The Kingdom: Investigating Complexity in Northern Ghana

Siaw is a doctoral candidate of anthropology with research interest in landscape archaeology and pre-European contact in West Africa. He holds a master of philosophy degree in archaeology from the University of Ghana, Legon. His master’s research involved survey, identification and documentation of the spatial distribution of mounds at Hambuikong of Komaland, Northern Ghana. This contributed to the reconstruction of culture history and an understanding of the spatial organization of the ancient settlement. He has conducted archaeological research in several parts of West Africa, including Ghana, Benin, Togo, and Sierra Leone. He has also engaged in cultural resources management projects. He is a faculty member of the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, University of Ghana. Prior to his arrival at Syracuse University for the doctoral program, he taught several undergraduate courses at the University of Ghana, including Human Origins and Cultural Foundations in Africa, Foundation of Old and New World Civilizations, Landscape Archaeology, Cultural Resource Management in Ghana, Public Policy in Ghana, and Archaeology and Tourism in Ghana. His current research focuses on examining long distance trade patterns and sociopolitical transformations in West Africa, by investigating the emergence and development of sociopolitical complexity of the Gonja polity, a precolonial African state that flourished in northern Ghana between the 16th and 18th centuries.