Reconsidering Ivor Wilks’s « big bang » theory of Akan history

Ivor Wilks assumes that a rapid transition from a foraging economy to a labour intensive agrarian system characterised the history of the Akan during 15th and 16th centuries in the forest area of present-day Ghana. In particular, he affirms that matriclans, and matrilineal ideology itself, arose in the 16th century. This article challenges those assumptions and claims that matriclans must have been in existence before the rise of the state in the Akan area in the 16th century. The argument is developed on the basis of a set of elements concerning oral traditions and kinship structures, and, particularly, the terminological identity of cross-cousin marriage and marriage with a slave which are both labelled under the same definition as “marriage in the house” throughout the entire Akan area.