J World Prehist (2005) 19:133168

DOI 10.1007/s10963-006-9003-y
ORI GI NAL PAPER
Four Millennia of Cultural History in Nigeria
(ca. 2000 B.C.A.D. 1900): Archaeological Perspectives
Akinwumi Ogundiran
Published online: 30 June 2006
C
Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2005
Abstract This essay is an analysis of archaeological contributions to the understanding of
Nigerias cultural history between ca. 2000 B.C. and A.D. 1900 focusing on the following
themes: the origins of food production; development and transformations in metallurgical
traditions; the beginnings of social complexity; and the character of state formation and
urbanism. The transformations in everyday material life as a result of the entanglement with
the Atlantic commerce and ethnoarchaeological approaches to understanding material culture
and archaeological contexts also receive attention. The essay provides pathways to some of
the turning points in Nigerias cultural history, shows the convergence and divergence of
cultural historical developments in different parts of the country, and identies the critical
gaps in archaeological research agenda.
Keywords Late Stone Age
.
Agriculture
.
Pastoralism
.
Iron production
.
Social
complexity
.
Urbanization
.
Empire
.
Atlantic encounter
.
Ethnoarchaeology
Introduction
Since 1943 when B. E. B. Fagg conducted the rst systematic archaeological excavations at
a Late Stone Age site in Central Nigeria (Fagg, 1944), archaeological research has followed
many pathways to enrich our understanding of Nigerias variegated cultural history in la
longue dur ee mode (Ogundiran, 2002a). The diverse methodologies, theoretical frameworks,
and intellectual traditions that have informed different archaeological investigations over the
past sixty years are brought together in this paper to shed light on about four thousand years
of Nigerias cultural history. Nigerias cultural and ecological diversity and the resultant
regional variations in the archaeological sequences tend to preclude comparisons of regional
cultural histories. I argue that despite the diversity of archaeological sequences in different
A. Ogundiran (

)
Department of History, Florida International University,
University Park,
Miami, FL 33199, USA
e-mail: ogundira@u.edu
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134 J World Prehist (2005) 19:133168
regions, there were convergences of cultural historical developments across Nigeria due
to a combination of common historical processes that these regions experienced since ca.
2000 B.C. It is not only that agricultural societies expanded across Nigeria in the last two
millennia B.C., for example, but iron production commenced very early in more than two
centers between the seventh and fth centuries B.C. What is more, social complexity marked
by the development of institutionalized hierarchies and large-scale sociopolitical formations
developed simultaneously in different parts of Nigeria during the rst millennium A.D.
Long-distance commercial networks of transcontinental and intercontinental dimensions
contributed to shaping the cultural historical trajectories in several localities after the eighth
century A.D. These commercial networks were however grounded in local and small-scale
regional economic foundations that included the manufacture of utilitarian and prestige
goods.
I highlight the implications of the archaeological sequences in Nigeria for understanding
the cultural historical innovations in West African subcontinent during the late Holocene. The
paper is chronologically and thematically organized into ve sections, covering the period
from the last phase of the Late Stone Age (Later Stone Age) to the early years of colonial
rule; including the emerging perspectives on pathways to food production; metallurgical
traditions; social complexity, state formation, and urbanism; the consequences of Atlantic
encounters, and ethnoarchaeology. Specic nds, chronology, methodology, and sites are
mentioned where appropriate but the primary focus is on the substantive relationships be-
tween archaeological concepts and data on one hand, and interpretations and narratives on
the other. This allows us to draw out unresolved issues, neglected themes, and critical gaps
in the research agenda, as groundwork for charting new courses in Nigerian archaeology.
Unless otherwise stated, all radiocarbon dates mentioned in the text are calibrated ages.
Overview of geography
The political boundaries of Nigeria are recent, a product of arbitrary demarcation through
European colonial rule in the second half of the nineteenth century. The consequence is that
areas that belonged to the same cultural complex; involved in intimate networks of political,
economic, and cultural interactions prior to 1861; or which belonged to the same pre-colonial
political umbrella were partitioned into different countries and now tend to be discussed in
isolation of one another. The emphasis here is on the areas that are within the boundaries of
the modern state of Nigeria but references will be made, where necessary, to the adjacent
regions that form a continuum with the cultural contexts in Nigeria (Fig. 1). The scale of
archaeological research in Nigeria is uneven. The current archaeological map of the country
only reects the areas of archaeological investigations. Most of the case studies in this essay
come from four geographical zones: the northeast (Lake Chad region), the Middle Belt
(especially the Niger and Benue Valleys), the southwest (Yoruba-Edo cultural complex), and
the southeast (primarily Igboland). However, some mention will also be made of Hausaland
in the central sudanic savanna where very tentative and sporadic archaeological research has
so far been carried out (Fig. 1).
With the most diverse ethnolinguistic groups and one of the most diverse ecological
zones in Africa, Nigeria presents a complex geographical and cultural landscape. Its diverse
ecologies and climatic regimes have conditioned, if not determined, the cultural historical
manifestations in different regions of the country. This ecological diversity is germane to
any critical understanding of the character of innovations, changes, and continuities in the
cultural history in the country. Today, six major climatic and vegetation zones are identiable,
all arranged in parallel east-west bands between the Sahara Desert and the Atlantic Ocean
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Fig. 1 Nigeria: Major Sites and Cultural Areas
(Barbour et al., 1982). These zones are the sahel; sudanic savanna (the sudan is the belt of
open grassland savanna on the northern fringes of the equatorial forest); Guinea savanna;
derived savanna (or, forest-savanna mosaic); rainforest; and the mangrove and deltaic swamp
(Fig. 2). These vegetation bands are for the most part a reection of the distribution of rainfall
as determined by the interactions between two air masses: the cool humid southwesterly
Atlantic air and the dry northeast continental wind from across the Sahara (Sowunmi, 1981,
p. 128).
The trends toward the current climatic and vegetational picture began during the third
quarter of the Holocene, about 2,500 B.C. (Brooks, 1998; Brunk and Gronenborn, 2004;
McIntosh, 2000). This period serves as the terminus a quo of this article because of the far-
reaching impacts that the environmental changes have since had on cultural transformations,
demographic and settlement changes, and socioeconomic innovations in Nigeria and across
Western Africa. The latitudinal shifting of the environmental zones, especially the oscillations
between wet and drought conditions, created prime conditions for pulse migrations and
cultural innovations in the past four thousand years. The beginning of the second millennium
B.C. was ushered in by higher aridity, onset of desertication throughout the Saharan and
Sahelian localities, increasing oscillations of the lake and playa shores, and shifting frontiers
of rainfall isohyets (McIntosh, 2000, p. 153). The increasing dry conditions continued in the
rst millennium B.C. The climatic conditions reached the level similar to the present-day
situation between ca. 600 and 400 B.C., but environmental conditions drier than at present
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Fig. 2 Nigeria: Vegetation Zones
prevailed between ca. 300 B.C. and A.D. 300. Precipitation increased by about A.D. 300
and improved for the rest of the rst millennium A.D. This stable optimum precipitation
was superceded ca. A.D. 1100 by a drop in rainfall that lasted till ca. A.D. 1500. This drop
shifted ecological zones southwards, signicantly affecting several hundred kilometers in
some areas (Brooks, 1998, p. 149). The period from ca. AD 1500 and 1630 was marked by
an increase in rainfall with the consequent dependable and abundant harvests for farmers,
and improved grazing areas for pastoralists (Brooks, 1998, p. 152). However, a return to very
unpredictable climatic conditions, characterized by droughts and famines, prevailed fromca.
1630 to 1860. The cultural, technological, economic, and sociopolitical transformations and
processes that marked the archaeological sequences in Nigeria during the past four thousand
years have followed the contours of these climatic and ecological changes.
