The purpose of the thesis is to identify, describe and interpret two series of terracotta objects from southern Ghana originally donated by Robert P. Wild to the British Museum in London between 1933 and 1936. The dissertation does not seek to answer questions of origin, intention and meaning, but seeks instead to show how phenomena such as production, distribution and consumption may better be understood as processes and situations that the object passes several times in its ?social life?. The dissertation is based on the study of a variety of materials relating to the institutional practices at the British Museum, and analyzes both material impressions left on the objects and also intangible aspects of them.0The investigation also turns to the contemporary artist El Anatsui. The aim here is to show how El Anatsui?s work allows for a new interpretation of the terracotta objects. In the dissertation, it is shown that the circulation of the terracotta objects leaves its marks on them, transforming them, and that it is this ongoing process which creates the objects over and over again.