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Early African Ivories

2022; UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center; Volume: 55; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1162/afar_a_00652

1937-2108

Luís Urbano Afonso, C. A. S. Almeida, José da Silva Horta,

African Studies and Ethnography

Based on archaeological excavations conducted in the 1970s by Merrick Posnansky in Begho (Ghana), this paper outlines a new cluster of early African ivories located in central Ghana.1 This group dates from the same time of other clusters widely recognized by the literature on early African ivories, such as those located on Serra Leoa,2 Owo, Benin, Calabar, and Kongo.3 Ivories belonging to some of these clusters are well documented in historical sources of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including records in European collections as early as the mid-sixteenth century. Fragments of other ivories were found in archaeological contexts dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, namely in Portugal (Manso, Casimiro and Gomes 2021) and Ghana (Posnansky 1976). When compared against each other, the internal cohesiveness of these clusters becomes clearer, as well as their differences.We structured this paper into three sections in order to present our arguments for outlining Ghana's cluster of early African ivories. First, we discuss the position of Begho in the trans-Saharan trade and how it fostered the development of local industries, including the production of small ivory objects. Second, we present evidence for considering the two fragments of side-blown ivory trumpets found by Posnansky in Begho as a product of the Akan peoples4 and we rebut the arguments of Ezio Bassani, who classified them as a subset of the Kongo cluster (2008: 35–38). Our reasoning stems from the relevance of Posnansky's archaeological findings and from a deeper stylistic analysis of these objects. Third, we contrast Ghana's ivory trumpets with trumpets from other early African clusters—namely Serra Leoa, Benin, Calabar, Kongo and another cluster in West Africa whose specific location remains undetermined, in order to strengthen the idiosyncrasy of Ghana's ivories.5This paper's main argument is anchored on Merrick Posnansky's archaeological work conducted in Begho in the 1970s. In 1972, during excavations in Begho, at the Brong quarter, Posnansky's team found two fragments of the distal ends of side-blown ivory trumpets outside of what appeared to be a house wall, in a stratigraphic level corresponding to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Fig. 1).6 Both were thoroughly described, illustrated, and interpreted in a paper published in 1976 that covered the origins of the Akan peoples (Posnansky 1976).7 Located immediately to the north of Ghana's forest area, Begho was the largest town in the region prior to European contact (Posnansky 2013: 65). This settlement was established in the beginning of the second millennium, but grew more rapidly after 1350, both as a marketplace and a manufacturing centre of ivory, among other commodities (Posnansky 2013: 66). It was abandoned in the early eighteenth century, when the pressure of Atlantic trade caused a decrease in the flow of trans-Saharan trade in Ghana (Posnansky 1973: 158, 1976: 51, 1979: 53; Stahl 1999: 72; Austen 2019). Begho emerged along with other trade towns such as Bima, Ahwene Koko, and Bondoukou, all of them privileged contact zones for Mande and Akan language groups, as well as Muslim and non-Muslim individuals (Posnansky 1973: 157). Most of Mande traders who crossed the savanna from the Sahel brought their pack animals up to the entrance of the forest in the south, exchanging rock salt and copper-alloy objects and ingots produced in the Mediterranean basin for kola nuts and gold mined in the Upper Volta.These settlements in the forest's fringes of Ghana had fertile soils, regular rain, abundant game, iron ores, and elephant ivory, benefiting from natural resources generated both in the savanna and the forest. Integration of these areas into the trans-Saharan world is evidenced by a wide array of cultural traits.8 Of all these settlements, Begho was the most important southern terminal of the caravan trade, where animal portage shifted to human portage (Stahl 1991:251).9 The forest was an ecological and epidemiological barrier that protected merchants arriving from the north, particularly against trypanosomiasis (transmitted by the tsetse fly) and other tropical diseases (Posnansky 1973: 155). Similarly to what has been documented in some major entrepots of the Sahel, and in other forest areas, such as Igbo Olokun, in