Germinating Stones as an Alternative Archive in an Atlantic African Society

Abstract Resolving troubled Akuapem–Akwamu–Akyem relations in the wake of the 1729–30 Nyanoase War culminated in the reaching of the 1733 Accord ratified through a medicine eating ritual. Through a dynamic interrelation between feedback and reverse feedback, both the oral and material records of this precolonial African ritual have found their way into the colonial archive, seeking to construct legitimacy during the age of the “world on paper.” By examining the history of the 1733 Accord and its resulting memoryscape, this article highlights the checkered relationship Africans had with the text – oral, written, and material genres – during the (early) modern period.