“Pots are pots, not people:” material culture and ethnic identity in the Banda Area (Ghana), nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Abstract

Colonial literature often assumed that Africans belonged to tribes and could be organised in orderly fashion. Concepts of ethnicity and identity have replaced the colonial paradigm and propositions of ‘pots as people' are considered fallacies. Nevertheless, analogies continue to be employed, thereby overlooking the diversity of historical experiences, the fluidity and the strategic character of ethnicity, rather than stressing similarities across time and space. This case study cautions against the validity of simple analogies used to address identity formation and its direct relationship with material culture. It focuses on ceramics produced in the Banda area of west-central Ghana during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that are characterised by their seeming lack of meaning as emblems of identity, while intangible cultural aspects play a central role. When analysed at the micro-level identical vessels used by different ethnic groups in their daily life show variability in manufacture among villages. This paper examines how contexts and choices in production can be entangled with cultural identity, taking us beyond formal aspects of ceramics as markers of identity.

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