Boyasi Hill

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Sub-Saharan Africa represents a world region with a significant archaeological record. A greater number of these archaeological sites have not been excavated over the past years. Though many research studies from African Palaeoanthropology show that the greater number of Pleistocene archaeological sites are located in the southern, northern and Eastern Africa. In regards to Western Africa, of which Ghana is located, little is known about such archaeological sites. Ghana, which is located in the western part of Africa, sharing borders with Ivory Coast to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, has many archaeological sites which have not been discovered in the past. There are numerous sites classified as Kintampo Cultural sites which include: Bosumpra, Rockshelter, Asockrochona, among others, all of which were inhabited during Ghana’s Stone Age in the 18th and 19th Centuries AD.

Boyasi Hill is one of the archaeological sites in Ghana, located in the Asante region near Kumasi, on an area of savanna vegetation covered by a thick forest. It was discovered in the 1970s by a lecturer named Leonard Newton of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) located in Kumasi. The discovery of Boyasi Hill was first reported in *Sankofa* in 1976 by Newton and Woodell. Newton had discovered the site in 1969 during botanical field work. Boyasi, the name of the location where the hill is situated, existed around 2500 BC, and is about 500m in diameter. It was already in use during the early Stone Age, as demonstrated by the evidence of collections of polished stone axes and arrowheads, microliths, stone arm rings and beads. It also shows the ancient ruins of stone structures, and archaeological research has found a clay sculpture of a dog. The inselberg had attracted botanical interest because it is an island of savanna vegetation that is different from that of the surrounding forest. Newton and Woodell observed grinding grooves carved into the granite outcrops on the side of the hill, and the remains of dwellings near the summit. They collected grinding stones, stone arm bands, polished axes, grooved stones, worked stone flakes, pottery, "terra cotta cigars" (flattened, elliptical, scored items made of fine-grained sandstone), and a clay figurine from the surface at the summit and on the "saddle," a lower area to the south of the summit. These artefacts were identified as being associated with the Kintampo Complex by Merrick Posnansky, then at the University of Ghana. Boyasi was an example of archaeology working in the interest of botany. This outlier of relict vegetation indicated that in the past the area was once much drier than it is now, and evidence for Kintampo peoples, who at the time were thought to have preferred open savanna, seemed to indicate that the hill had had savanna vegetation for a very long time. Boyasi, the name of the location where the hill is situated, existed around 2500 BC, and is about 500m in diameter. It was already in use during the early Stone Age, as demonstrated by the evidence of collections of polished stone axes and arrowheads, microliths, stone arm rings and beads. It also shows the ancient ruins of stone structures, and archaeological research has found a clay sculpture of a dog. James Anquandah (1976) reported on excavations undertaken at Boyasi Hill in April 1976. Five test pits were excavated at the summit of the site. They recovered artifacts similar to those collected by Newton and Woodell, as well as beads and the remains of several stone-based structures (Anquandah 1976, 1982). Anquandah estimates the site to have been about 11.53 ha in extent. At the time Boyasi Hill was excavated, not much was known about the Kintampo complex, so excavations at Kintampo sites were primarily concerned with working out chronologies, and understanding the material culture and regional variations of the complex. In the past 15 years we have learned considerably more about Kintampo, primarily through the reassessment of K6 Rockshelter (Stahl 1985 a,b) and the discovery of new sites in northern Ghana (Casey 1993; Kense 1992). Kintampo has provided the earliest known evidence for domesticates in sub-Saharan western Africa (Stahl 1994:76) and it is assuming a prominent place in helping us to understand the origin and nature of early food producing societies in Africa. The 1976 excavations at Boyasi were of an exploratory nature and were clearly aimed at obtaining information, but left as much of the site intact as possible. This is, of course, standard archaeological procedure to ensure that in the future when new questions and new techniques become available, there will still be enough of the site left to allow researchers to investigate it in light of these new developments. Boyasi remains an important site in our understanding of Kintampo because of the presence of figurines and clearly defined stone structures. The choice of location is also interesting. The top of the inselberg is highly defensible with an excellent view of the surrounding countryside, but it is devoid of water sources. Fetching water would require an arduous climb up a very steep hill which rises 60 metres above the surrounding land. In conclusion, it was understood that very little is known about the social organisation of the Kintampo peoples, so it is difficult to suggest why this location was chosen, but the possibility of Kintampo peoples needing to defend themselves against enemies raises interesting questions about their relationships with contemporaneous peoples.

References

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