Within savanna and forest: A review of the Late Stone Age Kintampo Tradition, Ghana

Abstract

The Kintampo Tradition (c. 3600–3200 BP) of Ghana is associated with the earliest manifestations of figurative art, personal adornment, semi-sedentary ‘village’ settlements and food production in the Late Stone Age (LSA) of the savanna-forest/forests of West Africa. Despite decades of research, fundamental questions regarding this tradition remain unresolved and discussion of it remains heavily structured by notions of diffusion or migration. This study synthesises the available data with a comprehensive comparative analysis of Kintampo material culture in order to explore and evaluate this tradition's temporal and spatial patterning, as well as theoretical issues regarding identity and the socioeconomic and technical practices associated with the appearance of food production. Available data evince the existence of a unique adaptation that confounds attempts to interpret it within traditional socio-economic categories such as ‘Neolithic’. The Kintampo is recast here as a distinctive and durable archaeological tradition that constitutes the beginnings of food production in Sub-Sahelian West Africa.