Abstract This essay studies changes to mortuary practices in colonial Gold Coast (southern Ghana) beginning with the British state’s creation of town cemeteries in the late nineteenth century. It argues that the colonial state enforced cemetery burial because they realized Gold Coast people would never sell their land if it contained the remains of their elders; cemeteries were therefore a crucial tool in the transformation of land into private property for state dispossession. However, the invention of cemeteries had a significant impact on how communities worshipped, and conceived of, ancestral spirits. By gathering ancestors from the various households into a single site, the graveyard created an “ancestral public,” a community of ancestors who protected the community collectively. Their invention changed Gold Coast communities’ relationship to spirits, the afterlife, and property. What ensued were political contestations over rightful burial places, mortuary authority, and what will be called “the necropolitics of property”—the decision of who could, or who could not, enter the afterlife, and what consequences this had for estates.

中文翻译：

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建立祖先的公众：加纳殖民地的墓地和财产的墓地政治

摘要 本文研究了从 19 世纪后期英国政府建立城镇墓地开始，殖民地黄金海岸（加纳南部）的太平间实践的变化。它争辩说，殖民国家强制执行公墓埋葬是因为他们意识到黄金海岸的人们永远不会出售他们的土地，如果它包含他们长辈的遗体；因此，公墓是将土地转变为私有财产以供国家剥夺的重要工具。然而，墓地的发明对社区如何崇拜和构思祖先的精神产生了重大影响。通过将各个家庭的祖先聚集到一个单一的地点，墓地创造了一个“祖先公共”，一个共同保护社区的祖先社区。他们的发明改变了黄金海岸社区与精神、来世和财产的关系。随之而来的是关于合法墓地、太平间权威以及将被称为“财产的墓地政治”的政治争论——谁可以或谁不能进入来世的决定，以及这对遗产有什么影响。