Komaland terracotta (Yikpabongo figure type)
Hand-built, grog-tempered fired-clay figure from the Komaland archaeological culture of northern Ghana, dated roughly 6th–14th century CE, typically recovered from stone-circle burial mounds.
Komaland terracottas are hand-built figurative objects produced in the Builsa and Sissala region of northern Ghana by a culture known primarily through its material remains. The corpus, documented principally through James Anquandah's excavations from the 1980s and Benjamin Kankpeyeng's subsequent fieldwork at Yikpabongo, comprises human figures — often with cylindrical or flattened torsos and schematic lower bodies — alongside animal forms and a distinctive class of multi-headed or janus figures. Applied pellet eyes, additive coil decoration indicating jewellery and scarification, and coarse grog-tempered fabric fired to warm ochre and brick-red tones are the primary formal characteristics.
The objects derive from stone-circle burial mounds and are interpreted as mortuary deposits, though their precise ritual function cannot be determined with certainty from the archaeological record. The tradition is entirely archaeological: no living community maintains continuity with its production or use. Since the mid-1980s, when Komaland became known to the international market, large-scale looting has depleted the site contexts that would otherwise allow systematic art-historical and anthropological study, making Anquandah's and Kankpeyeng's excavated assemblages the primary comparative reference for authenticating market pieces.