Trade Networks and Consumer Practices in Amedeka, Ghana: Negotiating “Nkudzedze” From the Late 19th to Mid‐20th Centuries

This paper examines local taste practices in the era of “legitimate trade” when the trade in botanical (e.g., palm oil, palm kernel oil, and cocoa) and nonbotanical (e.g., ivory, textiles) commodities replaced the trade in enslaved Africans. Following the 1807 British abolition of the Atlantic trade in enslaved people, the locus of the trade in the geopolitical area now known as Ghana shifted from the Atlantic coast to the hinterland regions. This region actively participated in the new legitimate economy and also shaped the networks of trade through its local practices of taste. In this article, I argue that community‐based archaeology combined with local epistemologies provides alternative histories that underscore how local people experienced global encounters in the 19th and 20th centuries. In Amedeka, southeastern Ghana, where this research is situated, local tastes and their related performances are conceptualized through the Ewe expression, nkudzedze —“pleasing to the eyes.” Drawing on Indigenous archaeologies and Black feminist perspectives, I trace the materiality of nkudzedze through the consumption of imported ceramics excavated from Amedeka to understand daily socioeconomic life and problematize the Western lens of taste and knowledge production in Ghana and West Africa.