Unearthing the Buried History of Christiansborg Castle

UNESCO-recognized Christiansborg Castle is Ghana’s most important heritage site.

A former 17th-century Danish trading post, the previous British seat of colonial government administration, and, after independence, the Office of the President of the Republic of Ghana, the Castle is featured on the Ghanaian coat of arms and currency. It was also the Danish administrative headquarters in West Africa during the transatlantic slave trade and the point at which captive African men, women, children and infants were forcibly imprisoned and trafficked to St. Croix, St. John, and St. Thomas (today, the US Virgin Islands).

Thousands of miles away from the Castle in Los Angeles, Getty Scholar Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann and Getty Graduate Intern Tom Keep are collaborating to reimagine how scholars approach research and share stories related to the transatlantic slave trade.

From personal histories to framework in action

Each year, a group of international scholars is invited to join a Getty Scholars Program cohort. Last year’s theme was “Repair,” a central motivator for Engmann, a Ghanaian researcher and associate professor, and her work. As the first scholar granted Castle access, she is conducting its first archaeological excavation.

For Engmann, this work is personal. Her great-great-great-great-great grandfather was Carl Gustav Engmann, Castle governor from 1752 to 1757. He was also on the board of directors of the Guinea Company, a Danish slave trading organization, from 1766 to 1769. He married Ashiokai, the daughter of a local Ga (an ethnic group in Ghana) chief, and they began Engmann’s Danish-Ga family line.

Engmann’s manuscript in progress, Slave Traders in the Family: An Autoarchaeology of the Slave Trader at Christiansborg Castle (Ghana), explores “descendant epistemologies.” These are ways of understanding the past through descendants’ lived, remembered, and inherited experiences. “I wanted to explore what repair and reconciliation look like when one’s ancestry is associated with being a Eurafrican slave trader,” she says.

To further expand her work, Engmann sought the assistance of supporting technologies. So, when Getty research assistant Taylor Carr-Howard introduced her to Keep, who demonstrated photogrammetry and photometric stereo imaging, she found the perfect specialist.

Excavating surprises

A trained archaeologist, Keep uses emerging technologies like 3D artifact digitization, reconstruction, and virtual reality to record and display cultural heritage. His PhD research involved excavating and creating a 3D reconstruction of a first-century BCE Roman multi-craft production site. Keep was exploring how these interactive digital models can boost public engagement with under-visited archaeological sites.

He and Engmann digitized some of the artifacts she had brought from Christiansborg Castle, including European clay pipes with unique makers’ marks. These inscriptions, stamped onto the objects by their manufacturers, help researchers approximate their date and location of origin.

The process of digitizing these objects is technical, but Keep says that “anyone can make a 3D model with just a little bit of practice.” An object is photographed and rotated on six different axes, resulting in hundreds of high-definition images that are then used to create a detailed digital reconstruction of the object. Next, 3D replicas can be printed from the scans. Keep’s scans of Engmann’s artifacts greatly extended the scope and scale of her research.

Their journey included surprises and discoveries. “On several occasions, we imaged a [maker’s] mark with no expectation of seeing anything at all, only to find there was a picture of a fisherman, a rampant lion, or some other carefully designed impression that was just waiting for us to discover it,” Keep says.

Adding dimension to history (literally)

The efficacy of Engmann and Keep’s collaboration is partly due to their shared emphasis on community, accessibility, and the democratization of expertise.

Keep’s mission-driven digitization practice shows how 3D scans can be used to serve the public good. “Digitization,” he says, “not only increases the ability of specialists to analyze uncovered materials but also brings archaeology closer for all interested people.”

These scans and replicas allow for the handling of fragile objects that can’t withstand many interactions. People can also view works in greater detail, particularly important for the visually impaired. Those not directly involved in excavation—from descendant community members to curious heritage enthusiasts, including African-descendant people—can engage more deeply with reproductions of heritage objects too.

“A tragedy of archaeological excavation is that materials are often placed in storage, where they become inaccessible, in some instances even being separated from their originator communities,” Keep explains. “Producing 3D digital models increases access to these artifacts, as they allow anyone with a computer to access them, or can be used to produce inexpensive copies that can be physically handled.” Engmann adds, “This way, anyone who is interested can conduct their own research and investigations.”

Keep says that the models’ impact can expand far beyond the castle. Enthusiasts and cultural heritage lovers can curate object collections, and teachers can create artifact-based lessons. Immersive digital models could allow people to access archaeological sites remotely. “The possibilities are really limited mainly by our imagination,” he says.

Creating histories of repair

Keep’s scans and replicas will also be used to improve how historians, archaeologists, and researchers engage with contentious pasts.

A lot of traditional archaeology—and academia—is rooted in power dynamics that decide who has the “authority” to chronicle and tell stories. “The Danish transatlantic slave trade documentary archive is marked by silences and imperial biases. The stories of African, Eurafrican and African-descendant people in the diaspora are underrepresented in institutional archives,” says Engmann, who also started the non-profit Christiansborg Archaeological Heritage Project in 2014. This houses her research as well as other community engaged initiatives in the area surrounding the Castle.

Engmann and Keep want to ensure that research helps the communities whose histories make their work possible. “Many academics continue to approach communities primarily as sources of information rather than as partners in knowledge production,” says Engmann. “Our digital archaeology work creates new counternarratives that [bring about] new forms of revisionist histories.” Their work allows non-archaeologists to be experts, presenting an alternative model of how archaeological practices can be.

And it’s working. In response to Engmann’s project, the Ghanaian Traditional Authority and the Ghanaian government are developing plans to transform Christiansborg Castle into a museum and heritage site. This museum would be the culmination of her research and a venue to display her and Keep’s work. Through their collaboration, the history of the castle is being brought to light, and its afterlives are actively being written—this time, with the community in mind.