The Akan civilization
Geography
The Akan are a group of peoples (Ashanti, Baoulé, Anyi, Attié, etc.) who live in southern Ghana and in the south-east of the Ivory Coast. For a geographical presentation of Ghana, please refer to the Sao section.
The Ivory Coast is a country in West Africa bordering the countries of Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Ghana. It has a population of 17 million and is a member of the African Union.
Its capital, Yamoussoukro, is situated in the center of the country. Other principal cities are Abidjan and San Pedro, on the Gulf of Guinea, and Bouaké, also in the center.
The population is very young: 48,2% are under the age of 14, and its birth rate is one of the highest in the world.
The official language is French, although the Ivory Coast consists of approximately 60 different ethnic groups (Sénoufo, Bété, Baoulé, Yacouba, Lobi, Gouro, Agni, Mandingue, Attié, Akan, Mossi, Pedro). It is also home to 5 million foreigners, that is to say about a third of its population, a unique situation on the world stage. Particular groups are the Burkinabés (3 million), Ghanaians (500,000), Liberians (100,000), Malians, Guineans, Senegalese, Togolese, Beninese, approximately 20,000 French (of which a third have dual nationality), Germans, Belgians, Americans, Canadians and Lebanese (approximately 100,000). The Akan people of southern Ghana are a group of smaller sub-ethnic groups, from the same part of the south-eastern Ivory Coast. They are considered the greatest creators, and the largest producers of art on the continent of Africa. There is nothing they are not familiar with: refined jewels, goldsmithery, weights to weigh gold, work made in wood (statues, masks, stools, seats, combs, headstocks etc), work in copper, clothes of the finest fabrics, and the most delicate of these arts, the manufacture of funerary terra cotta sculptures.
The Akan consist of several ethnic groups or sub-ethnic groups: Bono, Asante, Aowin, Nzena, Fante, Kwahu, Denkyira, Akwapin, Anyi. The majority of these sub-groups practice a funerary form of commemoration using terra cotta sculptures. Taking into account their differences, whether they be lingusitic, aesthetic or in their customs, the sculptures are singular both in their form and in the treatment of their surfaces, and their degree of ornate naturalism.
History
Until the arrival of the Portuguese explorers in 1474, the various Akan groups were organized in small independent kingdoms. Gold was in such abundance in the area that the Portuguese named it the Gold Coast. The indigenous tribes have preserved the tradition of goldsmithery to this day. The omnipresence of gold in the everyday life of the kings especially in their luxurious ornaments reveals a social hierarchy where power is represented in gold. The king cannot show or give audience without wearing gold in abundance, his jewels, his throne, his other signs of power. Gold is everywhere: in the hair, the ornaments, and the clothing. And what then of the funeral ritual? Was there also a place for gold in ceremonies honoring the deceased?
The manufacture of effigies to be placed in places of worship associated with the funerary rituals had been common within the Akan ethnic group since antiquity. During a long stay on the Gold Coast in 1601, Pieter De Marees observed a royal funeral. He reported that the important figures were represented out of modelled and painted clay. These effigies were laid out around the burial site.
At first glance, the terra cotta heads do not reveal their relation to death. They have consistant stylistic characteristics however: an oval or an almost perfectly circular shape, regular features, and a long neck. The obvious serenity of the majority of these pieces can be quite moving, especially in the strongly pronounced eyes which seem fixed and the mouth sometimes with a pout or a slight smile.
It seems that these royal funerary terra cotta portrait figures functioned like photography for the Akan, that is to maintain the memory the deceased. For the Akan, this sculptural art was deeply related to a social significance and a function: at the sides of the commemorative figures of the chief were other statuettes representing the members of his family and other courtiers, such as women, public speakers, tambourine players and trumpeters.
Culture
Thanks to the high content of raw materials, particularly gold, in their country, the Ashanti are excellent goldsmiths and have kept alive the splendid tradition of jewelry in this noble metal.
But there are fewer remaining traditional terra cotta funerary sculptures which, in spite of only intermittent practice through centuries, remains nevertheless one of the essential components of their rich cultural heritage, in addition to the more obvious signs of royalty (royal jewels, treasures, thrones and seats, crowns, sandals, swords...). The first accounts of the European travellers from the XVIIe century unambiguously report the ritual practice of the funerary portrait.
It is thus on the fortieth day after the death of an important figure that a short family ritual followed by a celebration which takes place to dedicate both the terra cotta effigy and the smaller figures of its close relations.