Later stone age transformations
The archaeological study of the last two millennia B.C., often referred as the Later Stone
Age for convenience, has focused on four themes: regional variabilities in stone technology;
innovations in food-sourcing strategies; migrations; and environmental history and human
adaptations to the unstable climatic regimes. In looking for evidence to answer questions
on each of these themes, archaeologists have focused on the two habitation types that
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characterize the Later Stone Age (LSA) in Nigeria: rockshelters in the savanna and rainforests
of central and southern Nigeria (e.g., Rop, Dutsen Kongba, Kagoro, Akpo, Iwo Eleru, Ita
Ogbolu, Ifetedo, and Mejiro in Old Oyo); and open-sites in the Sahelian and coastal regions,
especially in the Chad Basin and Badagry (see Fig. 1; and Andah and Anozie, 1980; Alabi,
1998; Breunig et al., 1996; Connah, 1981; Eyo, 1972; Fagg, 1972; Fatunsin, 1996; Oyelaran,
1991, 1998; Shawand Daniels, 1984; Soper, 1965; Willett, 1960; York, 1978). Investigations
show that pottery appears in most LSA sites between 5000 and 2000 BP in association with
microliths, polished stone axes, and heavier tools such as cores and hammer stones, large
stone blades, and grinding stones. The presence of microliths seems indicative of hunting,
whereas the heavy tools have been interpreted as part of the tool kits for foraging and farming
(Shaw and Daniels, 1984).
Research into the origins and development of agriculture has proceeded slowly due in
part to poor preservation of certain food plants such as yam in the savanna and rainforest
belts, and, until recently, inadequate application of otation or other plant recovery strate-
gies during excavations. Another factor may be the preference in earlier research for rock
shelter sites, which may represent only a seasonal sub-set of subsistence activities. A per-
sistent disappointment, especially in the savanna and rainforest belts, has been the lack of
domesticated plant remains in contexts where pottery, ground stones and axes have been
found (Neumann, 2003, 2005). We should however note that evidence of domestication is
not necessarily synonymous with cultivation as the latter might have been practiced without
resulting in domesticated plants. In fact, domesticated plants are an end result of a long-
term manipulation of wild plants that may or may not include cultivation (Haaland, 1999,
pp. 398399). In order to have a better understanding of the development and intensication
of agriculture in Nigeria, as in other parts of Africa south of the Sahara, we will have to
jettison our bias towards domesticates in favor of studies that focus on complete plant as-
semblages in a locality (Neumann, 2005,p. 265). But before this agenda can move forward,
we will need to use better and rigorous methods of plant recovery from archaeological con-
texts. Meanwhile, this essay will follow the current practice of using plant domesticates as
evidence of agriculture. Archaeological, ethnobotanical, and palynological research demon-
strates that food-producing practices followed different pathways according to the dictates
of ecological variations (Breunig and Neumann, 2002a; Chikwendu and Okezie, 1989; Klee
et al., 2000; Neumann, 1999; Sowunmi, 1999). The following will show the pathways in the
Sahelian and rainforest/savanna regions of Nigeria.
The Sahel: Emergence of food production in the Chad Basin
The most detailed information on the origins and transformations of agricultural commu-
nities in Nigeria has come from the Chad Basin. Various interdisciplinary archaeological
researchers in the Basin have followed an ecological program in which variability in the
archaeological records is interpreted as consequences of uctuations in the climatic and
environmental conditions (Breunig et al., 1996; Connah, 1981). These studies have given us
informative insights into how the unstable dry climatic regime that set in between 2,500 and
2,000 B.C. had signicant impact on population distribution, food-sourcing strategies, and
sociopolitical development in the Chad Basin (Breunig, 2005) [All the dates reported in this
subsection derive from over 120 C14 dates obtained in the Chad Basin. The dates are cali-
brated to 2-sigma range using CalPal, The K oln Radiocarbon Calibration and Palaeoclimate
Research Package, and OxCal v.2.18 with calibration curve INTCAL98.14C (see Breunig,
2005, p. 110; Brunk and Gronenborn, 2004, p. 108).]
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During the early second millenniumB.C., dry conditions led to a retreat of the Lake Chad,
and forced the southern Saharan populations, mostly pastoralists, to migrate southwards
into the more favorable Bama Deltaic area of the Chad Basin where, by 1800 B.C., they
established a culture that has been named Gajiganna (Breunig et al., 1992). The Gajiganna
people produced pottery and made bifacially retouched arrow points similar only to the
ones found in southern Sahara. The thin occupation debris associated with these pioneering
Gajiganna people show that they led a highly mobile life between 1800-1500 B.C. (Breunig,
2005). The bones of domesticated animals cattle, sheep, and goat associated with the
occupation levels demonstrate that the Gajiganna were pastoralists. The lack of any trace of
contemporary domesticated plant remains suggests that pastoralismpreceded crop cultivation
in the Nigerian Chad Basin. This pattern has been documented elsewhere in Africa north of
the equator (Marshall and Hildebrand, 2002).
Between 1500 and 1000 B.C., however, the Gajiganna people established fairly permanent
hamlets along the shores of Lake Chad (Breunig et al., 1996). Plant cultivation seems to
have commenced in the Chad Basin in the late second millennium BC as indicated by the
presence of domesticated pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) for the rst time, ca. 1200 B.C.,
in Kursakata (Gronenborn, 1997; Klee et al., 2000). Lack of any local wild prototype for
pearl millet suggests that the process of domestication of pearl millet took place outside
the Lake Chad region, possibly in the area between southwestern Sahara in Mauritania
and the Nile Valley (Neumann, 2004, pp. 258259). The pastoralists-farmers of Gajiganna
did not however only live off raising cattle, sheep and goat, and cultivating pearl millet.
Fishing, gathering, and hunting also played important role in their food-sourcing strategies.
In addition, wild sorghum and rice were well utilized in the Chad Basin during the second
millennium B.C. Meanwhile, while there is evidence at Elkido that sorghum was cultivated
during the rst half of the rst millenniumB.C. (Neumann, 2003), it is not certain whether the
prolic occurrence of rice grains in all layers at Kursakata are of the two wild species (Oryza
barthii and Oryza longistaminata) presently found in the area or an early, domesticated
variety of African rice, Oryza glaberrima (Gronenborn, 1996, p. 43).
The continued aridity during the rst millennium B.C. made sedentary life extremely
difcult in the Bama Deltaic area of Lake Chad that had supported the Gajiganna popula-
tions during the second millennium B.C. (Salzmann and Waller, 1998). Between 1000 and
800 B.C., the settlement mounds in the Bama Deltaic region disappeared and were replaced
by sheets of ephemeral occupation sites, consisting of few potsherds and stone artifacts.
While many people were forced out of the area, others adopted a mobile pastoral and for-
aging lifestyle. About this time, the rki clay area in the southeastern Lake Chad Basin was
occupied for the rst time. However, not all parts of the Bama area (western basin) were aban-
doned (Breunig, 2005, p. 118). In fact, by the middle of the millennium, Zilummay represent
the rst fortied settlement in this increasingly dry zone (Magnavita and Magnavita, 2001).
Zilum is 60 km north of Maiduguri. At the peak of its occupation, it was about
1213 hectares in size, with an estimated population of 17002500. The settlement lasted
fromabout 600 to 400 B.C. (Magnavita, 2004, p. 73). It seems that the agglomeration of pop-
ulations in fortied settlements like Zilum represented a form of cultural and sociopolitical
adaptation to the intense aridity of the rst millennium B.C. The discrete concentrations of
specic nds and features at Zilum indicate that the settlement was divided into residential
corporate groups each pursuing different techno-economic specializations (Magnavita, 2004,
p. 86). Hundreds of what are identied as grain storage pits serve as pointers to the intensi-
cation of food storage aimed at coping with the unpredictable harvests. The construction
of defence/enclosure walls around the settlement also suggests the priority of communal
solidarity against outsiders.
