article
On mentally mapping Greater Asante: a study of time and motion
Journal of African history • 33 (2) • Published In 1992 • Pages: 175-190
By: Wilks, Ivor.
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
What was the extent of Asante authority in the18th and 19th centuries? The Asante had no maps of their empire, the ‘Greater Asante.’ Rather they had a mental map of it as a circle centered on the capital Kumasi and its diameter reckoned in the time it took to travel across it: 42 days, or one Asante month. Wilks examines the Asante road and messenger system, calendar, and European travel accounts, in order to convert travel time into a linear equivalent. Wilk's ultimate interest is in the rationality of Asante administrative practices.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Transmission of messages
- Highways and bridges
- Territorial hierarchy
- Chief executive
- Luck and chance
- Weights and measures
- Ordering of time
- Ethnosociology
- 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
- article
- 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
- Ian Skoggard ;1999
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- Not Specified
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- 1730-1881
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Ashanti; Ghana
- NotesAdditional notes
- By Ivor Wilks
- Includes bibliographical references
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 63005723
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Akan (African people)