Pieter de Marees notes that « ... all the affairs of the deceased, including his weapons and clothing, are buried with him and all the gentlemen who had served him are naturalistically represented in clay, and then painted. They are arranged around the tomb, one beside the other... »
However, these sculptural representations are not portraits. There is a naturalist element to the piece, with a great wealth of details: the faithful representation of a complicated hairstyle, exact restitution of plaits, braids, chignons, small buns of hair, various scarifications, a beard, and a necklace. Apart from this realistic style, the artist also represented more « traditional » appreciations of beauty, hand crafted, artistically free interpretations of the deceased, more suggestive, evocative, cultural, and ethnically identifiable, thus facilitating the mysterious poetic relationship between man and the supernatural, between life and death.
Technique
Based on the testimonys of the first European visitors, the art of funerary terra cotta owes its origin to the arrival of Europeans on the African coast and particularly with the expansion of the Catholic religion. There was certainly a kind of iconoclast practice as seen elsewhere...
In any event, the terra cotta pieces are idealized effigies representing the deceased, devoid of all human virtues, particularly of all the aesthetic traditions we find in the representation of living beings. These funerary portraits were fired in furnaces, so the sculptures were hollow to avoid cracking during the firing process. Generally, there is a hole in the back of the head to allow gases and vapors to circulate and evacuate.
They are full size, very realistic, and very wonderfully crafted. The work is elegant, fine, and delicate, and the clay itself is homogeneous, of a beautiful quality, soft, as if it had been maticulously chosen, lengthily worked, filtered, and mixed.
The Akan had very quickly understood the terra cotta's resistance to moisture and termites, and had chosen clay as the perfect material for their commemorative sculpture.
The European travellers also tell us that the sculptures were painted, reinforcing their naturalist aspect. The terra cotta would be covered with a kind of very subtle make-up, like a temporary element that time has since erased.
Certain characteristics of the face, of the distinctive anatomical details, like the size of the eyes and the lips, the height of the face, were done in quite formal processes intended to commemerate death, easily identifiable and immediately recognizable.
Let us not forget that the Akan, more than a simple death cult, represent and establish a bond with the beyond, a kind of footbridge towards even more power, more knowledge, and more wisdom. The deceased, for the Akan, move on to a higher level of existence, enabling them to help the living during times of crisis. This statuary thus reinforces the spiritual bonds that the living have with their ancestors making it possible to draw from these capacities which the dead have acquired.
It is important to know that this practice of funerary representations lasted until the 1940's, decreasing in popularity and eventually disappearing in the last century and replaced by the simpler, and much more frustrating for sculptural art, photograph...
Aesthetics
The Ashanti tradition is mainly concerned with the detailed and refined representation of human heads, both male and female. The pieces to be found here are all from between the 16th and the 18th centuries, from a succession of small kingdoms. The pieces are representations of tribal chiefs, kings, queens, courtiers and others close to the royalty.
However these are not strictly represtative portraits, even if if certain details underline the naturalism of the sculpture: scarifications at the corners of the mouth, simple chignons or more complicated multiple braids, small buns...
The association of funerary representation with royalty is confirmed by several sources, both oral and written. These accounts show that, in the past, when an Akan chief or leader would die, a terra cotta representation of the deceased would be ordered from a wise old female artist. Gradually, the Akan royal portraits tended to be idealized and attributes of physical perfection are often manifest: wrinkles and prominent, well crafted eyes, nose and mouth, are all criteria of beauty in the Akan culture.
In the Ashanti funerary tradition, there are 5 or 6 different types of statues, most of them not well known. We will touch on only the two types of Akan Ashanti statuary which are represented on this site: round heads and flat heads.
« Flat » heads
These are small (10 to 20 centimeters), generally carved only on the front, and have schematic facial features: well crafted eyebrows, ears, defined hairstyle, precise scarifications, and prominent eyes, often closed.
Hollow « round » heads
Much bigger than the flat heads (the real size of a normal head), their aesthetic is also more important. These superb heads are finely decorated, and show multiple naturalist details.
Generally, the statuary is elegant, fine, sophisticated, and very realistic. One could almost say naturalist, as these terra cotta heads are natural sized, which accentuates the realism and the great expressivity of the faces: the eyelids, sometimes even the pupils, the wrinkles, and mimicing smiles. In all ways, and always, the royal statuary is not only the largest, but also the most ornate of all the figurines found at a burial site. The style of the hairstyles is used to dictate the position in life the effigy represented: certain pointy chignons at the top of the head are a sign of social distinction, another style is characteristic of Akan priests, another is reserved for other elites adding gold ornaments and jewels, and the multiple bows in the hair which we sometimes see undoubtedly represent ancient nuggets of gold...
