The indigenous timber and clay building technology of the Akan peoples of southern Ghana is a later expression of an ancient tradition of timber frame construction. Timber frame building had attained a considerable level of sophistication and beauty by the early nineteenth century as evidenced in the architecture of the Asante kingdom, and especially that of its capital, Kumasi. Such sophistication, in light of the antiquity of timber frame building in the region, should not be surprising. Nor should we be at a loss to account for its origins.
Akan coursed clay construction is less well known than timber frame construction. It was not as widely practiced as timber frame construction in pre-colonial times, particularly in the regions of dense forest. It seems to have been more common in the region occupied by the Northern Akan, the Bono (or Brong), and in parts of the central coastal plain occupied by the Fanti. The product of this type of building is a structure consisting of...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Andah, B. W., & Anquandah, J. (1988). The peoples between Mount Cameroon and the Ivory Coast. In M. el Fasi (Ed.), General history of Africa (Vol. III, pp. 488–529). Paris: UNESCO, Heinemann, and University of California Press.
Anquandah, J. (1976a). Boyasi hill – A Kintampo ‘Neolithic’ village site in the forest of Ghana. Sankofa, 2, 92.
Anquandah, J. (1976b). Excavation at boyasi hill, Kumasi – A preliminary report. Nyame Akuma, 8, 33–35.
Anquandah, J. (1982). Rediscovering Ghana’s past. Harlow, UK: Longman and Sedco.
Anquandah, J. (1993). The kintampo complex: A case study of early sedentism and food production in Sub-sahelian West Africa. In S. Thurston et al. (Eds.), The archeology of Africa: Food, metals and towns (pp. 255–260). London: Routledge.
Barbot, J. (1732). A description of the coasts of North and South Guinea. c. 1682. In A. Churchill & J. Churchill (Eds.), Collection of voyages and travels (Vol. 5). London: Compilers.
Blake, J.W. (Ed. & Trans.). (1942). Europeans in West Africa, 1450–1560. Sec. Ser. No. 87. London: Hakluyt Society.
Bosman, W. (1705). A new and accurate description of the coasts of guinea. London: James Knapton.
Bowditch, T. E. (1966[1819]). Mission from cape coast to ashantee. London: Frank Cass Publishers.
Brammer, H. (1962). Soils. In J. B. Wills (Ed.), Agriculture and land use in Ghana (pp. 88–126). London: Oxford University Press.
Davies, O. (1967). Timber construction and wood-carving in West Africa in the second millennium BC. Man, NS 2, 115–118.
Denyer, S. (1978). African traditional architecture. New York: Africana Publishers.
Dombrowski, J. C. (1976). Mumute and bonoase – Two Kintampo sites. Sankofa, 2, 64–71.
Dombrowski, J. C. (1980). Earliest settlements in Ghana: The kintampo industry. In R. E. F. Leakey & B. A. Ogot (Eds.), Proceedings of the eighth pan-African congress on prehistory (pp. 261–262). Nairobi, Kenya: International Louis Leakey Memorial Museum for African Prehistory.
Dupuis, J. (1966). Journal of a residence in ashantee (1824). London: Frank Cass Publishers.
Effah-Gyamfi, K. (1975). Traditional history of the bono state: An archaeological approach. Legon, Ghana: Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana Publication.
Effah-Gyamfi, K. (1979). Bono manso archaeological research project 1973–1976. In B. W. Andah (Ed.), Perspectives on West Africa’s past: Special book issue of West African journal of archaeology (Vol. 9, pp. 173–186). Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan University Press.
Farrar, T. (1996). Building technology and settlement planning in a West African civilization. Lewiston, ME: Edwin Mellen Press.
Gardi, R. (1973). Indigenous African architecture. New York: Nostrand Reinhold Publishers.
Gluck, J. F. (1973). African architecture (1956). In E. P. Skinner (Ed.), Peoples and cultures of Africa (pp. 230–244). Garden City, NY: Natural History Press.
Hull, R. (1976). African cities and towns before the European conquest. New York: W. W. Norton.
Hyland, A. D. C. (1974). An introduction to the traditional and historical architecture of Ghana. In M. Dodd (Ed.), History in Ghana. Accra, Ghana: Cultural Program of the American Women’s Association (unpaginated collection of presentations).
Kea, R. A. (1982). Settlements trade, and polities in the seventeenth century gold coast. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
McIntosh, R. (1976). Finding lost walls on archaeological sites. Sankofa, 2, 45–52.
McLeod, M. D. (1981). The Asante. London: British Museum Publications.
Moughtin, J. C. (1985). Hausa architecture. London: Ethnographica Publishers.
Oliver, P. (1971). Shelter in Africa. New York: Praeger Publishers.
Posnansky, M. (1973a). Aspects of Early West African trade. World Archaeology, 5, 149–162.
Posnansky, M. (1973b). Archaeological aspects of the Brong-Ahafo region. In K. Arhin (Ed.), Seminar on Asante and Brong. Legon, Ghana: Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon (unpaginated).
Posnansky, M. (1975). Archaeology, technology and akan civilization. Journal of African Historical Studies, 2(1), 24–38.
Prussin, L. (1969). Architecture in Northern Ghana. Berkeley/Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
Prussin, L. (1980). Traditional Asante architecture. African Arts, XIII(2), 57–82.
Prussin, L. (1986). Hatumere: Islamic design in West Africa. Berkeley/Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
Rutter, A. F. (1971). Ashanti vernacular architecture. In P. Oliver (Ed.), Shelter in Africa (pp. 153–171). New York: Praeger Publishers.
Swithenbank, M. (1964). Asante Abakosem: The traditional architecture of Ashanti. Ashanti Research Project: First conference May 17–20, 1963. Legon, Ghana: Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon. n.p.
Swithenbank, M. (1969). Ashanti fetish houses. Accra, Ghana: University of Ghana Press.
Wilks, I. (1975). Asante in the nineteenth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this entry
Cite this entry
Farrar, T. (2016). Building Construction in Africa: Akan. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7747-7_9440
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7747-7_9440
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-7746-0
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-7747-7
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities