Bosumpra Cave

The plateau and uplands lie just north of the Akan lowlands, and run diagonally across south-central Ghana for c. 200 km from near the western border with Ivory Coast to the edge of the Volta basin.

Bosumpra Cave was the first site of its kind to be excavated in Ghana and although it is frequently cited in literature and discussions concerning the West African Late Stone Age, the significance and interpretation of its occupational sequence and material culture have been a matter of speculation.

[1][2] The site derives its name from abosom (singular obosom), meaning ‘lesser gods’ in the traditional Akan religion who predominantly inhabit lakes and rivers.

Bosumpra Cave was previously the abode of the local tete bosom (tutelary deity) of the Pra River, traditionally sourced in the Kwahu region to Twendurase.

Some of the earliest examples of pottery in Sub-Saharan West Africa come from Bosumpra where stratigraphic and chronological data indicate that geometric microliths, partially polished celts and ceramics formed the basis of a distinctive adaptation on the Kwahu Plateau from the tenth millennium cal.

[2] Bosumpra Cave was probably occupied periodically throughout its use-history and given the site’s prominence within the landscape it may have been a ‘central place’ in a network procuring resources from both lowland and highland regions and contiguous ecotones.

The persistence of stone technology at Bosumpra demonstrates its local importance as it continued alongside metallurgy to form part of a repertoire of technical knowledge transmitted across generations until the seventeenth century.

In Bosumpra Cave, the ebb and flow of empires and the economic and political prominence of Abetifi is not even obliquely referenced by the material culture found in the archaeological layer, although it does hold relevance for understanding other dramatic transformations on the Kwahu Plateau.