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These sociocultural innovations could not, however, be sustained for long. Under the
pressure of the arid conditions that prevailed between ca. 300 B.C. and A.D. 300 (Brooks,
1998, p. 147), Zilum and other fortied settlements were abandoned. Another consequence
of the intense dry condition in the Sahel was the development or expansion of regional trade
networks. The high proportion of exotic stone raw materials like int, hematite, or syenite,
found both in the ephemeral sites and in the stoneless rki clay, southeast of the lake, not
only attest to the high mobility of the populations but that long-distance exchange networks
developed between the nomadic pastoralists and the sedentary populations in the region
during the rst millennium B.C. (Breunig and Neumann, 2002b).
Agricultural beginnings in the rainforest and savanna
Contrary to the more detailed picture of cultural historical sequence in the Chad Basin during
the second and rst millennia B.C., the archaeological data for the contemporaneous period
in other parts of the country are spotty and sometimes tentative. In the rainforest/savanna
regions, questions of migration and cultural adaptation to shifting climatic regimes have
been secondary to preoccupation with the antiquity and cultural dynamics of yam and oil
palm cultivation. Yam and oil-rich fruits were probably among the earliest plants intensively
exploited here. These plants naturally occur in the savanna/forest zones and are believed to
have formed the core of agricultural development in the region. Due to the lack of direct,
datable evidence, because of the problem of preservation, the antiquity of yam cultivation in
the savanna/rainforest belts is not yet determined, but is considered most likely to predate
the second millennium B.C. (Andah, 1987, Andah et al., 1993; Posnansky, 1969). However,
studies of wild yam species closely related to the domesticated ones, Dioscorea latifolia and
D. cayenensis, suggest that domestication probably occurred in the forest-savanna ecotone
(Coursey, 1967). Heavy, parallel-sided aked stones and polished stone axes in the wooded
savanna and rainforest belts have been identied as evidence of digging tools for yam
cultivation (Alabi, 2005). These could have been used alongside wooden implements with
sharpened points and edges for the cultivation and harvesting of yam(Chikwendu and Okezie,
1989).
The abundant occurrence of charred endocarps of oil palm fruit in several LSA rock
shelters, and the identication of pollen grains of oil palm in the Niger Delta and the Middle
Belt strongly indicate that the oil-rich fruits and seeds were important in the regional
subsistence economy during the rst millennium B.C. (Sowunmi, 1999, p. 201; also see
Oyelaran, 1991). Palynological records in the Niger Delta showthat the oil palmwas a minor
component of the vegetation from ca. 35,000 to 3,000 B.P. but that the pollens of oil palm
and weeds sharply increased fromca. 2800 B.P. This assessment is based on ve radiocarbon
dates obtained from different levels in a 36 m deep core in the Niger Delta, and associated
with pollen grains of oil palm (Sowunmi, 1981, p. 460):
28.12 m level: >35000 YBP (GU-1203)
13.38 m level: 7575 130 YBP (GU-1204)
2.50 m level: 700 90 YBP (GU-1208)
1.90 m level: 720 70 YBP (GU-1209)
0.50 m level: 535 60 YBP (GU-1207)
This increase in pollen is attributed by Sowunmi (1999, pp. 206207) to deliberate
cultivation and protection of palm trees in areas near stream valleys and in the drier fringes
of the forest. Maley and Chepstow-Lusty (2001) have questioned this conclusion, arguing
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140 J World Prehist (2005) 19:133168
instead that the increase in the percentage of oil palm pollen in the early rst millennium
B.C. was a result of increasingly dry conditions and reduction in forest cover ca. 2800 and
2400 B.P., a situation that allowed for wider dispersal of palm pollen. Even if this is the case,
the persistent association of palm kernels with LSA artifacts in secured rockshelter sites
during the rst millennium B.C. [Apa (Badagry), Iffe-Ijumu, and Kariya Wuro (Alabi, 1998;
Oyelaran, 1991; Sowunmi and Awosina, 1991), among others] suggests that the increasingly
dry conditions necessitated changes in food-sourcing strategies that may have included
increase in the use of oil palm. How these environmental changes affected the utilization
of palm fruits in southern and central Nigeria remain an unanswered question. Future work
should help us understand whether these LSA peoples were merely opportunistic foragers
taking advantage of the natural thinning of the forest and natural expansion of palm trees, or
farmers who were protecting and cultivating palm tree groves.
Other directions in LSA studies
The agricultural innovations in the savanna and the rainforest belt seem wholly independent
of the Saharan and Sahelian development. However, we are still in the dark on the kinds
of interactions that developed between the agropastoralists of the Sahara-Sahelian belt and
the farmers and horticulturalists of the savanna-rainforest region. Future studies will shed
more light on how the arid conditions in the Sahel during the second and rst millennia
B.C. impacted the populations in the savanna-forest zone. We know that in the West African
subcontinent, there were not only southward migrations from the Sahara during this period,
but peoples of the heavily wooded zone in the south also colonized lands to the north as
the studies in the Middle Niger Valley have shown (McIntosh, 2000, p. 153). Comparative
regional archaeological investigations in Nigeria would be useful to understand the kinds of
interregional relationships between the Sahelian populations and their southern neighbors,
and the implications of the climatic uctuations in the fragile ecological niches of Sahelian
belt for the rainforest belt, and vice versa.
Historical linguistic studies based on the controversial methods of glottochronology and
lexico-statistics led to a cautious suggestion that most language groups that dene the current
ethnolinguistic groups in Nigeria developed between ca. 6000 and 2000 B.P. (Armstrong,
1964a, 1964b). Indeed, this period witnessed dramatic expansion in ceramic-using LSApop-
ulations across Nigeria and West Africa as a whole (Andah, 1987;, Andah et al., 1993). In
1975, the late Professor Bassey Andah began an important archaeological and ethnoarchae-
ological project to study the relationship between expansion of agricultural economy and
ethnolinguistic diversity during the last two millennia B.C. He and his students investigated,
inter alia, the role of the Middle Benue Valley (MBV) in the origins of proto-Bantu in the
general area of the modern Nigeria-Cameroun borders (Andah, 1983a, 1983b, 1998; Andah
et al., 1981). The research at MBV, focusing on Tiv region in particular, produced evidence
of LSA populations in rockshelters but, in age, we know only that they predate ca. 500 B.C.
(Folorunso, 2005; Ogundele, 1991a). According to Folorunso (2005, p. 182), archaeological
research has yet to demonstrate that the valley was the Bantu ancestral homeland but it
is not really clear the kinds of data the archaeologists working in the area are expecting
for the assessment of the MBV as a proto-Bantu homeland. Some of the answers to the
question of the place of MBV in the origins of the Bantu-speaking peoples will likely come
from systematic comparison of stylistic aspects of material culture, especially pottery, from
well-dated contexts between the MBV LSA sites and the early Bantu or Bantu-related sites
in Central Africa.
