Beyond Adornment: Colour Symbolism and Spiritual Significance of Beads in Dagomba Material Culture

The cultural significance of beads among the Dagomba people of Ghana, particularly their use by women, represents a rich tradition that parallels similar practices across numerous ethnic groups throughout West Africa. This study explores the symbolic, spiritual, and social significance of bead usage among Dagomba women in northern Ghana. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with cultural custodians including elder women, griots, and spiritual leaders, it examines how bead color, arrangement, and usage function as a communicative system that expresses identity, emotion, and spiritual alignment. Through an experimental archaeology approach, contemporary ethnographic insights are used to reinterpret archaeological bead assemblages from sites such as Begho and Daboya. The study highlights how indigenous knowledge systems can enrich archaeological analysis by revealing symbolic functions often lost in material records. Linking Dagomba practices with transatlantic parallels, particularly in Afro-Brazilian and African American contexts, the study also considers how bead symbolism reflects enduring cultural memory across the African Atlantic. Ultimately, this research challenges decorative or trade-based interpretations of beads and affirms their role as active cultural agents embedded in belief, identity, and intergenerational knowledge.