Akan goldweights

Beyond their practical application, the weights are miniature representations of West African culture items such as adinkra symbols, plants, animals and people.

[2][3] Stylistic studies of goldweights can provide relative dates into the two broad Early and Late periods.

[4] It's supposed that throughout the early and late periods from 1400-1900 AD there were around 4 million goldweights cast by the Ashanti and Baule ethnic groups of West Africa.

The base components of inorganic materials, such as metals, formed long before the manufacturing of the artifact.

Studies on the quality or origins of the base metals in brass are not very useful due to the broad distribution and recycling of the material.

Central to Akan culture is the concern for equality and justice; it is rich in oral histories on this subject.

The weights were part of the Akan's cultural reinforcement, expressing personal behaviour codes, beliefs, and values in a medium that was assembled by many people.

While it's inevitable that different cultures influence each other, the names, writing and philosophy ingrained into these weights are all ideas native to the Akan people and hardly found in other West African societies.

[8] Anthony Appiah describes[9] how his mother, who collected goldweights, was visited by Muslim Hausa traders from the north.

However of interesting note and significant lack of prominence in Akan goldweights is the depiction of a lion.

The Ashanti people of the Akan region are primarily located in forested areas where leopards thrive.

Symbolic lions tend to be a coat of arms associated with European trading companies in West Africa.

However, by the 1890s (Late Period) the quality of both design and material was very poor, and the abandonment of the weights quickly followed.