THE ARCHEOLOGY MUSEUM OF LEGON

Have you ever been to the Museum of Archaeology? Well, if you haven't, the University of Ghana is privileged to have one. The Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies is one of the oldest departments in the university. Our objective as a group is to explore Ghana's archives, that is, its archaeological excavations. This includes puzzles, beads, figurines, clay pots and human skulls. To begin our journey, we had a chance to speak with Mr. Ajari, who walked us through the history of the Archaeology Department. Alright, so my name is Idion Ajari. I'm a technician, principal technician in the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies. And I'm also a museologist or a curator in the department. The Museum of Archaeology started way back from the then Atumata College. So, that was around 1923. And then, during the expansion of the college, an anthropologist by the name of Estee Shaw started collecting the materials that were coming up during the construction. So, he decided to keep all those excavated cultural remains in a small room. And then he named the place as the Museum of Anthropology. So, until 1948, when the University of Ghana was built, and then the Department of Archaeology was also built. But the museum was actually opened in 1951. The materials, all the objects, all the cultural remains that were recovered from the Atumata College during the expansion were transferred into the Museum of Archaeology. So, those materials or the objects formed the basis for the Museum of Archaeology. That was around 1951. And then, in 1957, on the eve of independence, the National Museum was established. But I have to note that the materials from the Museum of Archaeology were transferred from here to the National Museum. And so, in a way, we can say that the Museum of Archaeology gave birth to the National Museum. And then, until that time, researchers have been going around the country, collecting across the country and then outside the country. So, we have a lot of collections, in fact, in the storage and on display. On display, when we enter the Museum of Archaeology, we have the human evolution. Next up is the human evolution. We get to hear about the skulls. With finer bone morphology, very efficient bipedalism, we have increased brain capacity. We can do things better than the earlier species. We say that, okay, we are more efficient. We can have thinking capacity. We have a social organization that is distinct among the earlier species. You know, bones are not as robust as it would be to evolve into a finer species of the same. And so, we say these are more than human species that can think of their own more efficiently, can make very fine tools for efficient hunting and survival and adaptation to the environment. Waste beads, beaded bracelets, beaded necklaces. Do we know the history of these beads? Let's find out. And then beads collection in the Museum. We have different types of beads in the Museum of Archaeology. So, we have beads from the Teshin House around the 1930s. So, those were the traded beads. And then we have the locally made beads from the Asante, the Daban people, and then the Krobo. We also have some natural beads as well in the Museum of Archaeology. Alright, so apart from wearing the beads, using the beads for body adornment and so on and so forth, the other thing I also want to add is that the beads, you can also use the beads as a musical instrument. It's a musical instrument, so what we call the maracas. You can also use the beads for that. So, talking about beads, I mean, it plays a major, major role in our Ghanaian society or our Ghanaian culture. Sometimes it identifies you, who you are. You go to a function and you see somebody wearing a lot of beads on their wrist. It's telling you something. It tells you who that person is. So, this is what we can say about the beads. Did you know Ghanaians used to make their own irons? Check this out. Talking about the iron from northern Ghana, so there's this notion that Africa had no knowledge in ironworking. Right, but archaeologists and archaeological excavations have revealed that way back before the Europeans, the Africans, I forgot, Ghanaian or Ghana, people were producing beads, producing iron. Way back before the European presence in Africa or in Ghana. Now, how did they do that? Local people collect the local material, what we call the latrite. The latrite contains some amount of iron ore. This oil is put in a furnace and it is melted at a very high temperature. When it is done, they break the two ears and then they allow the melted magma, what we call the route. And now what comes out, you allow it to cool and then you go ahead and send it to the blacksmith. And the blacksmith would turn them into implements or iron implements. Way, way, way back before the Africans, the Europeans, Africans were producing iron. They were smelting iron using the indigenous technology. Some of the things, well, I can't say on the record that the ideas were stolen from Ghanaians because our people were doing these things before the iron routes and so on and so forth came into being. All right, good. So this is what I say about it. Visiting the Archaeology Department at Komnapi was fun and very educative. We learnt how artefacts are excavated, examined in the lab, before they finally reach the shelves in the museum. In a nutshell, there's so much more to learn and discover in the Archaeology Department than you think. So we entreat everyone to visit the department and its museum.