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Table 1 Radiocarbon chronology of some of the early iron age sites
Site Date Lab. No Source
Taruga 2230 120 B.P I 1459 Calvocoressi and David,
1979
2390 140 B.P I 2960
2250 100 B.P I 3400
2042 126 B.P BM 532
2269 116 B.P BM 533
2541 104 B.P BM 938
2488 84 B.P BM 940
2541 104 B.P BM 941
2291 123 B.P BM 942
Nok 2160 95 B.P I 4913 Calvocoressi and David,
1979
Ran Ndoko 2020 75 B.P N 2585 Calvocoressi and David,
1979
Rop Rock Shelter 1975 125 B.P I 406 Calvocoressi and David,
1979
Opi 2305 90 B.P OXA-3201 Okafor and Phillips, 1992
2170 80 B.P OXA-2691
2080 90 B.P OXA-3200
Metallurgical traditions: Emerging perspectives
The clustering of early radiocarbon dates from iron smelting sites within eighth to fourth
centuries B.C in the area between the upper reaches of the rainforest belt in southeastern
Nigeria and in the Sahel in the northeast indicates that the second quarter of the rst
millennium B.C. heralded the development and spread of iron technology in Nigeria. These
sites include Opi in Nsukka area of Igboland; Taruga, Samun Dukiya, and Katsina Ala
in the Nok Culture area; the Middle Benue Valley (Tiv), the Chad Basin, and the Mandara
mountains (see Fig. 1; Folorunso, 2005; Fagg, 1972; Gronenborn, 1998; MacEachern, 1996a;
Okafor, 1992, 2000; Okafor and Phillips, 1992; Tylecote, 1975b; for similar early dates
from neighboring Cameroon and Niger Republic, see Holl, 2000; Woodhouse, 1998) (Table
1). These early dates for iron production have placed Nigeria at the center of debates
on the origins of iron technology in Africa (e.g, Andah, 1979; Tylecote, 1975a). While
many archaeologists see these dates as evidence that iron technology most likely developed
independently in different parts of Africa (see many contributors in Bocoum, 2002; also
Childs and Herbert, 2005, p. 281), some would argue that there is yet no proof to support
such a claim (e.g., Killick, 2004; Killick et al., 1988; Tylecote, 1975a). In addition to the
old wood problemin radiocarbon dating (Killick 1987), Killick (2004, p. 105) has recently
drawn attention to the attening of the calibration curve in the mid-rst millennium B.C.
whereby calibrated ages can range between 300 and 500 calendar years.
The debate on how iron technology began in sub-Saharan Africa has now been narrowed
to whether it developed independently in more than one place, or whether it was a result
of diffusion from the Phoenician trading posts in North Africa (Bocoum, 2002; Holl, 2000;
Killick, 2004). More signicantly, lack of evidence of earlier copper smelting in Nigeria
and the controversial nature of some of the dates from copper-smelting sites in Niger have
raised doubts about the independent invention of iron technology in sub-Saharan Africa
(Killick, 1987; Killick et al., 1988; Posnanky and McIntosh, 1976; Tylecote, 1975a, 1982).
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Nevertheless, research in Mauritania and Niger still raises the possibility of copper smelting
as early as the second millennium B.C. (Holl, 2000, p. 15). Indeed, the expectation that
the mastery of copper smelting is a necessary precondition for iron manufacture seems to
derive from the idea that the discovery of iron metallurgy was the ultimate consequence
of the use of iron ores as a ux to facilitate the separation of molten reduced copper from
copper ores (McIntosh and McIntosh, 1983, p. 241). However, as noted by Schmidt (1996,
p. 8), there may be more than one pathway to iron metallurgy. A number of scholars have
noted the possibility that efcient re control derived from pottery production may have led
to the independent development of iron technology in more than one place (Andah, 1979;
Woodhouse, 1998, p. 179).
Nonetheless, the sheer diversity of iron-smelting techniques and furnaces in Nigeria (see
Adeniji, 1979; Anozie, 1979; Holl, 2000; Okafor, 1993; Schmidt, 1996; Tylecote, 1975b),
from the slag-tapping, forced-draft smelting furnaces at Opi to the low-shaft, forced-draft,
non-slag-tapping furnaces at Taruga, suggests early innovations in iron technology and the
possibility of several origins between the eighth and fourth centuries B.C. Further, although
there is now rm proof of Phoenician iron working at Carthage and in the Iberian Peninsula
by at least the eighth century BC, the smelting furnaces and tuy` eres are different from those
known in sub-Saharan Africa (Killick, 2004, p. 107). Perhaps it would be more fruitful to
conceptualize the development of early iron metallurgy in Nigeria and elsewhere in sub-
Saharan Africa as a mosaic process in which initial independent local experimentations
and inventions later beneted from the circulation of intercontinental and transcontinental
innovations.
The question of origins requires more high-quality data: systematic documentation and
excavation of newly discovered iron-smelting sites, the dating of furnaces and smelting
residues, and better description of the various methods of iron working. The over sixty iron-
smelting furnaces, furnace bases, and heaps of iron slag discovered at Ampara, Delimiri,
and Shaushau; the 2-km
2
complex with over thirty furnaces documented at Ibila-Alukpo,
and the numerous iron smelting furnaces in southern Zaria, all in central Nigeria, may prove
important in shedding more light on the age and origins of ironworking in West Africa
(Aremu, 1999, 2005). Placing these smelting sites in the context of their settlement systems
will be useful for understanding the relationship between ironworking and the development
of sociopolitical complexity, social differentiation, and craft specialization, among others
(see Childs and Herbert, 2005, p. 294).
Many of the recent archaeological investigations on metallurgy have focused on the
relationship between iron and stone technologies. It is now clear that the advent of iron did
not mark a sharp break with the stone-using technology. Rather, stone tools continued to
be used, although in reduced number, parallel to iron tools. In fact, ground stone axes and
microlithic tools constituted a major component of the agricultural, foraging, and hunting
tool kit until about A.D. 500 even among the early iron users (e.g., Connah, 1981, p. 155).
Thus, there was not a fundamental change in technology between ca. 500 B.C. and A.D. 500
when iron production began.
Attention has also been placed on the methods of iron production in different locations
including the methods of iron ore prospecting, ore preparation, smelting, and smithing (e.g.,
Akinade, 2003; Jemkur, 1989; Okafor, 1993, 1995; Sutton, 1976); types and characteris-
tics of furnaces (Anozie, 1979); documentation of iron-smelting sites (Aremu, 1999); and
impacts of iron technology on cultural and social processes including labor and sociopo-
litical organization, socioeconomic networks, as well as local and regional trade (David
and Sterner, 1996). Morphological and microscopic analyses of residues and slag from iron
smelting furnaces have been very informative in the study of change and continuity in the
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technology of iron production in southeast Nigeria (e.g., Okafor, 1993). Edwin Okafor has
documented that in the fth century B.C. in Opi area, and fourteenth century A.D. in the
area of Owerre-Elu (both in Igboland), the smelting of iron was conducted in various
forms of slag-tapping, forced draught shaft furnace but by the eighteenth century A.D. in
Umundu-Orba area of Igboland, self-draught furnaces were used in which the slag was not
tapped as smelting progressed (Okafor, 1993, pp. 437-439). The study of other metals, es-
pecially copper and its alloys, are usually in relation to the study of social complexity, social
distinction, long-distance trade, and ethnoarchaeology of metal technology (e.g., Aremu,
1990a, 1998; Chikwendu and Umeji, 1979; Chikwendu et al., 1989; Shaw, 1970; Willett,
1977) (see below). One theme that has received much less interest is the belief and cognitive
systems associated with iron production, and how these systems affected social relations
across gender, age, and social ranks (e.g., Childs and Killick, 1993; Schmidt, 1996).
Social complexity: Foundation and consolidation
Complex societies, dened by the emergence of hierarchical institutions and elaboration
in elite material culture, began to emerge during the last quarter of the rst millennium
A.D. Local and regional networks of complex societies rapidly expanded across Nigeria
between ca. A.D. 1000 and 1500. The archaeology of social complexity in Nigeria has
focused on elite sites, and on features and materials that dene the characteristics of social
complexity. The existing data, for the most part, tell us about the character, not the origins and
processes of social complexity. Archaeological data are generally weak on the foundations of
social complexity during the rst millennium A.D. Historical sources, mostly oral traditions,
indicate that parallel but similar developments accounted for the emergence of dynastic,
state-level political formations in the Yoruba-Edo area, Hausaland, and the Chad Basin in
the fourth quarter of the rst millennium A.D. (see contributions in Ikime, 1985). The oral
traditions tend to privilege migrations, intergroup relations, factional conicts, and expansion
of regional commerce as the main engines of social complexity and state formation. These
traditions are useful not only for identifying archaeological sites, generating hypotheses, and
formulating research designs amenable to archaeological investigations, but they offer an
opportunity for a truly interdisciplinary humanistic account of the advent and transformations
of social complexity.
