WODOKU

Excavations at Wodoku, the ancestral home of the Nungua people of Accra, have produced pottery, a piece of terracotta figurine, grinding stones, glass beads, iron slag, animal bones and shells of molluscs. Earlier researchers have regarded the site as a seventeenth century phenomenon, but a piece of a sixteenth century Martinkamp-type flask from Northern France found in the excavations suggests that the site was founded in the sixteenth century if not earlier. The author discusses the implications of the locally-manufactured pottery, particularly as they relate to Ga-Dangme origins and cultural influences resulting from European contact with the people on the Accra coast, while the zooarchaeological finds throw light on the subsistence practices of the site's inhabitants.