used to legitimize particular sociopolitical agendas, such as dam
building. It is also essential for archaeologists to become more involved with contemporary commu-
nities and activities to promote historical-ecological preservation among policymakers and the
public.
In this kind of scenario, archaeologists should work to achieve a balance between the need for
development and the need to identify and protect cultural resources of the indigenous people
(Bergman and John 2003, 95). Our mediation between BPA and the three affected communities
was the main catalyst leading to the relocation of the burials and shrines, thus allowing the
238 D. A. M. ABRAMPAH
affected communities to preserve important elements of their pasts. Our intervention proved to be
extremely positive, and in our interactions with community members, they seemed to appreciate the
interest we had in their history and the potential of showcasing their culture to the wider world. The
BPA officials were excited by commending us for the new insights we were able to provide them
regarding the importance of salvage archaeology in the event of dam construction. For us, (as
archaeologists) the salvage work taught us new ways to be archaeologists, within a community
whose interests conflicted with that of a state organization (BPA). However, the interests of local
people were pivotal in this kind of salvage/community archaeology. At one point, the community
members and BPA joyfully participated in the excavation process (Figure 3), because they said
repeatedly that the salvage work gave them the opportunity to have a feel of archaeology for the
first time.
The clash between BPA and the communities arose in the first place because BPA failed to listen
to the wishes of people who were to become victims of development. However, because of our
advocacy and mediation work, and their own willingness to participate, the communities involved
were able to preserve key elements of their cultural heritage, even though their socio-cultural land-
scape was flooded and they were forcefully displaced from their heartland.
Who do we serve as archaeologists?
There have been calls by Ronayne (2006, 2007, 2008) and others for archaeologists to be involved in
the protection of cultural heritage and support of local communities. This is because one of the
essential components of salvage archaeology is accountability to the local people who are
affected by the development projects (Ronayne 2007, 253). Smith (2007, 169) explains further that
heritage is not only an aspect of the past, we can also appropriate it to address cultural and political
needs of the present. This raises the question of whose interests do archaeologists serve, and in what
Figure 3. Archaeologists, Bui community members, and BPA staff were cordially involved in the excavation process (photo by
author)
JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY ARCHAEOLOGY & HERITAGE 239
ways have archaeological research projects benefited local populations? Mapunda and Lane (2004,
211) have tried to answer this question by saying that, thus far, local communities have benefited
very little from archaeological research carried out in their domains. They therefore suggested hol-
istic involvement and collaboration with local communities so that archaeological practice will even-
tually cease to be a private and intellectually elitist discipline. As part of our community engagement
protocols, when the archaeology work commenced we employed local people from the various
communities as field assistants. Beyond this however, we asked community members to be respon-
sible for the management of the memory centre where the excavated artefacts were to be curated.
These local people were to be trained to offer guided tours to visitors to the memory centre and
other culturally important places.
In recent times, the development of the heritage industry has had a profound effect in motivating
individuals and communities to engage with the past through various kinds of activities. These can
range from watching TV programmes to visiting sites as tourists as well as the organization of other
community activities (Watson and Waterton 2010, 1). In our case, all of our team’s activities (ethno-
graphic research and archaeological excavations) were video-recorded to serve as a visual reminder
of life in their former settlements. We felt this would be especially important for community
members who may not be able to read or access the written documentations.
In June 2011, the team returned to document how the actual relocation programme had been
carried out. The team was therefore able to videotape both in the former, now-submerged settle-
ments and in the new settlements, where the people now live, and where they reminisce about
their past lives with mixed feelings.
Creating video documentaries about archaeological investigations is one way to make archaeol-
ogy a medium of memory production. Archaeology becomes performative – a theatrical stage which
allows the audience to appreciate the physical activities it entails (Jones and Russell 2012). Documen-
taries and television series about archaeological processes are particularly important because they
have the potential to evoke or reconstruct the social memory of a particular people which otherwise
would have remained ‘buried’ in academic publications.