the ancient city of Ile-Ife, in southwest Nigeria (Babalola 2019), local industries included metallurgy of iron, glass beads, ceramics, textiles, and carved ivory ornaments, namely bracelets for local use and interregional trade (Posnansky 1973: 158, 1976: 51–53, 1979: 53).Concerning the production of small ivory objects, Begho was not an isolated case. In Dawu, in southeastern Ghana, archaeologists recovered several fragments of twenty-four ivory bangles, dating probably from the fourteenth to fifteenth century (Stahl and Stahl 2004: 89). In New Buipe, on the Black Volta River, archaeologists recovered three spatulate ivory objects decorated with dots and circles in seventeenth century contexts (Stahl and Stahl 2004: 89). At Elmina, on the coast, several fragments of ivory bracelets and what appear to be stamps for body decoration were recovered from secondary fill deposits, making it difficult to date them (Decorse 2001: 138–40). Finally, at Kuulo Kataa (Banda), in west central Ghana, thirty-six bangles, seven pins/combs, and two blanks were recovered, made from elephant and hippo ivory, some of them revealing the same decorative solutions—incised parallel lines, circles, and dots—all dating from ca. 1300 to ca. 1650 (Stahl and Stahl 2004: 90–93).10The relevance and extension of long-distance trade in Ghana is quite clear when we consider the material abundance of thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth century large copper-alloy metalwork of high prestige documented in several historical shrines, royal palaces, and mausoleums, some of them still in situ (Posnansky 1973: 158, 1976: 51). Although the imported copper-alloy ingots were melted down, outstanding imported vessels were preserved for their status and use value. Some of these objects are well documented in Ghana, namely six large brass bowls and basins made in Mamluk Egypt in the fourteenth and early fifteenth century and three very large English bronze ewers of ca. 1390–1400. These objects are/were kept in Nsawkaw, about 20 km east of Begho; Atebubu, about 150 km east of Begho; Timponem, about 40 km southeast of Begho; Amoaman, about 120 km southeast of Begho; and, for the English ewers, Kumasi, near Amoaman. Despite their poor state of conservation, particularly the loss of the bowls' silver and gold inlays, these objects are eloquent testimonies of Ghana's full integration in trans-Saharan trade and the global networks it provided (Silverman 2015, 2019: 257, 259). We can conclude, therefore, that Ghana was totally embedded in long-distance trade and that it had the resources and skills to develop local industries of ivory production, long before the Europeans arrived and opened this territory to the Atlantic trade.The two fragments of side-blown ivory trumpets, found by Merrick Posnansky's team in 1972, measure 15.3 cm × 3.2 cm and 9.1 cm × 2.3 cm (Fig. 2). They clearly share structural and formal characteristics, in addition to having been found next to each other in a sixteenth-seventeenth century context. First, they are decorated only with transversal incised lines, small circles, and dots. Both have their mouthpieces carved on the concave side of the trumpets, near the distal end, which is plain and possesses a rectangular shape without any relief signalling the aperture.In the smaller of the two fragments the mouthpiece is located at some distance from the tip, which is clearly separated from the body of the trumpet, constituting a truncated-cone volume. In the shorter fragment, the tip is decorated with incised parallel lines in both extremities, two at the top and three at the base. In the longer fragment, however, the tip seems to be absent from the instrument, something that is less evident in the drawings than in the photos made by Posnansky's team. In its present state, the mouthpiece seems to have been carved almost at the instrument's distal end. The decreasing diameter of the instrument's body, toward the narrower solid extremity, wrongly suggests that this extremity corresponds to the tip. It is precisely at this narrower point, roughly at the same distance from the mouthpiece, that a truncated-cone-shaped tip is carved in the shorter fragment. This explains why this trumpet's mouthpiece is so close to the supposed tip and why the separation of these adjacent areas is made by a band of parallel lines with four incised circles framing both extremes, instead of recurring solely to parallel incised lines.Posnansky considered that these side-blown ivory trumpets were another example of the cultural transfers brought by the Mande to the Akan world, who were responsible for introducing to the region similar systems of