Seven Frafra Brass Bangles

Seven cast brass bangles of the Frafra, made on the Ghana–Burkina Faso border. In West Africa ornaments of this kind form part of religious belief and signal the rank and affiliation of the wearer; diviners could prescribe the wearing of protective jewellery to keep malevolent spirits away. Because of the value of the metal, such rings also served as a store of value and circulated in trade as a pre-coinage currency, cast or forged in standardised forms and exchanged over long distances. The use of imported copper-alloy manillas as trade objects in Africa goes back at least to the sixteenth century, when the Portuguese established trading posts in West Africa; the imports were repeatedly melted down and reworked into new forms and other metals such as iron. Most colonial administrations banned bangles and other money forms as means of payment in the early twentieth century in order to establish their own currencies.