West African Gold Research Articles

Doran Ross: The Scholar of Akan Art

Doran Ross: The Scholar of Akan Art

World(‐)Systems, West Africa, and the Global Middle Ages

AbstractThough West Africa and West African gold is generally acknowledged to have played a critical role in the high and later medieval world economy, the full extent of the region's global influence remains understudied in Global Middle Ages scholarship. This is not a new development but instead a continuation of a trend begun with the development of world systems theory, a key methodological paradigm used in the production of Global Middle Ages scholarship. By tracing the development of world systems theory and contextualizing it in historiography of West Africa and the Latin West, this essay seeks to offer answers for this analytical lacuna and provide potential strategies for producing more holistic scholarship.

XRF and LA-ICP-MS studies of gold and silver artefacts from a 12–13th century CE tumulus in Senegal: Implications for the medieval African gold trade

Silver and gold artefacts from a 12–13th c. CE tumulus in Senegal were recently analysed by means of XRF and LA-ICP-MS. The identification of major, minor and trace elements allowed gaining a rare insight into the composition of precious metals circulating in that part of Africa in medieval times. The results show that all objects were made of polymetallic alloys. Comparisons with analyses from other West African as well as North African and European silver and gold artefacts suggest that the metal from the studied objects most probably originate from outside West Africa. At least in the case of the gold artefacts, this is quite surprising, as we expected to come across pure West African gold. The results hint at a hitherto little known facet of the medieval African gold trade. It is concluded that, in addition to the acknowledged mass export of West African raw gold toward North Africa, there was also a thus far widely ignored traffic of alloyed gold (and silver) into West Africa.

Transpoétiquement votre, Anthologie (1966–2016) / Transpoeticamente vostro, Antologia (1966–2016) by Hédi Bouraoui

74 BOOK REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS possible clue to race), at mid-desert wells. By contrast, the historic supply of West African gold to North Africa and beyond has left abundant evidence in gold coins and other artefacts. Intriguingly, we learn, some of these surviving objects of presumed West African origin are now being analysed in an attempt to define their chemical composition. Development of clear chemical signatures for this gold would mean that coins could be traced archaeologically over time and space: then some very intriguing historical trading links might be suggested, or indeed confirmed. This important and revealing study suggests overall that the Saharan historian would do well to heed the findings and wisdom of the archaeologist (and his scientific colleagues), as the archaeologist equally needs to heed the work and wisdom of the historian, to their mutual benefit. The opportunity is provided by this and the further planned volumes in the series, with their promise to continue illuminating Saharan ancient history with much-needed floodlights of new knowledge JOHN WRIGHT Richmond HÉDI BOURAOUI, TRANSPOÉTIQUEMENT VOTRE, ANTHOLOGIE (19662016 ) / TRANSPOETICAMENTE VOSTRO, ANTOLOGIA (1966-2016), ROME: EDIZIONI UNIVERSITARIE ROMANE, 2016, PP. 220. Mario Selvaggio’s bilingual anthology Transpoétiquement votre, Anthologie (1966-2016) / Transpoeticamente vostro, Antologia (1966-2016) is a carefully arranged selection of Hédi Bouraoui’s poetry spanning over a period of forty years. It contains one to three selected poems in French from most of Bouraoui’s poetry collections with a translation in Italian by Mario Selvaggio (himself a poet). Alternating between the French and Italian languages, the reader is invited to perform a constant movement not only through time, but also through the multiplicity of cultural and linguistic spaces explored. An entirely new space emerges from this type of reading, something that Bouraoui himself names the space of “l’interstice”. Indeed, central to the philosophy of his (poetry) writing is the notion of transpoétique. As Bouraoui himself explains in an interview I conducted with him in July 2011 in London, this notion is closely connected to the concept of the border, or rather the transgression of that border at the level of the cultural, political and poetic: “la transpoétique c’est le transvasement d’une poésie à une autre, le passage d’un registre à un autre, le va-et-vient entre les langues, les métaphores, les styles, les registres, les sonorités…”.1 As Bouraoui writes in his 2005 essay 1 See “Interview with Hédi Bouraoui in July 2011”, in: Bolfek-Radovani, J., Geo/graphies of Loss: Space, Place and Spatial Loss in Maghrebian and Canadian writing in French, BOOK REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 75 Transpoétique, éloge du Nomadisme, the space that emerges from this approach to writing or ‘du faire poétique’ is a transucultural one: “Ce travail symbiotique, qui tisse parfois à notre insu cette nouvelle sensibilité, permet à chaque vecteur culturel d’établir des lignes de communication avec d’autres cultures tout en se transcendant, c’est-à-dire, en s’effaçant pour laisser la trace palimpseste de son processus créateur”.2 The anthology opens with two poems from the collection Musocktail (Chicago: Tower Publications, 1966) - “Création” and “Cocktail Poétique” that can be said to lay the foundation of Bouraoui’s innovative approach to writing. The ‘transpoetic’ aspects of Bouraoui’s poetics begin to take their full expression, however, in the collection Haïtuvois suivi de Antillades (Montréal: Éditions Nouvelle Optique, 1980). So, in “Les globules de ton île”, the first stanza of the poem begins with a powerful verse: “Je t’ai dans la peau HAÏTI”. As the author explains himself in the introduction, it is only within the cultural space of Haïti that he was able to recuperate the three main components of his identity: African, European and North American. The prose poem ‘Paix’ published in the collection Vers et l’envers (Toronto: ECM Press, 1982) marks the beginning of a new humanism and transcultural consciousness, as can be seen in the following verse: “La paix, c’est la véritable rencontre de l’Autre dans sa vérité; c’est l’acceptation totale de la difference”. Yet, one can witness a...

