Joanna L. Casey 

PhD., University of Toronto 1993

Associate Professor 

 

 

Office Hours: 

Phone Number:  777-6700

Hamilton 319

Email: jlc@sc.edu

My current research involves prehistoric Archaeology and ethnoarchaeology in Northern Ghana. I have an on-going archaeology project doing excavation and analysis at the multi-component Birimi Site near the towns of Gambaga and Nalerigu in the Northern Region of Ghana. The site has occupations spanning the Middle Stone Age through the advent of iron working. The largest component of the site is a Late Stone Age occupation known as the Kintampo Complex that dates to 3000-4000 bp. My primary archaeological interest is in the origins and nature of early food production in West Africa. Toward that end, my technical specialty is the analysis of informal stone tool technologies. I also collaborate with Dr. A. Catherine D’Andrea, Dr. Dorothy Godfrey-Smith and Dr. Alicia Hawkins whose areas of specialization are Paleoethnobotany, Geophysics and the analysis of Middle Stone Age technologies respectively.

The Ethnoarchaeology aspect of my research is primarily concerned with the use of wild resources, but more recently I have become interested in Women’s businesses and the impact of the global economy on them.

                             The Birimi Site

The Birimi Site is located at the top of the Gambaga Escarpment near the towns of Gambaga and Nalerigu in the Northern Region of Ghana. It was located in 1988 during the first surveys of the area under the direction of Dr. Francois J. Kense (1991). The site was attractive because it is a very large, intact Kintampo site that also had evidence for preserved organic remains. Unfortunately the potential of this site was only recognized during the last weeks of excavations. Other Kintampo sites in the area gave evidence for a substantial Kintampo occupation (Casey 2000), but Birimi had the potential to fill in the gaps in our understanding of who the Kintampo people are and what they do.

Kintampo appears at a critical time in West African prehistory, during the final desiccation of the Sahara Desert. At this time, significant changes become apparent in the archaeological record of Western Africa as people migrate from the Central Sahara, and evidence for domestic crops and settled lifestyles becomes evident. Kintampo is part of this trend toward sedentism, but it stands alone in time and space, separated by about 500 years and miles in any direction. Continued research will narrow the gaps in time and space between Kintampo and its neighbours, but at present it seems to arise almost without precedent and occurs only in Ghana.

The material culture of Kintampo is characterized by an artifact assemblage that includes most or all of the following: comb-stamped pottery, grinding stones, ground stone axes, stone arm bands, bored stones, grooved stones, geometric microliths, and a chipped stone tool industry predominantly in quartz. The fossile direteur of the Kintampo complex is the "terra cotta cigar", an elliptical object usually made of fine sandstone that has been scored or pecked and abraded on one or both sides.

Kintampo Ceramics on the Surface of Birimi

Kintampo has been the focus of more investigations than any other single complex in Ghana, but archaeological research in Ghana in general has been patchy. While previously Kintampo appeared to have been a complex oriented toward the forest and savanna ecotone in central Ghana, in truth Kintampo is found almost everywhere that archaeologists look for it. True analyses of most of the Kintampo artifact types are lacking so it is difficult to compare Kintampo sites on the basis of the published record. Consequently it has been difficult to see relationships between sites and regions beyond the superficial similarities of a fairly generalized artifact assemblage.

One of the most pressing questions about Kintampo has been the nature of its subsistence base. Although sites of substantial size with permanent structures have suggested large populations and long-term occupation, evidence for domestic crops has been lacking. Their presence has been suggested by a faunal assemblage from central Ghana that indicates an increase through time in animals that prefer cleared fields (Stahl 1985), but no cultigens had ever been found.

At the Birimi Site, an intensive program of sampling and flotation throughout the excavations resulted in the recovery of domestic millet.

Document's URL: http://www.cas.sc.edu/ANTH/Faculty/CaseyJ/Joanna.html 
Published 08/16/02; by the College of Arts & Sciences, University of South Carolina.
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