weight, brass-working knowledge, building methods, and ceramic forms used in the Western Sahel (Posnansky 1976: 56). The aniconic decoration of these ivories, in line with contemporary African Islamic values, seemed to reinforce his theory. Posnansky believed that the absence of animal and vegetal ornamentation could be an influence from northern Muslim traders, mirroring the stylistic similarities between local pottery and Sahel and Sudan pottery (Posnansky 1973: 53). This interpretation has two limitations. On one hand, available material evidence of early African ivories from Mali and present-day Ghana is too scarce to test this hypothesis. On the other hand, we must remember that other African clusters of early ivories (namely in West Central Africa) were also markedly aniconic and such aniconism had nothing to do with the influence of Islam. In this particular point, we think that Posnansky suggested this interpretation mainly to reinforce his arguments about the origins of the Akan peoples, emphasizing the strong cultural and demographical contribution made by people coming from the Sudan belt, namely the Mali empire (Posnansky 1976).11 In contrast, Posnansky is absolutely right in pointing out the structural similarities shared by these two fragments with nineteenth and twentieth century undecorated ivory trumpets used in the region by the Asante, emphasizing the royal and chieftain ceremonial use of these instruments among the Akan (Posnansky 1976: 53–54; Kaminski 2007: 63–65, 2012).The ivory trumpets now discussed as having been created in Ghana were grouped by Ezio Bassani as a subset of the Kongo cluster (2000: 80, 152, 2008: 35–38). Before he was aware of Posnansky's findings, Bassani had already identified a small group of ivory trumpets presenting the same stylistic and structural traits of the two fragments from Begho (Bassani and Poplin 1982). The first is a large ivory trumpet measuring 83.3 cm preserved at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. This is probably the same object described in detail by Louis Daubenton in 1764 as a piece displayed at the King's Cabinet (Fig. 3). The second trumpet is about the same size (83 cm) and is kept at the Danish National Museum (Fig. 4). It is very likely the same described in 1737 as belonging to the Danish Royal Kunstkammer (Bassani and Poplin 1982: 6–8). Bassani related these two objects to an Italian watercolor painted by Domenico Tencalla before 1666, which illustrates two ivory trumpets from the Museum Septalianum in Milan (Fig. 5). One of them—the largest one—is clearly identical to the previous two analyzed by Bassani, while the other is typical of what Bassani classifies as ivory trumpets produced in the Calabar region. This watercolor has an inscription of two sentences, written at the time of the painting, probably by the collector Manfredo Settala (1600–1680), canon of Milan's cathedral and the son of Lodovico Settala (1550–1633), from whom he inherited a large collection of exotica. The inscriptions read: “Elephant tooth arranged to sound, which they use in the Kingdom of Congo to play in front of the king. Another smaller one, with a soprano tone, carved with crocodile in low relief” (Bassani 2000: 152).12Taking into consideration the clear geographical identification of the largest trumpet, Bassani attributed this small group of ivory trumpets to the Kongo, classifying them as a subset of the Kongo cluster. Bassani also considered that they possessed similar truncated-cone-shaped tips (Bassani and Poplin 1982: 8). However, the differences between the two groups are quite obvious. The tips from the Kongo trumpets are conical and have grooves, while those from Ghana are plain and have a truncated-cone shape. The best-preserved examples from Kongo even possess a small sphere after the conical tip, an element absent from the Ghana trumpets. In addition, the mouthpiece edge of the Kongo trumpets is almond-shaped and is slightly higher than the surrounding surface of the object, in clear contrast with the mouthpieces from Ghana, which are plain and have a rectangular shape without any relief. Finally, the Kongo trumpets have at least one suspension lug carved near the distal end, on the concave side, and sometimes a second one near the proximate end, while those from Ghana do not possess any lug.As stated, in 1982 Bassani was not aware of Posnansky's archaeological findings. Therefore, he had no reason to question the validity of the watercolor's geographical information. In later studies, however, Bassani became familiar with the two fragments recovered by Posnansky and recognized the obvious similarities between them and the trumpets