A Little Big History of Iberian Gold

We present a “little big history” of the gold that either was mined in the Iberian Peninsula, or was brought there from deposits located elsewhere, by trade or by conquest. During Roman times, gold was extracted from the Peninsula itself. In the Middle Ages, gold was brought across the Sahara from very rich near-surface occurrences in West Africa. After the discovery of the New World, Colombia was the most important source of gold entering the Peninsula. Each of these gold-bearing regions has had a different geological history, and in each one, gold was concentrated by a variety of geological processes. The West African gold dates back to fairly early in Earth history, about 2 billion years ago, and resulted from closure of an ancient ocean basin. The Iberian gold is related to the continental collision that produced the Appalachians and their Variscan continuation in Europe, while assembling the Pangea supercontinent. The Colombian gold is associated with the subduction under South America of the Pacific Ocean crust that has produced the Andes. For each of the three regions we present a database of historical and active gold mining areas, and we summarize this information in maps. The ways in which Earth concentrates gold are the subject of much geological research, and we give a brief introduction to this remarkable topic, hoping that big historians will go beyond Carl Sagan’s statement that “We’re made of star-stuff,” and will recognize that “We’re made of star-stuff, concentrated by Earth.”

Rethinking runaways in the British Atlantic World: Britain, the Caribbean, West Africa and North America

ABSTRACTThis essay utilises four exceptional case studies to explore the various causes, experiences and results of escape from slavery in the late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century British Atlantic World. These are: Johnny Beckles in Barbados, Jamie Montgomery in Scotland, Castle Slaves at Cape Coast Castle on the West African Gold Coast; and Harriet and Beverly Hemings in Virginia. This essay illuminates the diverse forms of enslavement and escape, showing that while some sought escape from slavery and even their race, others sought sanctuary within slave society and even on plantations, while others used escape as a means of pressuring for changes in their lives and work as enslaved people.

Saladin and the Ayyubid Campaigns in the Maghrib

This article concerns the conquest of Libya and Tunisia by Saladin (Salah al-Din) and the Ayyubids in the 1170s and 1180s. First it presents a reconstruction of the campaigns conducted by the Ayyubid mamlūks Sharaf al-Dīn Qarāqūsh and Ibn Qarātikīn in Libya and the conflict in Ifrīqiya (Tunisia) between the Almohads and the Ayyubids based on the relevant primary sources. Then the extent to which Saladin was responsible for these military expeditions is considered and finally the issue of the motive behind them is discussed. It is concluded that Salāh al-Dīn and his amirs invaded the Maghrib in order to control the northern termini of the eastern and central axes of the trans-Saharan trade routes, thereby gaining access to the West African gold which passed along these routes. This occurred at a time when there was a great shortage of precious metals in Egypt and Saladin was in need of cash to pay for his wars with the Crusaders in Palestine.

3D VTEM inversion for delineating sub-vertical shear zones in the West African gold belt

SUMMARY Accurately delineating sub-vertical graphitic thrust faults and shear systems is one of the major strategies followed in West African gold exploration. Due to the dense vegetation and limited outcrops, airborne electromagnetic (AEM) surveys have been routinely flown for geological mapping. We present a case study for practical 3D inversion of VTEM data acquired in Ghana. The geology is very complex, and consists of carbonaceous shear zones containing multiple thrust faults. Certain types of gold mineralization are directly associated with the shear zones which manifest themselves as sub-vertical conductors. We compare results from 3D AEM inversion to those obtained from traditional AEM interpretation methods, including conductivity depth imaging, decay constant analysis, profile anomaly picking, Fraser filtering, and plate modelling. We show that even with no a priori information, 3D AEM inversion accurately delineates the sub-vertical conductors, and recovers the most accurate representation of the geology. Interpretations based on CDIs are shown to be unreliable.

