Goldweight with a Geometric Design

Trade—especially in gold—contributed to the development of the influential states and kingdoms of the Akan-speaking people of southern Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. Before 1900 gold was both an item of trade and the region’s currency. Early weights were mostly geometric and non-representational and were standardized to the Islamic systems of measurement, whereas later ones were sometimes figurative and were made into metric units. Weights using geometric and abstract designs—such as this one, made in the shape of a pyramid— were common from the 15th through the 19th centuries.