Although trade of trans-continental proportions played crucial roles in the structure and
trajectories of the several complex societies that developed in West Africa after the eighth
century A.D., the evidence of foreign trade, such as beads and copper-alloy artifacts, cannot
by itself explain the origins of social complexity. It appears the key to the rise of complex
societies lay in the elite control of local resources, including ritual knowledge (e.g., in Igbo-
Ukwu, see below). The surpluses derived fromthe manipulation of these local resources were
then diverted to procure exotic goods, which served to accentuate and perpetuate the elite
power and social stratication. How domestic economy and local power structure enabled
and shaped long-distance commerce and social differentiation is a critical area for future
research. So much emphasis has been placed on foreign trade that the domestic economy
the essential ingredient of social complexity is often ignored. The rest of this section
will be devoted to a region-by-region assessment of the evidence of foundations of social
complexity, between A.D. 800 and 1500, and the subsequent transformations between A.D.
1500 and 1900. The latter period witnessed an increase in the number of sociopolitical
formations, an intense spirit of political centralization, consolidation of imperial ambitions,
and diffuse regional interaction networks.
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The central Sudan: The chad basin and hausaland
Research into the rst millennium A.D. shows that iron-bearing settlement mounds, repre-
senting villages, rapidly increased in the valleys of River Niger and its tributaries (e.g., Yelwa
and Wushishi), southern Hausaland, and the plains of the Chad Basin after the sixth cen-
tury A.D. (Connah, 1981, pp. 201213; Shaw, 1976; Sutton, 1976). Over 250 iron-bearing
settlement mounds have been identied on the Nigerian side of the Chad Basin alone, sev-
eral of which had origins in the Late Stone Age, some dating to ca. 2000 B.C. (Holl, 1993,
p. 337). Anumber of these mounds have been the focus of investigations into the character of
continuities between the LSA and the iron-using communities. Excavations in the Nigerian
Chad Basin suggest that although large village settlements were present by 500 B.C., there
was little evidence for site hierarchies in the region until the mid-rst millennium A.D.
How these site hierarchies culminated in the rise of Kanem, the oldest known state in
the central sudan and well referenced in the Arabic writings, is not yet understood. Both
Arabic and oral sources suggest that Kanem developed out of factional conicts among
peer-polities in the northern Chad Basin (in the modern Chad Republic) around the ninth
century A.D. Archaeology has not illuminated the development and character of this early
state partly because of the nature of the evidence (see accounts in Gronenborn, 2001). First,
the boundaries of the polity were uid just as the capital and the seat of its Mai (kings) shifted
from time to time; and the perishable nature of the house structures meant that the locations
of the early capitals are elusive to us (Gronenborn, 1998, 2001; also see Bivar and Shinnie,
1962). Second, the adoption of Islam by the Kanembu rulers ca. A.D. 1080s (Lavers, 1980)
implies that the kinds of durable sculptures that were associated with the royal court art in
Igbo-Ukwu and Ile-Ife during the same period (see below) are not likely to have existed. For
now, the Arabic and oral sources only paint in broad strokes the political dynamics of the
rise of Kanem polity as the dominant power in the Chad Basin ca. A.D. 800. The tentative
scenario is that the struggle over the control of prime land and northward trade routes among
the small polities and groups in Zaghawa, a region between modern Chad Republic and
sudanic savanna, intensied in the eighth century in the northern Chad Basin. Out of these
peer-polity competitions arose a single powerful state of the Kanembu between the ninth and
eleventh centuries (Ehret, 2003, p. 48).
Some insights into the foundations of social differentiation that eventually culminated in
the segmentation of the basin into a mosaic of unequal and competing polities have come
from southern Chad Basin at Aissa Dugj e in northern Cameroon, adjacent to Nigeria. The
earliest horse/pony remains at Aissa Dugj e were directly dated to 1310 60 B.P. (TO-7515;
MacEachern, 2001, p. 64). Their occurrence in an atmosphere of weakly developed social
hierarchies suggests that the possession of horses/ponies were markers of social prestige
and elite status by the seventh century A.D. rather than as evidence of hegemonic political
power (MacEachern, 2001). However, horses/ponies became instruments of conquest and
state hegemonic control by the end of the rst millennium A.D. as state-level sociopolitical
organization developed. Despite the evidence of differentiated political elites in northeast
Nigeria and the adjacent northern Cameroon by the mid-rst millennium A.D., most of the
Chad Basin with the exception of Daima, Mdaga, and other areas closer to the lake were not
really integrated into long-distance trade until ca. 1200 A.D. (MacEachern, 2001, p. 135).
Smaller polities developed in the shadow of the expanding Kanem in the rst half of the
second millennium A.D., and some of them were later incorporated into the state. In the
southern Chadic plain, between the plains of Bornu to the Logone River, and south to the
Mandara Mountains and Bui Plateau (in both Nigeria and Cameroon), polities arose and
increased in number by AD 1200. Some rose as little imitators of the Kanem state, but
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the rise of most was in response to the external threats posed by Kanem and other large
polities. The distinctive characteristics of these southern Chad Basin polities are that their
capitals were walled settlements and they also had extensive graveyards. Such townships
included Kabe, Kala-Kafra, Maltam, Kala-Maloue, Logone-Birni, and Ngala. They buried
their dead in jars and the grave goods that accompanied the burial of the elites included
carnelian and glass beads and alloyed copper artifacts (Holl, 1996, p. 590). The increase
in the frequency of these items indicates intensication in external trading activities by the
early thirteenth century. The presence of warfare- and horsemanship-related artifacts in the
graves also demonstrate that the political elite of the southern Chad Basin were not only
entrepreneurs but they also actively engaged in warfare. In fact, it was from the latter that
their high status was primarily derived (Gronenborn, 1998; Holl, 1996).
Kanem-Bornu and transformations in the Southern Chad Basin, A.D. 15001800
The southward relocation of the capital of the troubled and aging Kanembu polity to Birni
Gazargamo in 1472 transformed Bornu into the center of imperial activities in the basin.
Between ca. 1500 and 1900, Bornus imperial interests reshaped sociopolitical dynamics
throughout the Chad Basin. In the southern plains of the basin, for example, archaeologists
have discovered that the region witnessed important changes in the balance of power between
1500 and 1600. The excavations conducted by Augustin Holl at Houlouf, northern Cameroon,
have implications for understanding the sociopolitical processes taking place in the adjacent
northeastern Nigeria during this period. The stratigraphic sequence shows that many parts
of the Central Chadic plain of northeastern Nigeria and northern Cameroon were abandoned
between ca. AD 1350 and 1450 due to dry climatic conditions but reoccupation commenced
in the second half of the fteenth century with the advent of favorable climatic conditions.
In the sixteenth century, Bornu initiated a vigorous program of expansion and conquest into
the southern Chadic plains. During the same period, Arab pastoralists moved into the area,
encroaching on the agricultural land, and coming into conict with the autochtonous farmers.
Likewise, the plain was plagued by competition among the new and old polities.
Holl discovered that in the face of external threat and intra-regional competition, the
peoples of the southern Chadic plain intensied the building and maintenance of earthen
ramparts to ward off border encroachments and they developed cemeteries for the formal
disposal of their dead (Holl, 1996, p. 590). This latter practice is seen as evidence of
mobilization of ideological symbolic practices to demonstrate the autochtones rootedness
in the land. The Houlouf cemeteries gave several clues to the nature of changes in the Chadic
sociopolitical organization during the sixteenth century, when ranked and hierarchical social
structure intensied. Only a fraction of the population was buried in the cemeteries, and
these were mainly the elite (Holl, 1994, p. 168). Similar processes were likely taking place
on the Nigerian side of the southern Chadic plain during this period. These symbolic burial
practices and defense strategies did not however halt the southern thrust of Bornu expansion.
