African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African Americans 67
Goldwork and Gold as Currency
For over fifteen hundred years, West African gold has been part of the world economy.
Its trade across the Sahara by Berber nomads became part of the international financial
market, beginning in the third and fourth centuries. By the eighth century, exportation of
gold to North African and Egypt gave rise to the most important of the early West
African Iron Age states. The kingdom of ancient Ghana dominated the southern border
area of modern Mauretania and Mali until the thirteenth century. During the height of its
power in the fourteenth century, the ruler of the neighboring empire of Mali, Mansa
Musa, made a famous pilgrimage to Mecca. In doing so he brought Mali’s affluence and
sophistication to the notice of the rest of the Muslim world. Upon his arrival in Cairo he
so lavishly spent the one hundred camel-loads of gold that accompanied him that the
value of gold plummeted and did not recover for a number of years.
Beginning in the fifteenth century, European merchants began to visit various centers
along the West African coast and observed local forms of adornment firsthand. A
Portuguese expedition arriving in 1482 was met by an Akan chief whose arms, legs, and
neck were “covered with chains and trinkets of gold in many shapes, and countless bells
and large beads of gold were hanging from the hair of his beard and his head.” For the
next four hundred years the trade in gold was concentrated along what was known as the
Gold Coast until Ghana’s independence in 1957.
Although an ancient artistic tradition, most African goldwork that survives today dates
only as far back as the nineteenth century. Because it functioned as wealth, it was
continually traded and recycled. The king mandated that all ornaments be melted down
and redesigned annually on the occasion of the Yam Festival and imposed a tax on their
recasting. It is important to consider, however, that leaders along the Gold Coast
appreciated gold not only as a raw material denoting wealth, but for the symbolic
significance it took on when refined. According to Asante history, the formation of its
confederation in 1701 was ushered in with an official decree that all objects and symbols
of the past be destroyed.
Gold dust circulated as a form of general currency throughout the region until the end
of the nineteenth century. Unlike Ghana, southeastern Cote d’Ivoire had no comparable
system of chiefs or related tradition of regalia. There was no particular restriction on the
ownership of goldwork, which principally took the form of personal adornments that
could be commissioned by wealthy individuals. Worn by men and women as signs of
beauty and prestige, they were attached to the hair or suspended from a necklace on
special festive occasions. Today such works are regarded as part of a family’s legacy, and
as heirlooms, are passed from one generation to the next. In the Lagoons region, adding
to this family treasury allowed an individual to enhance his social status. This
accomplishment was recognized through a ceremonial exhibition that publicly displayed
his wealth.
Baule beads and pendants, which can be discs, rectangles, tubes, or bicones inspired
by Akan designs, are cast of impure gold mixed with a high percentage of silver or
copper. In addition to these abstract forms, a classic design is that of a human face or
head. Although most examples depict a male face with beard, moustache, elaborate
hairstyle, and facial scarification, an enormous range of interpretations of this
standardized motif exist. The mask’s meaning also varies and while in some areas it is