Boyasi Hill
Script error: No such module "Draft topics".
Script error: No such module "AfC topic".
Sub-Saharan Africa represents a world region with a significant archaeological records.A greater number of this archaeological sites have not been excavated over the past years.Though many research from African Palaeoanthropology studies shows 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 a little is known about such archaeological sites. Ghana which is located in western part of Africa sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north,Togo in the east, the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, has a lots of archaeological sites which has not been discovered in time past. There are numerous sites classified as Kintampo Cultural sites which includes: Bosumpra, Rockshelter, Asockrochona among others were all inhabited during Ghana’s Stone Age in the 18th and the 19th Centuries AD.
Boyasi Hill is one of the archeological sites in Ghana which is located in the Asante region Kumasi on an area of the Savanna vegetation covered by a thick forest. It was discovered in the 1970s by a lecture by name 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.[1] Newton had discovered the site in 1969 in the course of botanical field work.
Boyasi the name of the location where the hill is situated existed around 2500BC, about 500m in diameter was already in early Stone Age industries which is 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 have find out 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 2500BC, about 500m in diameter was already in early Stone Age industries which is 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 have find out a clay sculpture of a dog. James Anquandah (1976) reported on excavations under- taken at Boyasi Hill in April 1976.[2] Five test pits were excavated in the summit of the site. They re- covered artifacts similar to those collected by Newton and Woodell, as well as beads and the remains of several stone-based structures (Anquandah 1976, 1982).[3] [4] Anquandah estimates the site to have been about 11.53ha. in extent.[5] 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).[6] [7] [8]
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.[9] 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 insure 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. etch in 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 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[edit]
- ↑ Newton and Woodell, L.E. and S.R.J. (1976). "A Newly Discovered Site for the Kintampo 'Neolithic' Cultural Tradition near Kumasi". Sankofa. 2: 19–22.
- ↑ Anquandah, J. (1976). "Boyasi Hill. A Kintampo Neolithic-1 lage Site in the Forest of Ghana". Sankofa. 2: 92–93.
- ↑ Anquandah, J. (1976). "Boyasi Hill. A Kintampo Neolithic-1 lage Site in the Forest of Ghana". Sankofa. 2: 92–93.
- ↑ Anquandah, J. (1982), Rediscovering Ghana's Past, Accra: Sedco
- ↑ Anquandah, J. (1993). "The Kintampo Complex: a case study of early sedentism and food production in sub-Sahelian West Africa". The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns: 253–260.
- ↑ Stahl, Ann B. (1985), The Kintampo Culture: Subsistence and Settlement in Ghana During the Mid-second Millenium BC, University of California Berkeley, PhD Dissertation
- ↑ Casey, Joanna (1993), The Kintampo Complex in Northern Ghana: Late Holocene Human Ecology on the Gambaga Escarpment, University of Toronto, PhD Dissertation
- ↑ Kense, François J. (1992). "Settlement and Livelihood in Mamprugu, Northern Ghana". An African Commitment, Papers in Hoonour of Peter Lewis Shinnie. University of Calgary Press: 143–155.
- ↑ Stahl, Ann B. (1994). "Innovation, Diffusion and Culture Contact: the Holocene Archaeology of Ghana". Journal of World Prehistory. 8 (1): 51–113. doi:10.1007/BF02221837. Unknown parameter
|s2cid=ignored (help)
This article "Boyasi Hill" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Boyasi Hill. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