that he grouped as a subset of the Kongo cluster (Bassani 2000: 152, 2008: 35–38). Surprisingly, instead of reconsidering his arguments, Bassani preferred to rule out these archaeological findings as proof of a local production in Ghana and suggested that these objects were brought to Ghana through existing maritime connections between the Kongo and the Gold Coast (Bassani 2008: 38).13 That is, Bassani clearly overlooked the archaeological evidence and did not undertake a more detailed visual analysis of these trumpets, giving more credit to the inscription and to the (false) similarity of the trumpets' tips. Finally, Bassani did not consider the imprecision involved in early geographical information of African artifacts. If the 1897 punitive expedition to the kingdom of Benin inaugurated an overall trend to classify most African works of art as originating from Benin, before that event, whenever a West African work of art was not wrongly identified as “Indian” or “Turkish,” it would probably be attributed to the Kongo (Heger 1899: 106; Curnow 1983: 35). In other words, prior to 1897 “Kongo” functioned as a classification label used with the same carelessness that the “Benin” label would be after that date. In seventeenth century Italy it was even more common to associate sub-Saharan African works to the kingdom of Kongo, given the regular presence of Kongolese ambassadors in Rome and, conversely, due to the large presence of Capuchin missionaries in Kongo since 1645. Most of them were Italians and some were highly sought after by exotica collectors, including in Milan, where Settala lived (Almeida 2011). Therefore, this kind of geographical information cannot be taken at face value in those cases where the writer does not have direct knowledge of the lands he mentions.As he was one of the main specialists in early African ivories, Bassani's interpretation, further sheltered in the auctoritas of Jan Vansina, became indisputable. The hypothesis advocated by Merrick Posnansky of local production has been entirely neglected until now. Surprisingly, the previously mentioned formal and structural differences between these two fragments and the ivory trumpets commonly attributed to Kongo were not taken into consideration. Thus, not only did Bassani overlook the relevance of Posnansky's in situ findings, but he also did not acknowledge the obvious differences between the trumpets from Ghana and those belonging to Kongo.In addition, various European written sources from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century further back up the existence of a deeply rooted use of ivory trumpets in this region (Jones 2005; Kaminski 2012: 31–50).14 From Peter de Marees (Dantzig 1987), at the very beginning of seventeenth century, up to Barbot (1732; Hair, Jones, and Law 1992) and Bosman (1705; Dantzig 1976), at the turn of the eighteenth century and beyond, there is evidence of a persistent tradition of production and use of ivory trumpets, usually related to the ritualization of power and as insignias of social status. Reports do not allow for either identification of a clear iconographic pattern for the trumpets or a secure identification of their morphological features. Available indications point to the existence of different typologies in terms of size, shape, and placement of the mouthpiece, as well as in terms of decorative motifs (including their absence), which can hardly be surprising in the context of such a heterogeneous cultural universe as the Akan world. From a methodological point of view, the amount of evidence available in these reports is solid enough to support the local origin of the fragments found by Posnansky.Following the pioneering study by William Fagg (1959), there was major growth in the historiography of early African ivories from the 1980s onwards, with relevant studies by Kathy Curnow (1983), Ezio Bassani (2000, 2008), Peter Mark (2007, 2011, 2014, 2015), William Hart (1995, 2007), and Mário Pereira (2010), among others. With the exception of Kathy Curnow, most of these studies were conducted after the exhibition Africa and the Renaissance: Art in Ivory, held in 1988 in New York and Houston, under the coordination of Ezio Bassani and William Fagg, whose catalogue included an inventory of 203 ivories broadly classified as “Afro-Portuguese” (Bassani and Fagg 1988). Regardless of a few divergences among some of these authors, namely in terms of the chronology or the geographical location of the clusters, the accumulation and development of knowledge over these last forty years has been extraordinary.In order to differentiate the Ghana cluster from other early African clusters, we must