Several southern Chad Basin polities collapsed, and mound settlements disappeared between
A.D. 1500 and 1800 on the Nigerian side. They collapsed mainly because of the increased
slaving activities initiated by Bornu and their agent-polities, such as Wandala (MacEachern,
2001, p. 142). Many groups retreated into the impenetrable area of southern Lake Chad and
developed defensive systems that ranged from settlement on mountain ranges, [for example,
the Mandara highlands in Nigeria and Cameroon (MacEachern, 2001)], to seeking refuge in
caverns, caves, and rockshelters. They also built defense systems with plants and stones. In
their impregnable new homes, they protected both themselves and their deities from Bornu
imperialism and slaving (Bah, 2003; Gronenborn, 2001).
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The Bornu imperial activities, led by the Kanuri from the capital, also had consequences
for the ethnic identities of the indigenous Kotoko populations in the southern Chadic plains.
Gronenborn and Magnavita (2000) have shown a gradual correlation between the Bornu
imperial expansion and migration of the Kanuri frontiersmen on one hand and changes
in ethnicity and ceramic traditions in the plains between the sixteenth and early twentieth
century (Gronenborn and Magnavita, 2000, p. 65). Although the Kotoko groups and polities
struggled to maintain their own ceramic traditions in the face of Kanuri imperial rule,
by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century several Kotoko groups had adopted the
diagnostic elements of Kanuri pottery tradition from the Bornu area: a combination of red
coating, twisted strip roulette, and sgrafto.
The increasing scale of Bornu imperial power also stimulated the development of
industrial-scale iron production at the southern peripheries of the empire (David, 1996;
David and Sterner, 1996). The escalating demands for weapons, horse paraphernalia, and
protective gear by (the). . .cavalry states of Bornu, Baghirmi, and Waday intensied iron
production in the Mandara region (on the Nigeria/Cameroon border) (David and Sterner,
1996; Stahl, 2004, p. 153). Sukur was a Mandara polity that specialized in iron production
for external trade. As iron production became the mainstay of its economy, it increas-
ingly depended on its neighbors for agricultural produce. (David, 1996; David and Sterner,
1996). Sukur represents a rare case of classless industrial society. The procuring of ore and
charcoal, and smelting activities were organized on familial basis, with mens labor con-
centrating on smelting and the womens labor on collecting raw materials. This non-capital
intensive production system obviated the institution of wage labor and slavery and there
was no social stratication, despite Sukurs connection to the intensive merchant capital
economy of the Lake Chad and Saharan regions. The organization of intensive iron produc-
tion within an egalitarian society at Sukur cautions against the frequent assumption that the
archaeological remains of large-scale iron slag are necessarily a product of stratied labor
organization.
Hausaland
West of the Chad Basin, the early trajectories of sociopolitical development in Hausaland
are archaeologically almost unknown. Glimpses from oral traditions and linguistic studies
suggest that the Niger-Congo speaking Mbau groups, skilled in ironworking and involved in
hunting and herding, held sway over Hausaland, ca. A.D. 300700. By the eighth century
A.D., however, Chadic speakers, who were cattle pastoralists and shers, began to expand into
the Mbau landscape, and initiated new forms of interactions that would dene sociopolitical
complexity in Hausaland during the subsequent centuries. Towards the end of the rst
millenniumA.D., trade in iron, salt, and other commodities developed or drastically expanded
between Hausaland and the Nilo-Saharan Zaghawa populations in the Lake Chad region
(Last, 1985, p. 175). The Chadic speakers seem to be the source of sacred dynastic kings
and state formation in Hausaland between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. In Kano,
the sociopolitical transformation between the twelfth and fourteenth century led to a change
in the conguration of settlement patterns, from dispersed interdependent settlements to
nucleated urban centers with perimeter walls (Last, 1979). Archaeologists have not yet
seriously addressed howintergroup relations between immigrants and autochthonous groups,
and the expansion of regional commerce shaped the sociopolitical transformations that
heralded the rise of large-scale polities in Hausaland between the eleventh and fourteenth
centuries.
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Igbo-Ukwu in Igbo cultural history
The archaeology of social complexity in southeast Nigeria has focused on Igbo-Ukwu where
one of the most spectacular archaeological nds in Nigeria was made in the 1960s. Three
adjacent Igbo-Ukwu sites Igbo Richard, Igbo Isaiah, and Igbo Jonah, representing a grave,
a shrine, and a storage pit respectively revealed a high level of craftsmanship in copper
and bronze sculptures and ornamental pottery (Shaw, 1970). The grave consisted of a high-
ranking man buried in sitting position with ve other individuals, two of whomwere wearing
copper bracelets. Among the artifacts from the three sites were about 165,000 beads (mostly
glass), ivory tusks, ornately decorated bronze and ceramic objects. Four radiocarbon dates
fell in the ninth century A.D., and one in the fteenth century:
A.D. 850 120 (on wood in the burial chamber);
A.D. 840 110; (four on charcoal from the shrine and storage pit)
A.D. 840 145;
A.D. 875 30;
A.D. 1445 70.
Three other dates from the sites are in the tenth, eleventh, and thirteenth centuries.
However, their large standard errors, between 240 and 300 years, limit their usefulness
compared with the ninth century dates (McIntosh and McIntosh, 1986, p. 433).
The Igbo-Ukwu evidence shows that wealth was concentrated in the hands of one or
a few individuals. Since British colonial ethnography had originally described the Igbo
people as far below the evolutionary stage of a state (Ottenberg 1971), the materials at Igbo-
Ukwu were initially considered aberrant, isolated, and unusual cultural achievements for the
region (Shaw, 1970). However, in the last twenty years, the forms and styles of Igbo-Ukwu
bronzes and ceramics have been found not only in other parts of Igboland, but also in the
neighboring Ekoi-Ibibio area in the Cross River Valley (Anozie, 1993; Ibeanu, 1989; Eyo,
2000). Further, archaeometallurgical analyses have demonstrated that the raw materials for
the Igbo-Ukwu bronzes were locally sourced and that the bronze objects were not of external
origins (Chikwendu et al., 1989; Craddock, 1985; Chikwendu and Umeji, 1979).
The regional distributions of artifacts of the Igbo-Ukwu styles have been the primary way
of establishing that the Igbo-Ukwu artifacts derived their inspirations fromthe Igbo symbolic
and stylistic reservoir (Anozie, 1993). The appliqu e, concentric, spiral, and geometric patterns
that characterize the Igbo-Ukwu pottery have been found at Ugwuagu Site 2 in Akpo
dated to about A.D. 670, indicating that the decorative grammar on Igbo-Ukwu pottery
was established at least two centuries earlier in Akpo. Igbo-Ukwu pottery styles have also
been identied in undated contexts at Inyi, Ishiagu, and Nrobu Ehandiagu (Ibeanu, 1989).
Decorative motifs on pottery and copper/bronze artifacts similar to those from Igbo-Isaiah
have been found at Otoogwe and Ogwugwu Agu sites, both about 3 km. west of Igbo-Ukwu.
Moreover, the grave of an elite man associated with a spiral bronze pendant and a terracotta
human head similar to the burial at Igbo Richard has been identied at Onyoma in the Niger
Delta. The site is dated to the thirteenth century, about three centuries later than the earliest
dates from Igbo-Ukwu (Anozie, 1993). Thus, rather than belonging to an intrusive culture
from a northerly direction (Shaw, 1970, p. 27), we have both precedents and successors
for the Igbo-Ukwu nds in terms of cultural context, cognitive and symbolic style, and
decorative grammar. Metallurgical analyses show that the copper and lead ores used in
Igbo-Ukwu bronzes and copper artifacts were mined about 100 km. to the east at Abakaliki,
Ishiagu, Enyingba, and Ameri. These sources of ore possibly extended to the Benue trough
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148 J World Prehist (2005) 19:133168
and the north-central plateau of Nigeria. These analyses essentially end speculations that
the raw materials were transported from the Saharan edge or from the Mediterranean world
(Chikwendu, 1998).
