17th-century English fort that served as slave trade outpost unearthed in Ghana
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A team of archaeologists led by Christopher DeCorse believes they may have found the first English slave outpost in Africa.
The BBC reported that the remains were unearthed inside the Dutch-built Fort Amsterdam.
The remnants of the original fort Kormantine, which served as a trading post for gold and ivory from Africa to other English locations, were found within this fort.
Kormantine was afterward captured by the Dutch, who further built the fort at the same site and named it Fort Amsterdam.
Fort built in 1631
The remains began to emerge through the various soil layers after cautious digging. Excavations discovered a six-meter (20-foot) wall, a door post, foundations, and a red brick drainage system.
The remnants indicate the existence of "the first English outpost established anywhere in Africa," DeCorse told BBC.
The 17th-century Fort Kormantine was built by the English in 1631 on Ghana's Atlantic coast.
The slave trade began in 1663 when King Charles II gave a nod for the use of a charter to the Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading. Around this period, Europeans began to shift their focus away from gold trading and onto humans.
The Fort was most likely used as an outpost during the early years of the slave trade. It also served as a storage for the items needed to purchase slaves.
Additionally, it was a temporary stop for hundreds of individuals who had been abducted from various regions of West Africa before being transferred to the Caribbean to work in sugar fields. They then had to endure the rough seas to get to the other end.
The artifacts found at the site
A rusty gunflint (used in old-fashioned weapons), tobacco pipes, pottery fragments, and a goat jawbone were also excavated at the site.
"It was mind-blowing, seeing first-hand the remnants, the footprints of an actual building subsumed under a new fort. Seeing the imprints of these external forces in Africa first-hand and being a part of such a dig takes me back a few hundred years, it feels like I was there," Omokolade Omigbule, a graduate student from the University of Virginia, who took part in the excavation work, told BBC.
Archaeologists will spend the next three years attempting to piece together Fort Kormantine through the remains recovered from the site.
The findings may provide crucial insights into the early slave trade, as well as those who were sold and traders.
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