Moynihan Institute Of Global Affairs and MASU welcomes Dr. Samuel N. Nkumbaan

My talk focuses on Tando Fagusa, a 6th to 10th Century AD site in Northern Ghana. The site contains unique anthropomorphic and zoomorphic terracotta figurines alongside other archaeological materials. These are suggestive of precursors to social complexity prior to the period of contact with the Saharan World. Tando Fagusa has multiple mounds, which have been identified as characteristic of settlement and “stone circle” mounds. Some research interprets the stone circle mounds as burials or shrines, but I propose that this is far from conclusive, and I interrogate this hypothesis through comparative data from other settlement mounds.

Dr. Samuel N. Nkumbaan is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Rochester. He earned his B.A., MPhil, and PhD degrees at the University of Ghana where he is a lecturer in the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies. Dr. Nkumbaan was previously a Fellow of the University of Michigan African Presidential Scholars (UMAPS) Program. He presented and published widely on cultural resource management, historical archaeology, and socio-political complexity. 

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