The salvage team again visited the Bui communities in April 2013, to preview the video documen-
tary with the three relocated communities. This was particularly useful because the people who were
studied and subsequently resettled had the opportunity to watch and reflect on their former lives in
the former settlements, and to appreciate the relevance of archaeology which had taken place. We
showed the video documentary at a newly built community centre filled with enthusiastic members
of the three relocated communities. As the people saw their vanished socio-natural landscape on the
screen, they became emotional. Some jumped in loud shouts as known faces appeared on the
screen. Footage of their former landscape such as rivers, hills, footpaths, agricultural fields, and
their former settlements evoked their deepest cultural sentiments and attachments. This further
demonstrates that natural, economic, and sociocultural factors inform the production of social
memory. At the end of the video, the chiefs and the elders of the communities requested a
repeat screening, which we did. This enabled all those who came later to see the full length of
the video documentary.
Exhumed/relocated burials
Relocation of ancestral burials has been important cultural practice among some cultures of West
Africa, especially when developmental projects could obliterate ancestral graves. This sort of reloca-
tion was noted ethnographically, early on, by Meek ([1925] 1971, 18) among the Mama, Verre, and
Mumuye tribes of northern Nigeria. This involves the removal of ancestral skulls as part of secondary
burial rites where if a village relocated, the ancestral remains, (most cases skulls) were also relocated
to a shrine in the new settlement.
As noted earlier, two of the affected communities (Bui and Akanydrom) had threatened not to
relocate, but did. This was because BPA eventually agreed to provide funding and logistics for
240 D. A. M. ABRAMPAH
Figure 4. Some of the ancestral graves of Bui village before relocation (photo by author).
exhumation and relocation of their ancestral burials. Each community demanded (from BPA) items
for rituals to mark the relocation. These ritual items were mainly sheep, goats, bulls, schnapps, and
Akpeteshie (local gin). Libations were poured with schnapps and Akpeteshie to propitiate the ances-
tors prior to exhumation. The chiefs and the elders (ruling class) of the communities had the auth-
ority to select which burial was an ancestor and, therefore, which merited exhumation and
relocation. These ancestors comprised former chiefs, relatives of both former and current chiefs,
as well as deceased community priests. On the relocation day, six of these ancestral burials were
exhumed from the former Bui settlement (Figure 4) while the people of Akanyakrom identified
and exhumed seven of their ancestral graves.
It was clear to us that not allmembers of the deceasedpopulationwere exhumed and reburiedwithin
the new settlement, because the exhumed burials were exclusively selected by the chiefs and elders of
the communities. These were former ruling elite and they were deemed ancestors (Figure 5).
In one of the community meetings organized by BPA, ordinary people whose deceased family
members were not part of the reburial arrangement vehemently protested against their own
chiefs that all the dead community members must be relocated. This created an episode of
tension between the community leaders and the ordinary people. The decisions of the chiefs not
Figure 5. Ancestral burials reinterred in the new Bui settlement (photo by author).
JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY ARCHAEOLOGY & HERITAGE 241
Figure 6. Wooden urns placed in graves for symbolic reburial (photo by author).
to relocate every burial ran contrary to their earlier argument that burial relocation was to prevent
the second death of the communities’ deceased population. The common people therefore, did not
have the same privilege of relocating the skeletal remains of their dead kin to the new settlement.
Their ancestors were to be left behind to suffer the second death, which suggests how the common
people were marginalized in this situation.
This compelled the salvage archaeology team to intervene, which brought to an end to the sta-
lemate. We suggested that the BPA procure wooden urns for the ordinary people to carry out sym-
bolic burial for their dead relatives. On the relocation day, the BPA provided these urns to every
household for the purpose of carrying soil from the individual grave sites to the new settlement
(Figure 6).
On the relocation day, family members solemnly trooped to the various grave sites, where they
scooped about 100 grams of soil into each of the wooden urns. These urns were symbolically
reburied in the new cemeteries of the new settlement. The people involved were satisfied that
their dead relatives had been relocated and that no one (dead or alive) was left behind to suffer
the second death of the dam floods. The symbolic relocation of the ordinary burials represents a
kind of de-marginalization of the dead which Tomaini (2018) described as essential to the natural
expression of kin and community.
