Ghana\u27s Vanishing Past: Development, Antiquities, and the Destruction of the Archaeological Record

Ghana\u27s past is being destroyed at a rapid rate. Although the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board has in some instances successfully intervened to stop the illicit trading of antiquities, the destruction of archaeological sites as a consequence of development over the past two decades has been staggering and the pace is accelerating. The potential of the legislation that established the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board and empowered it to manage and preserve the country\u27s archaeological past has not been realized. The lack of political action, limited relevant public education, insufficient funding, and the poverty of the majority of the Ghanaian populace have allowed for the widespread destruction of both sites and historic buildings. Conspicuously, both the absence of integrated development planning by the Ghanaian government and the inability of development partners (both foreign and domestic) to recognize the potential value of cultural resources have contributed significantly to the continued loss of the archaeological record. While the antiquities trade is a continuing threat to Ghana\u27s cultural resources, it is, in fact, tourism and economic development that pose the major menace to the country\u27s archaeological past. This article reviews the history of cultural resource management in Ghana, including both traditional attitudes toward preservation and current legislation. Case studies are used to illustrate the problems faced

Indigenous cosmology, art forms and past medicinal practices: Towards an interpretation of ancient Koma Land sites in northern Ghana

The ancient cultural tradition in the middle belt region of northern Ghana, with its stone circle and house mounds, contains varied material culture. The unique contextual arrangements of the material culture within the stone circle mounds and the diverse ceramic art forms, as well as their ethnographic analogues in West Africa, indicate the mounds’ association with past shrines that have multiple functions, including curative purposes. The archaeology of the mounds and ethnographic associations related to past indigenous medical practices is reviewed and discussed. This paper will also consider how some of the figurines through which the Koma tradition has achieved ‘fame’ possibly functioned as physical representations of disease, perhaps underpinned by intentions of transference from afflicted to image. The notions of protection and healing are also examined with reference to the resorted and disarticulated human remains sometimes recovered from the sites

In vitro antibacterial activities of selected TB drugs in the presence of clay minerals against multidrug-resistant strain of Mycobacterium smegmatis

Healing clay is a rich source of diverse minerals. The relevance of these indigenous minerals in the improvement of antibiotic chemotherapy against prevailing bacterial pathogens is yet to be thoroughly explored. In the present study, healing clay from archaeological context was characterized and used in combination with 19 different antibacterial drugs to test their combined in vitro activity against Mycobacterium smegmatis mc2 155 and a multidrug-resistant (MDR) Mycobacterium smegmatis strain. Among the antibiotics tested, the anti-tuberculosis drug, pyrazinamide (Pzd), showed a drastic antimycobacterial activity against Mycobacterium smegmatis mc2 155 in the presence of 5 µg/µL of the healing clay, whereas ribosome targeted inhibitors such as gentamicin showed significant reduction in activity in the presence of the healing clay. The resistance phenotype of the MDR Mycobacterium smegmatis strain to ampicillin and isoniazid was reversed in the presence of the healing clay. The activity of the other antibiotics was either unaffected, enhanced or reduced in the presence of the healing clay. The activity of ampicillin and isoniazid against the MDR strain in the presence of the healing clay suggest that healing clay might be a useful synergy for these antibiotics against MDR Mycobacterium tuberculosis