West African musical devices languishing in a Los Angeles museum’s storerooms are making a restitution problem, as a result of they’ve human skulls hooked up to them.
The drum and the ivory trumpet had been looted by British troops within the late nineteenth century in Kumasi, the capital of the Asante kingdom, so the Fowler Museum on the College of California, Los Angeles is decided to return them to Ghana. However though the musical devices could also be Asante, they seem to have been remodeled into ugly warfare trophies—the hooked up skulls might be the decapitated heads of the Asante’s enemies.
One risk is that the skull was added later, with a purpose to improve its worth for a purchaser with macabre tastes
Though it could be acceptable to restitute the musical devices to the current Asante king, it could be extensively considered unethical to return the bones of their former enemies, victims from neighbouring communities. And it could appear inappropriate to take away the skulls from the devices, splitting up historic ensembles which have most likely been collectively for 2 centuries.
In 2024, with appreciable fanfare, the Fowler Museum restituted seven different gadgets to the Asante king. These don’t have any human stays and are actually on show in Kumasi’s Manhyia Palace Museum. However what was not publicised on the time was that the 2 musical devices stay in limbo on the Fowler. Their existence is revealed in a brand new guide by the London-based journalist Barnaby Phillips, The African Kingdom of Gold: Britain and the Asante Gold.
The musical devices seem to have been seized individually by British troopers in Kumasi throughout navy operations within the late nineteenth century. The troopers’ unidentified households later bought them in London: the trumpet in 1919 and the drum in 1930. Each had been purchased by Henry Wellcome, whose wide-ranging assortment comprised gadgets with a medical connection.
In 1965, when the Wellcome assortment was being dispersed lengthy after the founder’s dying, the 2 devices had been donated to the Fowler. Since then they’ve by no means been displayed or illustrated in revealed images.
Trumpet with cranium
The bones on the devices have now been examined, with shocking outcomes. The trumpet has a cranium coated with a red-orange substance, which is hooked up to the instrument with a strap. On the 1919 London public sale at which it was bought, an outline of the trumpet learn: “A really massive previous Ashanti ivory horn with fetish cranium hooked up, sounded solely at human sacrifices. Collected similtaneously the executioner’s sword [in the same sale].” Each objects had been “discovered by an officer of the expedition in King Prempeh’s compound”, presumably when British troops invaded Kumasi in 1896.
Jawbones are generally discovered hooked up to Asante trumpets. These are believed to have a symbolic significance, suggesting praises sung from the mouths of defeated enemies. Nonetheless, it’s uncommon in Asante historic tradition to connect a cranium to a trumpet.
Analysis by the Fowler’s senior curator of African arts Erica Jones and her former colleague Carlee Forbes means that the cranium on the trumpet “belonged to a male who may need died in battle”. A scientific examination of the enamel exhibits that he was aged round 40. The person seems to have been attacked with a pointy instrument, which had created a one-inch slit in his cranium. There isn’t a proof of therapeutic, indicating a fast dying.
Drum with sudden skull
Nothing is thought about how the goblet-shaped drum left Kumasi. When it was being researched, it had initially been anticipated that the skull hooked up to it could even be that of a male sufferer. In accordance with Kwasi Ampene, a Ghanaian musicologist at Tufts College in Massachusetts, after the Asante had captured a robust enemy within the nineteenth century, they’d “decapitate that particular person and put their head on a drum”, as an act of humiliation.
What the Fowler’s investigation revealed got here as a shock: the skull hooked up to the drum is definitely that of a girl, and one aged round 50. This means that she might not have been a defeated enemy, however maybe even a outstanding member of the Asante court docket. One other risk is that the skull was added later to the drum, both in Kumasi or England, with a purpose to improve its monetary worth for a European purchaser with macabre tastes.
Analysis on the 2 devices has raised extra questions than it has answered. Are the trumpet and drum actually Asante, or may they’ve come from a neighbouring space, even when they had been acquired in Kumasi? The distinctive mouthpiece of the trumpet means that it might have been made north of Kumasi, in an Akan space exterior the Asante empire. The Asante didn’t usually use drum mallets, however these are additionally hooked up to the Fowler instance.
Even when the devices had been created by non-Asante makers, may they arguably have turn into a part of the royal heritage after their acquisition for the king’s palace? The query then arises as as to whether the trumpet and drum had been peacefully acquired from neighbouring areas or had been looted by the Asante throughout wars earlier than being looted once more, this time by British troops.
Analysis into the 2 devices might have been hampered by the truth that the Fowler is unwilling to permit publication of photographs of them (even with the skulls obscured) on the grounds that this might be disrespectful to the useless. Photographs have been privately provided to trusted specialists in Ghana. Nonetheless, issues about photographs of human stays may not really trigger difficulties in Ghana. Kodzo Gavua, the chairman of the nation’s Nationwide Focal Crew on Restitution and Repatriation, tells The Artwork Newspaper that exhibiting the precise devices and skulls “wouldn’t be an issue in Ghana, as we’re used to such shows”.
The subsequent transfer
Jones says that with gadgets that had been “violently or coercively taken from their unique house owners or communities”, it’s our “moral accountability” to return them. The tough query is to whom they need to be restituted. She provides: “On condition that there might be many potential claimants—the Asante, the unique makers of the horn and trumpet, and any descendant communities of the ancestral stays—we didn’t suppose it was acceptable for us to find out the place they need to be returned.”
Confidential discussions have now been underway for seven years with Ghana’s ministry of tourism, tradition and inventive arts and, since final July, with the Nationwide Focal Crew on Restitution and Repatriation. There may be nonetheless no signal of an imminent resolution.
The present Asante king, Otumfuo Nana Osei Tutu II, may just like the musical devices to go to the Manhyia Palace Museum, the place the artefacts beforehand returned by the Fowler are actually on present. However some non-Asante Ghanaians may really feel that it could be insensitive of the Asante to show the cranium of a defeated (and presumably decapitated) member of a neighbouring Akan group. Another resolution could be restitution to the Nationwide Museum within the Ghanaian capital, Accra, though to show the cranium of an executed man is perhaps regarded by some as disrespectful.
Gavua factors out that an eventual choice would require “a consensus between numerous stakeholders, together with the ministry, the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board and, most significantly, the native folks and their leaders”. Group engagement, negotiations and dialogue are “important to the return course of, which isn’t so simple as it might seem”.
If an settlement is finally reached, the return may merely end in a switch from a museum retailer in Los Angeles to 1 in Accra. Because the Fowler case vividly demonstrates, even when all events concerned are appearing in good religion, restitution can elevate tough moral dilemmas.
