Encounters with Development and Power: Salvage Archaeology at the Bui Hydroelectric Dam project Site in Ghana.

The built environment, cognitive structures, subsistence structures, and heritage sites are often the casualties of large-scale construction activities like hydroelectric power dams, road and industrial constructions. The need for sustainable power supply in developing countries often leads to the construction of dams to generate hydroelectric power. These dams are usually financed by globalized capitalist conglomerates in partnership with governments of the developing and the developed countries. The effects of these overarching machinations of political economic forces on human settlements caught up in these entanglements are enormous. The use of relevant archaeological and anthropological techniques are the few humane ways in which the tangible and intangible heritage properties and lifeways of the affected peoples are salvaged and documented for use by the future generations of such communities. According to the project overview of the 400-MW Hydro-Electric power project being constructed on the Black Volta at Bui in the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana, a 440 km2 reservoir will be created at full supply level.

This artificial lake will inundate a number of villages in its catchment area. This project, which is financed by the Government of Ghana in partnership with Syno-Hydro Energy and the Chinese government, has necessitated the relocation of the communities into new resettlement camps downstream. In line with the recommendations of the Environmental Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) report, a salvage archaeological research was carried out between November 2009 and March 2010 in three communities
(Bui, Akanyakope, and Dokokyina) within the inundation zone. This paper presents the processes and preliminary results of the salvage archaeological project, which involved the use of ethnographic, visual anthropological and salvage excavation techniques of data collection. It discusses challenges that the project team of archaeologists from the University of Ghana and a staff of Ghana Museums and Monuments Board encountered and addressed with the interplay and negotiations of power among the affected indigenous people as well as officials of the Bui Power Authority.