review their main characteristics, specifically concerning ivory trumpets. Serra Leoa constitutes the first cluster of remaining early African ivory trumpets produced south of the Sahara. This cluster was first identified by William Fagg (1959: xx), who suggested that a large group of ivory salt cellars, trumpets, and spoons sharing similar stylistic traits had their origins in this area. His main argument was based on the formal similarities between Sapi stone figures collected in this territory and the human heads sculpted in several ivories of this group.15 Fagg also suggested that the iconographical and stylistic hybrid features revealed in these ivories—combining European and African elements, namely Portuguese heraldry—could be explained by the regular presence of Portuguese in the Sierra Leone Estuary, in the confluence of the Rokel River and the Port Loko Creek. This high-level hybridity was precisely what led him to coin the term “Afro-Portuguese” as an original classification label (1959: xviii), which might be better conceptualized as “Luso-African.”16The trumpets produced in this cluster follow the European structure of oliphants, with the mouthpiece opened in the smaller end of the object and with several suspending rings carved along the concave side of the trumpet (Fig. 6). These trumpets might include short inscriptions in Portuguese, Latin, and Spanish; European hunting scenes involving wild boars and deer; Portuguese and Spanish heraldry; and also, albeit to a lesser extent, Christian iconography. These elements were combined with the representation of Africans and Luso-Africans with scarification, elongated crocodiles, and large pythons, among other elements of local origin. There are more than thirty ivory trumpets of this type preserved in museums and private collections all over the world (Bassani and Fagg 1988; Bassani 2000). Extensive documentary evidence published by Alan Ryder (1964) and Teixeira da Mota (1975) reinforced William Fagg's location of this cluster in the Serra Leoa.These ivories have been dated by most experts either from ca. 1490 to ca. 1550 (Curnow 1983: 64–67, 81, 92) or from ca. 1490 to ca. 1530 (Bassani and Fagg 1988: 147). Their iconography presents Portuguese royal heraldry from the time of King Manuel I (1495–1521) and King João III (1521–1555). However, Peter Mark (2007: 197–99) has a different theory, considering that the so-called Benin cluster corresponds, in fact, to ivories made in the Serra Leoa area in a later period (Mark 2015). The precise location and extension of the Serra Leoa cluster has also been discussed in literature. In its narrower sense, Serra Leoa was the name that the Portuguese navigators gave to the 40-km-long Sierra Leone peninsula, located to the south of the Sierra Leone Estuary, with an impressive, high coastline. However, in its broader sense it could encompass all the coast from the Îles de Los in Guinea, lying off Conakry (or even at Cape Verga, further to the north), down to the Cape Mount already in the coast of Liberia (Horta 2011: 52–53). People classified as Sapi in early European sources (“Çapijs”/”Çapeos”) were also producing carved ivories, very much appreciated by the early sixteenth century Portuguese, up to the southern bank of the River Grande de Buba, in Quinara region, in the south of Guinea-Bissau (Fernandes 1997: 98; Horta 2018). Therefore, it is not entirely certain that the Serra Leoa ivories were produced only in the mouth of the Scarcies River and/or in neighboring ports of the Sierra Leone Estuary, as suggested by Kathy Curnow (1983: 242).In addition to these hybrid ivory trumpets, mainly produced for export under Portuguese commission, there is evidence of other trumpets produced exclusively for local use. These pieces correspond to side-blown trumpets, with the mouthpiece carved on the concave side and with a different iconographic repertoire. In contrast with those made for export, none of these trumpets has lugs. As Bassani (2000: 287–89) has shown, some of these trumpets present strong stylistic affinities with Sapi stone figures, particularly the one preserved at the Musée Calvet in Avignon (Fig. 7) and another one kept at the Quai Branly in Paris.17The Benin cluster of early African ivories is known not only for its Luso-African export ivories, namely salt cellars and spoons, but also for its ivories produced for royal consumption, such as the two extraordinary and well-known ritual pendant masks of queen mothers preserved at the British Museum and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (LaGamma 2011: 26–29). More than fifty ivory spoons are attributed to this cluster, which are characterized