These latest studies do not deny that Igboland was indeed connected to a wider interaction
sphere through long-distance trade, but they demonstrate the intense local contexts that
sustained the cultural developments and commercial networks at Igbo-Ukwu and other
related sites between the ninth and fteenth centuries. Some of the glass beads at Igbo-
Ukwu are believed to be of Mediterranean origin, indicating that Igboland was part of the
transcontinental trading networks most likely via the Nile Valley (Insoll and Shaw, 1997;
Robertshawet al., 2003). Sutton (1991) has suggested that the trading routes passing through
the Islamic and Christian states of Nubia, the Lake Chad Basin (Kanemarea), and through the
Niger-Benue Valley, linked Igboland and the Nile Valley/Mediterranean world. The trading
routes that linked the Igbo hinterland and the central sudan, especially the Chad Basin,
deserve archaeological investigations. If by the ninth century A.D., as four radiocarbon dates
from Igbo-Ukwu show, the Chad Basin was already a carrier of long-distance trade to the
upper reaches of the rainforest belt in Igboland and to the Nile Valley, this means that well
developed commercial institutions were already established in the Lake Chad region before
the emergence of the Kanem polity and its Saifuwa dynasty in the ninth century.
What was the sociopolitical organization that facilitated the transcontinental trading and
individual accumulation of wealth so early in Igboland? Historical ethnography indicates
that Igbo-Ukwu ourished under the patronage of the Eze Nri institution. The rump of this
priest-king institution and ofce survives today in Oreri and Aguku areas of Igboland, a
few kilometers from Igbo-Ukwu, although the contemporary ofce holders do not enjoy
the kind of power that would have concentrated so much wealth in the hands of a single
person (Onwujeogwu 1981). The nds at Igbo-Ukwu suggest that the Eze Nri institution
and its agents were involved in long-distance commerce and that the wealth that they
acquired from their local ritual and political activities was used to nance the acquisition of
sumptuary goods, especially Indian and Venetian beads, textiles, and horses in exchange for
exports such as ivory, possibly kolanut, and other undetermined products that might have
included slaves, iron, and copper artifacts. The ofcers of Eze Nri also used their wealth
and status as ritual specialists to recruit and maintain numerous miners, craftsmen, and
artists among others. The Igbo-Ukwu nds not only challenge the ahistorical projections of
acephalous political systems on most parts of Igboland (Ottenberg, 1971, pp. 307313), but
they also weaken evolutionary assumptions about social complexity. Rather than seeking to
t Igbo-Ukwu into an evolutionary typology chiefdom or kingdom (see McIntosh 1999,
pp. 912), we would better see the Igbo society as most probably a mosaic of different types
of sociopolitical organization.
The interpretation of the symbolic and iconographic references in Igbo-Ukwu copper alloy
and ceramic objects has helped to establish the local historical conditions that shaped the
forms and disposition of the objects, and their contextual meanings in relation to the nature
of the social complexity that developed in Igboland (Ray, 1987). The materials underscore
the importance of ritual in the development and maintenance of social complexity there.
It has been argued that the pervasive ritual icons in the Igbo-Ukwu material served to
project aspects of the pivotal role of the priest-king within Nri Igbo life and thought (Ray,
1987, p. 77). The combination of fear, belief, supernatural sanctions, and nes that typically
accompany ritual seem to have been an integral part of securing compliant behavior and
resolving disputes in the foundations of sociopolitical development in Igboland ( McIntosh,
1999, p. 12). To this end, iconic signs and metaphors were deployed to institute an hegemonic
ideology of social differences and hierarchies in the region.
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Yoruba-Edo region
The increasing scale of social organization across the different regions in the late rst and
early second millennia A.D. was physically marked on the rainforest belt of southwest
Nigeria by embankments that demarcate settlement boundaries. In the Esan and Benin
areas (Fig. 1), Darling (1984) has mapped an intricate network of over 16,000 km. of
embankments, enclosing more than 500 interconnected settlements and a total of 6500 km
2
.
On the basis of poorly referenced radiocarbon dates (uncalibrated), Darling has proposed
that the earthworks were a continuing project that began in the mid-rst millennium A.D.
as slash-and-burn farmers increased in number and commenced their southward expansion
from the upper reaches of the rainforest belt. However, it seems that most of the construction
was carried out between ca. A.D. 800 and 1500, when the embankments and the associated
ditches became larger and deeper as settlements grew in size and sociopolitical formations
became more complex (Darling, 1997). Similar earthworks occur at Sungbo Eredo, in the
Ijebu area of Yorubaland, where a network of 160 km. of ramparts has been surveyed. They
encircle an area of 40 35 km, with walls up to 10 m in some places. Darling has reported
that charcoal, believed to be from res set to clear the bush before construction, give a date
of ca. A.D. 800 (Pearce, 1999, p. 11); however, details of the radiocarbon date are not yet
available.
The Benin-Esan earthworks have the potential to offer useful perspectives on the history
of sociopolitical formation in the rainforest belt when the details of their construction have
been worked out. We also need systematic surveys of the rainforest (difcult as this may be)
to determine how widespread embankments were between ca. A.D. 500 and 1000. Study of
the associated settlements will help us to understand the daily lives of the rampart-builders.
It appears that the walled villages began to coalesce into large polities, with institutional-
ized hierarchies, social differentiation and socioeconomic specializations, between ca. A.D.
800 and 1200, although the causes are not yet clear. Nevertheless, the best example of this
development is the city-state of Ile-Ife. Discussions of early social complexity in southwest
Nigeria have mostly centered on Ile-Ife (e.g., Akinjogbin, 1992; Akinjogbin and Ayandele,
1980; Ogundiran, 2003), because it is where we nd the earliest and most elaborate in-
dices of social complexity, especially life-size naturalistic sculptures in brass and terracotta,
representing a wide array of personalities, both elite and commoners (Willett, 1967, 2004).
Ile-Ife: A city-state in regional context
The rise of Ile-Ife as a major city-state in the Yoruba region of southwest Nigeria was
contemporaneous with the rise of Kanem and Igbo-Ukwu. Here, an urban-based polity
emerged in the upper reaches of the rainforest belt sometime between the ninth and eleventh
centuries A.D., although its foundations seem to lie in the sixth century (for a list of the
calibrated radiocarbon dates fromIle-Ife, see Ogundiran, 2003, pp. 5255 and Willett, 2004).
Since most of the excavations at Ile-Ife were rescue operations to save the accidentally
discovered sculptures, archaeologists have emphasized the morphology and styles of the
terracotta and bronze/brass sculptures, rather than broad settlement history and sociocultural
setting of those who produced the artworks (e.g, Eyo, 1974a; Ogunfolakan, 2001; Willett,
1967, 2004; Shaw, 1978).
Ile-Ife has the richest oral traditions in the region concerning its development partly
because the dynastic institutions established at the close of the rst millennium A.D. still
survive (Akinjogbin, 1992). These oral traditions, in combination with material culture, have
been used to reconstruct the process of state formation in Ile-Ife (e.g., Obayemi, 1985;
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150 J World Prehist (2005) 19:133168
Ogundiran, 2003). There has also been a healthy focus on the cultural, economic, and
sociopolitical aspects of Ile-Ife, and the regional contexts in which they functioned between
ca. A.D. 1000 and 1400 (Garlake, 1974, 1977; Eyo, 1974b). These studies have culminated
in a cultural historical synthesis linking developments at Ile-Ife to those in the other parts of
Yoruba-Edo region (Ogundiran, 2002b, 2003).
