Excavation at Kormantin No. 1 in the Central Region of Ghana

Abstract

Kormantin No. 1 lies on a hill approximately a kilometer north of Fort Amsterdam, Abandze. It was home to the local population at the time when Fort Amsterdam was occupied by the Dutch or the English from 1631 to1811. Excavation at Kormantin No. 1 has produced European, Japanese and locally-manufactured pottery, gun flint, glass bottles and beads, European smoking pipes, bricks and roofing tiles, metal objects, animal bones and mollusc shells. The site dates from the mid-eighteenth to the twentieth century, and the local pottery, similar to that excavated at Fort Amsterdam and other Akan areas, includes vessel forms that are regarded as indicators of Asante influence and presence on the coast. Trade with Europeans is attested by imported finds, and the subsistence economic lifestyle of the site's inhabitants as inferred from animal bones and mollusc shells was similar to that of the Europeans and residents of Fort Amsterdam who also depended on local resources for food.