The rain forest of southern Ghana between the Ofin and the Birim, from the hills south of the later Kumasi to the Pra and the Kakum, was not empty in 1200: it held a dense network of farming settlements.
Chouin and DeCorse (2010) describe large ditched enclosures (earthworks) in the Birim valley and between the Pra and the Kakum, built from the first millennium AD and abandoned abruptly before the mid-fifteenth century (Akrokrowa probably in the fourteenth century, about 1304-1365 at one standard deviation); they suggest the abandonment may be linked to the Black Death, as a hypothesis. North of them, Asantemanso was lived in continuously from the ninth century, with its radiocarbon peak between 1200 and 1700, and Adansemanso near the later Edubiase was first settled in the ninth or tenth century and reached its height in the thirteenth to fifteenth (Vivian and the Shinnies). On 1 January 1200 these are communities of forest farmers, smiths and potters, many of them living inside their ditches, under their own lineage heads.
Gold was later dug at Akrokerri and Dompoase near Adansemanso under ritual control (Ofosu-Mensah), but whether it was dug for trade in 1200 is not shown.
Who holds it
- Title
- Heads of the matrilineal clans and village elders
- Since
- Not known
- Confidence
- low
No ruler is known. Adanse's tradition makes it the first home of several Akan clans (Ekuona, Asona, Bretuo, Oyoko, Asakyiri, Asenie and Agona, after Boaten 1971 as cited); the Asante tradition has the Aduana and Oyoko clans come out of the ground at Asantemanso. Neither gives a ruler or a date for 1200.
How things stand that morning
Independent farming communities; no lord and no war recorded. The Bono country lies to the north-west, the coast villages of the Etsi to the south.
Customs
Matrilineal clans; ditched enclosures round the settlements; the earthworks pottery with its elaborate impressed decoration, which at Asantemanso precedes the later Akan ware; shrines and sacred groves; iron smelting.
Assemblies
Lineage heads and elders of each settlement. Nothing is known of wider councils.
What the year holds
What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.
- Through 1200The farming year in the forest: clearing, planting with the March rains, harvest from August.Depends on: Nothing in play. Stopped by: Nothing likely.
Places of note
- Adansemanso: Forest town, height thirteenth to fifteenth century
- Asantemanso: Settlement continuous from the ninth century
Where the sources disagree
- Konadu and Campbell (2016, as cited on Wikipedia) say Adansemanso was settled as early as 393; the excavators' own summary gives the ninth or tenth century.
- Chouin and DeCorse's dates show the earthworks still occupied on 1 January 1200; their end is a fourteenth-century event.
Evidence: Archaeology: excavated and radiocarbon-dated sites (Asantemanso, Adansemanso, Akrokrowa and other earthworks). Tradition for the clans. No written source.
On the map: The outline follows the rivers named in the evidence; the earthworks lie mostly in its southern half.
Sources and studies
- G. Chouin and C. DeCorse, Prelude to the Atlantic trade: new perspectives on southern Ghana's pre-Atlantic history (800-1500), Journal of African History 51 (2010), abstract and summary as read on the publisher's page
- Asantemanso (Wikipedia, on the Asante Archaeological Project of P. and A. Shinnie from 1986)
- Adansemanso (Wikipedia, on the excavations of B. Vivian, P. Shinnie and A. Shinnie, 1991-1995)
- Akan people (Wikipedia, citing Shinnie 2005, Ofosu-Mensah 2010, Boaten 1971, Konadu and Campbell 2016, Shumway 2011)
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.