Eureka and beyond: mining's impact on African urbanisation

This collection brings separate literatures on mining and urbanisation together at a time when both artisanal and large-scale mining are expanding in many African economies. While much has been written about contestation over land and mineral rights, the impact of mining on settlement, notably its catalytic and fluctuating effects on migration and urban growth, has been largely ignored. African nation-states' urbanisation trends have shown considerable variation over the past half century. The current surge in ‘new’ mining countries and the slowdown in ‘old’ mining countries are generating some remarkable settlement patterns and welfare outcomes. Presently, the African continent is a laboratory of national mining experiences. This special issue on African mining and urbanisation encompasses a wide cross-section of country case studies: beginning with the historical experiences of mining in Southern Africa (South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe), followed by more recent mineralising trends in comparatively new mineral-producing countries (Tanzania) and an established West African gold producer (Ghana), before turning to the influence of conflict minerals (Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone).

New light on the early Islamic West African gold trade: coin moulds from Tadmekka, Mali

Tadmekka, a town at the southern edge of the Sahara desert, has produced good evidence for making gold coins in the ninth–tenth century AD, the first concrete proof of coinage in pre-colonial West Africa. These were produced by melting gold dust or nuggets in ceramic moulds, similar to those used for the first pellet-like coinage of the European Iron Age. The authors suggest these coins were not political statements, but were probably blank and intended to facilitate the busy early Islamic caravan trade to destinations north, south or east. On arrival at the Mediterranean coast, these blank pieces would have been melted down or converted into inscribed coins by the local authorities.

Kinetic and equilibrium effects in gold ore cyanidation

Cyanide leaching of two West African gold ores was studied in multiple laboratories to provide process-engineering data for plant design purposes. Unusually slow leach extraction kinetics were observed using routine cyanide leach test procedures with pregnant solution monitoring. Carbon-in-leach testing, however, showed normal rapid kinetic behavior, with the same ultimate gold extractions being reached in much shorter elapsed times. Kinetic-curves based on washed solids assays also exhibited more typical leaching characteristics. The results bore all the hallmarks of some equilibrium inhibition of the leaching. It was surmised that ore gangue components were responsible for weakly adsorbing gold-cyanide complex reaction product, thereby holding up soluble gold in the solid phase. The term “preg-borrowing” was coined to describe the reversible phenomenon and distinguish it from irreversible preg-robbing. The two ores investigated may represent an extreme form of a more general effect that in most instances might pass unnoticed. The effect can lead to misinterpretation of kinetic leach curve data and underestimation of calculated ore head grades.

Promoting SMEs in Africa

ABSTRACT Under colonial rule, sub-Saharan Africa was self-sufficient in food production, and much produce was exported from Africa to Europe. Prior to obtaining independence, in 1957, Ghana-formerly British West African Gold Coast-had one of the most prosperous economies on the African continent. The same is true for Togo, which was administered as part of Afrique Occidentale Française from World War I until its independence in April 1960. Since these two countries obtained independence, however, Indigenous population growth has not been matched by a growth in agriculture and business activity. Today, both Ghana and Togo are net importers, even in basic grains. Can government policy help?

Rebecca's Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World (review)

