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...