Book
Forests of gold: essays on the Akan and the Kingdom of Asante
Ohio University Press • Athens, Ohio • Published In 1993 • Pages:
By: Wilks, Ivor.
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
This is a detailed study of the cultural and political history of the Twi (Asanti, Ashanti) people of west Africa from approximately the fifteenth to the late twentieth centuries (1980s). Much of the earlier material deals with the Akan kingdom of the fifteenth to seventeeth centuries from which the modern Twi nation evolved. The book consists of ten chapters. Chapters 1-3 deal with the conditions under which Akan society emerged in its historic form. Chapters 4-7 describe various aspects of Ashanti culture, as for example, the pervasive importance of wealth in the society, the ‘mental mapping’ of the kingdom for purposes of trade and government, and with reference to so-called human sacrifice, the close relationship between the status of the living and the dead (p. xiii). Chapter 8 reviews the careers of the incumbents of the highest military offices in the administrative capital of Kumase, and Chapter 9, those of a number of functionaries in the civil administration. The last chapter (chapter 10) presents a biographical sketch of an Ashanti woman who, on the behalf of the ASANTEHENE (the king), conducted negotiations with British, Danish, and Dutch on the Gold Coast in 1831.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- History and culture change
- External trade
- Status, role, and prestige
- Chief executive
- Administrative agencies
- External relations
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Akan
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 2000
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- Africa
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Western Africa
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- Book
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Historian
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 4: Excellent Secondary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- John Beierle ; 1994
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- no date
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- fifteenth century-1980s
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Ashanti; Ghana
- NotesAdditional notes
- Ivor Wilks
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 363-375) and index
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 93000473
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Ashanti (African people)/Ashanti (Kingdom)/Akan (African people)