Rebecca's Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World. By Jon F. Sensbach. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Pp. 302. Cloth, $22.95.)With admirable narrative clarity and analysis, Jon Sensbach takes us into the tremendously varied world of a mixed-race woman who lived for twenty-three years in both freedom and slavery in the West Indies, then moved to central Europe to join her fellow Moravians for over two decades, and ended her life with fifteen years in and around a Danish fort on the West African Gold Coast. This book exemplifies and makes an important contribution to the continuing emergence of an Atlantic paradigm for understanding early America.Sensbach skillfully uses this altogether extraordinary life to explain key complexities of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. Rebecca, her later Roman Catholic baptismal name, was born around 1718 in the English colony of Antigua. As a young girl in the mid-172Os she was sold into slavery in Dutch-Creole-speaking Danish St. Thomas, where she did domestic work for an elite family who probably taught her to read and write and some of their Dutch Reformed beliefs. She achieved freedom and became a Christian sometime around 1730. Although presumably related to another, the exact relationship and timing of these key events in her life are not known. Once free, she remained a household servant and pursued a life of Christian devotion and teaching that moved forward in dramatic ways with the support of German-speaking Moravian missionaries whom she met on St. Thomas in 1736. Rebecca played a vital role at the center of a rapidly growing black Moravian congregation there in the late 1730s and early 1740s. Her efforts to take up the cross with all my heart, as explained in a 1737 letter signed in her name, allows a rich examination of black leadership in creating a substantial black congregation that clearly had radical implications in a slave society (63). Sensbach apdy judges this work the most significant achievement of Rebecca's life, since the creation of black Christianity would become one of the greatest social and religious movements in modern history (3). This book, especially Chapter 4, presents of the most detailed examinations of eighteenth-century black Protestantism in the New World yet published.Six of the book's eight chapters focus on the Caribbean, yet Rebecca's life beyond St. Thomas remains just as fascinating. After living in central Europe for three years, she married Christian Protten, a mixed-race person born in Africa and educated largely in Europe, who had just returned from an unsuccessful eight-year mission on the Gold Coast. They would work together there from 1765 until his death in 1769, and Rebecca remained on the Gold Coast until she died in 1780, declining an opportunity to return to St. Thomas. Her life in Europe and West Africa is overshadowed by her conflict-prone and much better documented husband (276n2), yet Sensbach nicely contrasts the two to present a range of Afro-Christian spirituality and self-understanding. Rebecca's resignation to the will of God is a persistent feature of her portrayal, while Christian constantly struggled and failed to reconcile his African and European identities (201).The small number of documents in Rebecca's own voice prevents her being presented as an isolated individual, a classic pitfall of biography, so that we see her connections to a wide range of people from her slavemaster's family, with whom she likely identified strongly, to her close work with Africans and creoles, to deep ties with white Moravians and other black missionaries. In all of these relationships we see moments of both cooperation and conflict. Sensbach contextualizes Rebecca among a small but vital cohort of early Protestant activists of African descent whose commitments were overwhelmingly spiritual, yet whose work was an important precursor to the better known black abolitionists of the lateeighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. …

Incidents of cyanide spillage in Ghana

Cyanide spills and exposures in the mining industry have occurred in many countries and in recent times there has been extensive publicity, with some moves towards the banning of cyanide in mining. Cyanide spills or accidental release of cyanide-bearing tailings and solutions into the environment, mostly as a result of containment failure, are usually managed by detoxifying the residual cyanide using well known methods before allowing the escape of the sludge. Ghana, a small West African gold mining country, has not been spared these unfortunate incidences. In the last decade and a half, eight incidents of cyanide spills have occurred. The most recent, in October 2001, was at Gold Fields Ghana Ltd in Tarkwa. This paper chronicles the various cyanide spills in Ghana and makes an assessment of the recent spill in Tarkwa. It is noted that the cyanide detoxification process contributed in no small measure to the adverse impact on the environment.

Harvesting mineral riches: 1000 years of gold mining in Ghana

This paper provides a concise historical account of gold mining in Ghana, from the pre-colonial period, through to the present. For over 1000 years, the Ancient Kingdom of Ghana, the former Gold Coast Colony, and present-day Ghana, have produced a substantial portion of the world’s gold. Initially frequented by Arab traders who had crossed vast stretches of the Sahara, the trading routes of the Ancient Kingdom of Ghana had stimulated significant conflict among groups, in particular, the Europeans, who, for centuries, battled for control of the West African gold monopoly. The region’s first gold mining companies were formed shortly after the British established the Gold Coast Colony in 1874, and, following two successive gold rushes in the early-1900s, gold prospecting and extraction were widespread in Obuasi, Tarkwa and Prestea. However, the industry soon entered a period of depressed production, which began at the time of country independence in 1957, and ended shortly after implementation of the country’s Economic Recovery (ERP) Plan in 1983. The Ghanaian gold mining industry has since grown rapidly, supplanting cocoa cultivation as the country’s chief economic activity. In the past 20 years, production increases in the order of 700% have been achieved, and today, output from resident gold mines accounts for some 37% of national exports and 97% of mineral exports.

The Medieval Expansion of Europe.

Between the year 1000 and the middle of the 14th century a remarkable series of events unfolded as Europeans made contact with a substantial part of the inhabited world, much of it never previously known to or suspected by them. Leif Ericsson and other Vikings from Greenland discovered North America; European crusading armies established themselves in Syria and Palestine; Marco Polo and other Italian merchants, and missionaries such as John of Monte Corvino penetrated the dominions of the Mongol great Khans as far as China; the Vivaldi brothers sought to open a sea route to India; Jaime Ferrer was lured by dreams of locating the source of West African gold; and the Atlantic island groups, the canaries, Madeira, and the Azores, were all discovered. This is the second edition of this text and includes a new Foreword and Conclusion, as well as a bibliographical essay, surveying recent work in what is becoming a thriving area of research.

The Almoravids: West African Gold and the Gold Currency of the Mediterranean Basin

The Almoravids: West African Gold and the Gold Currency of the Mediterranean Basin

West African Gold Coast Timbers

West African Gold Coast Timbers