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Transformations of Form and Meaning in Akan Regalia
The Asante, an Akan people of southern Ghana, are renowned for communicating status, wealth, and power through displays of golden ornament and elaborately woven cloth. This opulence, combined with the symbolic richness of Akan regalia in general, has generated a special appreciation for Asante leadership arts.1 For many scholars, the centerpiece of these arts is the profusion of golden regalia worn or displayed by male and female traditional rulers and their court officials on state occasions.2
Yet one particularly intriguing form of regalia has remained relatively unexamined: an Asante chest ornament, or pectoral, that consists of paired golden disks in the form of stylized breasts suspended from a massive chain (Figs. 1-4). It appears to have originated within the context of Akan leadership arts, and it continues to be seen in the adornment of the two Asante royal fly-whisk attendants called mprakyirefoo (Fig. 5). In addition, over the course of the past century, the dual-disk pectoral has increasingly become associated with a new display context, that of the funeral, where it is known as awisiado, or "orphan's necklace" (Fig. 6).3
Although the process by which the dual-disk pectoral came into being may always be somewhat of a mystery, its meanings related to fertility and maternity suggest some manner of historical association between the necklace worn by the mprakyirefoc and the funerary awisiado. At least one, and perhaps two, early European accounts offer intriguing information that, allied with more recent ethnographic research, provides insights into the apparent transformation of the Akan single-disk pectoral into the Asante dual form.
Akan Pectoral Ornaments
The Asante necklace with two pendant disks belongs to the broader category of Akan chest ornaments known as ad[epsilon]bo or adaaboc, which are among the profusion of golden ornaments worn and displayed by Asante rulers and members of the royal entourage (Christaller 1933:70; Kyerematen 1961:3). The single-disk akrafokcnmu (popularly translated as "soul washer's badges" or "soul disks"; sing, ckrafokcnmu) are considered to be the most characteristic type of Akan golden pectoral. They are worn by court officials called akrafo (Fig. 7), whose full range of duties has only recently begun to be understood (see Ross 2002a, b).
Akan pectorals, including Asante double-disk pectorals, are either cast,...