by their shoehorn shape, with shorter handles decorated with zoomorphic motifs and longer bowls curving outwards in a hook in its narrow extremity (Curnow 1983: 186, 213–15). It also includes nearly twenty saltcellars composed of two spherical containers instead of one, as is common in Serra Leoa. Their iconography is also quite different from the Serra Leoa productions, with many more representations of Portuguese soldiers and dignitaries (Bassani and Fagg 1988: 161–86). However, very few Luso-African ivory trumpets can be attributed to Benin. In fact, only three objects are known: one is at the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum in Cologne (Fig. 8), a very damaged one is at the British Museum, and a third is in a private collection (Bassani 2000: 228). All of them are carved in very low relief combining local decorative patterns with European motifs, namely heraldic symbols, such as the armillary sphere and the Portuguese coat of arms (although incorrectly represented), and isolated figures of hunters and horn blowers (Bassani and Fagg 1988: 156–59). These objects have the same decorative patterns found in salt cellars made in Benin, but their iconographic motifs are clearly dependent on the same European engravings used on Serra Leoa ivories. The mouthpieces of these ivories are plain and rectangular, being very similar to the ones of the Ghana cluster. But the mouthpiece of ivory trumpets from Benin was carved on the convex side of the trumpet, a specificity of Benin trumpets in general (Curnow 1983: 219). Despite the similar format of the mouthpiece, in Ghana's trumpets the opening is made on the concave side of the tusks and is located near the tip. Finally, the tips from Benin are carved in the shape of menacing beasts with open jaws— apparently crocodile heads. According to Curnow these trumpets were never intended for local patrons due to the absence of local iconography (1983: 220).The Calabar cluster of early ivory trumpets was proposed as such by Ezio Bassani in 1977. Bassani was the first to recognize the idiosyncrasy of a large number of side-blown ivory trumpets from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Fig. 9) which are characterized by the total absence of suspension lugs and by protuberant unornamented rectangular mouthpieces located almost at the middle of the trumpet. These trumpets are coarsely carved in low relief and have a limited number of motifs, namely circular zigzag lines and animals seen from above (crocodiles, lizards, toads, four-leaf clovers), usually with cross-hatched patterns (Bassani 1977). Despite their obvious similarity and relatively common representation, with some twenty objects identified up to now, it is not certain that Bassani's geographical identification is accurate. Indeed his arguments for locating this cluster in the Calabar region, in the coast of Southern Nigeria, are anchored in formal and iconographic similarities with objects recently collected in this area, namely carved and engraved trays, fans, headdresses, and vessels made of wood, brass, and gourd (Bassani 2000: 263–67). The similarities noted by Bassani are quite generic, particularly those concerning the cross-hatched patterns in the figures seen from above, which is far from limited to this region. Despite what might have been a sign of cultural continuity, in this and other cases, there has not yet been enough research on the historical context to establish the provenience of these trumpets. In contrast with Benin and Serra Leoa, there are no spoons, saltcellars, or other types of vessels associated with this ivory cluster.In what concerns the chronology of these objects, however, Bassani is clearly right. In the already mentioned watercolor painted in Italy ca. 1666, illustrating two ivory trumpets kept in the Museum Settala in Milan, one of the objects is obviously from this group, offering a clear indication about the chronology of these pieces. In addition, one trumpet of this group preserved at the British Museum, and documented at the collection of Sir Hans Sloane since the early eighteenth century, has a later inscription carved in its surface mentioning that it was in use in the year 1599, when it was transformed into a drinking horn by the addition of a copper gilt head and tail (Bassani 2000: 266). Thus, taking into consideration their similarity and these two different inscriptions, Bassani considers that all these trumpets were produced between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century by the same workshop and during a short period of time (Bassani 2000: 266).We have already referred to some of the characteristics of the so-called