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AN INVESTIGATION OF IRON SMELTING SITES IN GAMBAGA AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS FOR IRON AGE STUDIES IN GHANA

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AKO OKORO, John
stagiaire
DOI: https://doi.org/10.57054/codesria.pub.637

Keywords:

Iron archaeology historical analysis iron ore Iron and steel industry mining production mining engineering Ghana West Africa

Synopsis

The development of interest in Ghanaian history since the early 20th century . has stimulated a demand that aspects of the Ghanaian culture and especially of .production be revealed to portray the nation's great past and help project a greater future. "Traditional" (that is while we wait for more data to reddress this issue of how traditional is "traditional") iron production has proved especially attractive since it provided the chief metallic base for technologies, agriculture and ~ndustry of the Early Iron Age societies. Y et in spi te of this, only a few smelting sites have been investigated. The large part of the data available on the industry is ethnological and dates to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which represent the closing period of this industry due to competition from imported substitutes of iron and its products. The data reveals that iron smelting was practised all over the country but there is not enough information to trace the history and development of this · industry. The number of archaeological investigations so far conducted is woefully inadequate. Thanks to the reports by geologists, anthropologists and archaeologists in the early twentieth century and the ethnographie work by the National Museums in the 1970's, Northern Ghana is fortunate to have good ethnographie descriptions of smelting practices. The règion, however, appears to lack known reconstructed archaeological remains (dated or not dafed) and their underlying technological parameters. The research in Gambaga has been able to characterize the iron technology of an area that has not received such examination and has established a base from

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Author Biography

AKO OKORO, John, stagiaire

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY, UNIVESITY OF GHANA, IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY IN AFRICAN ARCHAEOLOGY

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Published

June 22, 2023

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English

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APA John, A. O. (2023). AN INVESTIGATION OF IRON SMELTING SITES IN GAMBAGA AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS FOR IRON AGE STUDIES IN GHANA. CODESRIA. https://doi.org/10.57054/codesria.pub.637

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Chicago John, AKO OKORO,. AN INVESTIGATION OF IRON SMELTING SITES IN GAMBAGA AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS FOR IRON AGE STUDIES IN GHANA. Dakar: CODESRIA, 2023. https://doi.org/10.57054/codesria.pub.637.

MLA John, AKO OKORO,. AN INVESTIGATION OF IRON SMELTING SITES IN GAMBAGA AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS FOR IRON AGE STUDIES IN GHANA. CODESRIA, 2023. https://doi.org/10.57054/codesria.pub.637.

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