Conclusion and recommendations
The Bui Dam area in mid-western Ghana has played important role as a converging point of confl-
icting ideas, tension, mediation, and negotiations. Even though salvage archaeology was not orig-
inally part of the Bui Dam arrangements, archaeologists managed to lobby and in a way forced
themselves on to the project and successfully conducted mitigation works in the impacted commu-
nities. The archaeologists further played another crucial role as mediators in the tensions between
BPA and the affected communities. At the end of this process, BPA avoided what could possibly
have been international controversy arising from its failure to take due regard of the archaeological
and cultural heritage of areas impacted by the dam. This article describes the collaboration between
archaeologists and the community (on one hand) and with the state agency (BPA) on the other. This
collaboration was crucial for research, documentation and management of cultural heritage
resources in the Bui Dam catchment areas. It also enhanced public knowledge about archaeology,
its methods, and values, because the video documentary we made has been aired several times
242 D. A. M. ABRAMPAH
on all television stations in Ghana. BPA was seen to be living up to its promise to preserve the areas’
cultural heritage, and it benefited immensely from the resulting positive press coverage. Deafening
praises were heaped on the Bui Dam authorities for their willingness to allow archaeologists to
record and preserve heritage resources threatened by the construction of the Bui Dam.
Interestingly, these lobbying, negotiation, and mediation skills are not part of formal archaeology
training in Ghana. They are, at best, learning on the job skills, and it is probably necessary to add them
to archaeological training (Apoh and Gavua 2016, 220). Apart from acting as cultural brokers and
heritage activists, and assisting the communities in getting solutions to their problems, our
salvage intervention also offered much satisfaction to the local people by giving them a public voice.
The reason why the Bui dam communities (and many other traditional societies) have continu-
ously shared domestic spaces with their dead is their belief that the souls of the ancestors have
the ability to impact positively on living people. Therefore, the members of Bui dam communities
demanded the relocation of ancestral burials and shrines so they could be part of living society
within the new settlements.
The reluctance of state agencies, in this case, dam authorities, to allow archaeological mitigation
is rooted in the policies and laws concerning human rights and culture. In the field of human rights,
Schmidt (2000, 14) notes that Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights defines culture
in poor and ambiguous manner, and that economic, social, and cultural rights have not been a
primary focus in the human rights community. There is therefore little focus on cultural heritage
rights. We must end the loud silence about human rights abuses committed by government
agencies which are managing dam constructions, and cultural heritage issues should be included
in the mainstream activities of human rights activists and anthropologists. Local communities
must also be assigned meaningful roles in the decision-making process of dam construction. For
example, indigenous communities must be asked to explain the cultural meanings of their land-
scapes. They should also be given the opportunity to explain the sites and cultural items that are
central to their identities, and how the loss or preservation of certain sites will influence their cultural
well-being (Schmidt 2000, 14). When these things happen, archaeologists would not have to spend
time facing-off with dam authorities, and can instead concentrate on their frontline role in salvaging
the cultural heritage of dam-affected indigenous people.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Bui Power Authority (BPA) for allowing the salvage work to be carried out and for providing funds and
logistical help to the salvage team. I must also commend the rest of the members of the salvage team: Mark Freeman,
Samuel Amartey, David Tei-Meansh Adjartey, and George Anokye. Special acknowledgment goes to the leaders of the
salvage team: Apoh Wazi and Kodzo Gavua of the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, University of
Ghana, for their knowhow in directing the project. Thanks to all those who consented for their names to be used in
the text. I also appreciate the peaceful collaborations from elders and the people of the affected communities
where the research was carried out (Bui, Akanyakrom, and Dokokyina).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on contributor
David Akwasi Mensah Abrampah’s interests are in both general anthropology and historical archaeology, with specific
research interests in linguistic anthropology, the archaeology of salt mining/trading, and culture contact in the Gold
Coast/Ghana. He was part of the team that conducted salvage archaeology at the Bui dam area between 2009 and
2013, described here. He is currently studying the Danish plantation system in Dodowa in the Greater Accra Region of
Ghana, focusing on the archaeology of the Frederikssted plantation settlement founded by Denmark in 1794. The research
seeks to explore and harness the historical and archaeological heritage resources in the area for historical reconstruction.
JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY ARCHAEOLOGY & HERITAGE 243
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