Akan gold weight in the form of a cannon. The Akan are a group of related peoples who live in central and southern Ghana and the eastern part of Côte d’Ivoire. From the late fourteenth century, when they imported the technique of metal casting from North Africa, the Akan developed a system of weights for measuring gold dust, which was their main currency. By the seventeenth century the Akan also began producing weights that related to European standards based on the ounce. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, gold weights developed as an art form as well as units of measure. They remained in use until the late 1800s. Weights were often made from brass, and represented a wide range of artefacts in use in Akan society. These examples, in the form of guns and cannon, depict the weaponry imported by Europeans to West Africa.Part of Michael Graham-Stewart slavery collection.