Kongo ivory trumpets when we have compared them to the ones from Ghana in terms of the conical shape of their distal endings, the typology of their mouthpieces, and the existence of suspension lugs (Fig. 10). However, these side-blown ivory trumpets are mainly characterized by their peculiar decoration, which is exclusively formed by sophisticated geometric patterns identical to those applied on cloths produced in the kingdom of Kongo and in some scarification motifs (Bassani 2008: 17–24). This kind of geometric pattern is totally absent from the Ghana trumpets. There are nearly fifteen trumpets of this type, two of them documented in the collection of the Medici since the mid-sixteenth century, thus providing a solid chronology for equivalent works (Bassani 2000: 277; LaGamma 2015: 138–40).Lastly, we mention another coherent cluster of early African ivory trumpets whose geographical location is yet to be determined: a group of about a dozen ivory trumpets that Bassani designated as “fluted oliphants” produced somewhere in West Africa, but not Nigeria (Bassani and Fagg 1988: 209–12; Bassani 2008: 25–29).18 These side-blown trumpets have three distinguishing characteristics (Fig. 11). First, their body is fully sculpted with extremely elegant striate or fluting bands, except near the larger extremity of the object, which usually presents a plain surface. Secondly, the mouthpiece is carved in high relief on the concave side, in some cases almost at the middle of the instrument, with a lozenge shape resembling the form of a small boat. Finally, the tip of the trumpet is always formed by a menacing crocodile head emerging from under the striated bands. In two cases the crocodile head is carved swallowing a human figure, a variant that is exclusively represented in two early seventeenth century illustrations. One of these depictions corresponds to an engraving of several African musical instruments included in the book Theatrum Instrumentorum, written by the German composer and music theorist Michael Praetorius, published in 1619 at Wolfenbüttel in Lower Saxony. The other is a drawing made in 1635 depicting a trumpet that belonged to Spanish collector Vincencio Juan de Lastanosa (1607–1681), who displayed it at his palace in Huesca (Bleichmar 2008: 64–66). Curiously, some of these trumpets have suspension lugs, on either the concave or convex side, which might have been added to meet the requirements of possible European orders.We can conclude this section by emphasizing the idiosyncrasy of the clusters identified here, confirming that many cultures along the Atlantic coast of sub-Saharan Africa developed their own specific model of ivory trumpets, at least during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.The known clusters of early African ivories located in Serra Leoa, Benin, Calabar, Owo, and Kongo were defined by researchers mainly through formal analysis and other comparative methodologies. In some cases, these analyses were complemented by the examination of early European written sources, a methodology particularly fruitful concerning the Serra Leoa cluster. These clusters nonetheless represent only part of a much richer scenario: a) there are many other early African ivory objects that fit none of these traditional clusters; b) several early European written sources mention the presence of ivory objects in other areas of the Atlantic coast of sub-Saharan Africa outside the range of these clusters; c) an ever-growing number of archaeological excavations in Africa are revealing the presence and production of ivory objects in places and times not previously documented.In this paper, we focused our attention exclusively on a small group of ivory trumpets and fragments whose features diverge from the established clusters of early African ivories. Our starting point was a paper published by Merrick Posnansky in 1976, based on archaeological excavations conducted in Begho, Ghana. This city was fully integrated in the trans-Saharan trade, fostering the development of a significant number of local industries, including the creation of ivory objects. The two fragments of ivory trumpets found by Posnansky are clearly distinguishable from the trumpets belonging to the conventional clusters of early African ivories. Based on a thorough formal analysis of the objects, we suggest that the two fragments and the three specimens preserved in Copenhagen, Paris, and Milan (watercolor) are the only traces of a broader production of ivory trumpets by the Akan peoples, most likely centered in Begho. Indeed, data relating these objects to Ghana is enough to dismiss a distant origin for them, namely in West Central Africa.