“Kormantse”, as the modern people of the village call it, was and is still a small fishing settlement located on a hill approximately a kilometer north of fort Amsterdam at Abandze on the Accra-Cape Coast main road.
Kormantse settlement, according to oral traditional accounts was the location of an English lodge, supposedly established in the 1630’s, that was never fully built but abandoned for a new location at the location around which the current township of Abandze developed. Although the approximate location of the lodge has been identified at a section of the hill where Kormantse was and still located, no part of the lodge has been identified and excavated. As in the Caribbean, colonial authorities never entertained or kept maps or reported certain strategic locations especially if they were for very short duration and historic Kormantse may have been one of those. Some modern historians and archaeologists also have become obsessed with historical documents sometimes ignore oral traditions even if they relate to authentic historical connections. To such scholars, if there is no colonial map or photo of the lodge, to them it would mean that Kormantse never had a lodge. More important about Kormantse is its role in the formation of cultural traditions in many parts of the African Diaspora. The name “Kormantse” spelled in many varying ways, connotes bravery, power and the best of the African in the African Diaspora. Most of the time the interpretation and use of the name creates considerable ambiguity in the identity and interpretation of the history and culture of Africa and the African Diaspora.
The location of the lodge changed to its new site of Abandze and named “Fort Kormantse” after the name of the original settlement. This name was later changed to Fort Amsterdam by the Dutch when they took control of the fort. The name Kormantse has become stuck to the groups of people and their descendants, who passed through that location. This has resulted in cultural definitions that cut across ethnicity, art and artistic expression, stereotypical behaviors and other forms of cultural identity.
“Kormantse” has been used in its various forms to refer to the origins of a group of enslaved people of the then Gold Coast and most often with the Asante, who constitute one of the many Akan groups in modern Ghana, Ivory Coast (Cote D’Ivoire) and to their cultural practices such as religious worship, drums and drumming, songs or even sometimes, Kormantse is characterized as a nation.” In addition, numerous references Kormantse and the claims of societies in the African Diaspora as their “homeland” or “culture” in Africa, and its recognized central role in the search for African identities, with their attendant ambiguities and interpretations, demonstrate the need to explain its historical importance by use of tangible evidence. Although very important in the reconstruction of African cultural identities in the African Diaspora, Kormantse is only just being archaeologically examined by the Kormantse Archaeological Research Project (KARP). Its various references and meanings in historical and archaeological record of the African Diaspora are many.