The phenomenal elaboration of material culture in the rst four centuries of the second
millennium A.D. have been identied as the watershed in the cultural orescence of Ile-Ife
(Eyo, 1974b; Garlake, 1974, 1977; Willett, 1973), prompting Willett (1967, 1973) to call
it the Classical era. I have elsewhere proposed that the Classical period can be subdivided
into two phases: A.D. 10001200 and A.D. 12001400 (Ogundiran, 2001, 2003). The earlier
phase was characterized by the construction of concentric walls that dened the new urban
landscape (Ozanne, 1969); the orescence of art in durable media, such as copper alloys,
terracotta, and granite stones, much of which serviced the royal court and the religious cults
(Willett, 1967); the setting up of large-scale production of glass beads about 1.6 km. from
the center of the city (Ajetunmobi, 1989; Eluyemi, 1987); the construction of large-scale
impluvium houses (houses with an open central courtyard) and extensive potsherd and stone
pavements around the city (Agbaje-Williams, 2001; Garlake, 1975, 1977; Ogunfolakan,
1994); and the elaboration of iconography and rituals (Eyo, 1974a, 1974b). Sacred kingship
was fully developed during this period. Human sacrice either began or increased during
the eleventh century A.D., sometimes accompanying the elite burials or associated with
state rituals. Mortuary goods, such as glass and carnelian beads, copper alloy sculptures and
adornment, indicate the orientation of the elite towards external commerce (Garlake, 1974,
p. 122). The Classical period fell within a period when regional commercial networks in West
Africa were ultimately linked to the trans-Saharan trade (Posnansky, 1973). It is difcult at
this point to assess what role the northern trade played in the sociopolitical transformations
at Ile-Ife between ca. A.D. 800 and 1200. It is likely that the crystallization of a system of
dynastic kingship stimulated the need of the elite for exotic and prestige goods, leading to
the establishment of sustained (if punctuated) economic relations with the sudanic peoples
by the eleventh century.
The regional impacts of Ile-Ife on the development of social complexity, especially the
adoption of divine kingship, in the savanna and rainforest belts are far better understood than
the processes of its own development. Recent archaeological studies in southwest Nigeria
were aimed at accounting for the patterns of contacts and cultural historical relationships that
culminated in the proliferation of Ife ceramics and iconographies after the thirteenth century
in Yoruba-Edo region (Ogundiran, 2001, 2003; also see Eyo, 1974b). The occurrence of
the Ife ceramic stylistic grammar in different parts of the Yoruba-Edo region, starting about
two centuries after they rst appeared in Ile-Ife, suggests the primacy of Ile-Ife in regional
interactions between A.D. 1000 and 1500. The diagnostic decorative motifs of the Ife ceramic
sphere include applied bosses, cordons, keloid forms, cowry-form motifs; hyphenated cross-
hatched incisions; stamped geometric-shape impressions, circular stylus motifs; reliefs of
guilloche and rosette designs; rustication; and red-on-rims/lips. The diagnostic value of these
motifs for mapping regional cultural-historical relationship is enhanced by the fact that they
are associated not only with pottery but also with the Classical terracotta sculptures at Ile-Ife
(Ogundiran, 2001).
Acombination of conceptual frameworks adapted fromKopytoffs frontier model (1987),
Caldwells interaction sphere concept (1964), Wallersteins world systems theory (1974), and
the various oral interpretive models has been used to understand the trajectories of sociopo-
litical development and archaeological sequences in the Yoruba-Edo region. Intersocietal
networks (regional economic, political, and ritual interactions) played important roles in
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the structural reproduction of the sociopolitical, ideological, and material components of
Classical Ile-Ife in different parts of Yoruba-Edo region between the thirteenth and sixteenth
centuries (Ogundiran, 2001, 2002b, 2002c, 2003). Extensive production of glass beads, one
of the most important paraphernalia of kingship and social ranking, seems to have been
dominated by Ile-Ife. In controlling this key object of political capital, Ile-Ife became the
source of symbols of ofce for the rapidly growing dynastic kingships across the region
between ca. 1200 and 1400 (Ogundiran, 2003).
The predominant view has been that the manufacture of glass beads in Ile-Ife involved
melting and reworking glass imported from European and Islamic glass-making centers via
the trans-Saharan trading routes (Willett, 1977, 2004; also see Robertshaw et al., 2003),
although a number of scholars have speculated the possibility that glass was produced from
the local quartz-silica minerals (e.g., Eluyemi, 1987, p. 213; Fagg, 1980, p. 10; Horton, 1992,
p. 132; also see Ajetunmobi, 1989). However, recent analyses of glass beads, cullets, and
crucibles from Ile-Ife, from ninth to thirteenth century contexts, reveal that the beads have
high lime and high alumina content, which rule out the possibility that some of the glass was
imported from Europe, the Middle East, or Asia (Ige et al., 2006) areas where glass beads
generally have low lime and alumina content. The study therefore suggests that some of the
Ife glass beads were made of glass locally manufactured from wood ash and high-alumina
sand. However, the same study also shows that some of the glass beads as well as the cobalt
used to color the locally produced glass probably came from South Asia (Ige et al. 2006).
The implication of all of these is that glass and glass beads were being locally produced in
Ile-Ife simultaneous with the importation of South Asian glass beads.
The production of exotic objects and of exquisite artworks was not, however, limited to
Ile-Ife. Ile-Ife had a monopoly on glass beads before the fteenth century, but cylindrical red
beads of jasper and carnelian (red chalcedony), also important paraphernalia of kingship and
elite status, were produced in other areas of the Yoruba-Edo region. Preliminary investigations
at Old Oyo and in the Igbomina area of north-central Yoruba have provided evidence of exotic
stone bead manufacture no later than the thirteenth century (Obayemi, 1985, p. 291; Willett,
1960, pp. 63, 74). Naturalistic stone sculptures of humans were also made in Igbomina area
and have been found at Esie, Ofaro, Ipo, and Ijara (Usman, 2001). The majority of these
sculptures, about 800 in total, are at Esie (Stevens, 1978). Their archaeological contexts
have not yet been dened, so their implications for sociopolitical development and cultural
transformations in the region remain speculative (Adepegba, 1982; Andah, 1982a; Drewal
et al., 1989, p. 88).
Oyo Empire
Of all the Yoruba-Edo polities that emerged between A.D. 800 and 1500, only one attained
the status of an imperial hegemon. This was the Oyo Empire which came into prominence
in the sixteenth century (Law, 1977), about the same time that Bornu began to hold sway
over the Chad Basin. Archaeological investigations have focused on the capital of the empire
itself, Oyo-Ile. The research agenda has however not been tailored to understanding how
this Guinea Savanna polity gained ground to become the most powerful political formation
in seventeenth century Yorubaland. Rather, research interests have focused on dening basic
chronological sequences, mapping and describing the archaeological remains at the site,
including walls and remnants of house structures, and understanding the inventory of artifact
classes, especially pottery (Agbaje-Williams, 1983; Soper, 1992; Soper and Darling, 1980).
Contexts that could shed light on the dynamics of social structure and hierarchies in the
metropolis, such as the royal burial site of Oyo monarchs and the residences of the elite
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population, have not been investigated. The mapping of the palace structures has not been
followed by systematic excavations (Soper, 1992); and questions of the economy, military
system, and ideology of the empire have not been addressed archaeologically, although their
general patterns are known from historical studies (e.g, Johnson, 1921; Law, 1977).
Meanwhile, ongoing archaeological investigations at the frontiers of the empire, in areas
either colonized or conquered, have begun to address questions concerning the development
of imperial Oyo and its consequences for the Yoruba region. In north-central Yorubaland,
Usman (2001) has applied a version of core-periphery model (e.g., Chase-Dunn and Hall,
1991) to explain how the rise of Old Oyo empire and its imperial ambitions in north-
central Yoruba against the competing interests of Nupe accelerated the process of social
complexity in Igbominaland during the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. The
result was that the political system in Igbomina was militarized, and elaborate defensive
mechanisms were constructed. Through migrations from the Old Oyo core to the Igbomina
peripheries, as well as through inter-marriages between the elites of the two areas, Usman
suggests, the Oyo ceramic forms were adopted in Igbomina but did not displace the pre-
imperial ceramic complex. Delineating a six-hundred-year settlement history of Igbomina
with archaeological, oral historical, ethnographic, and archival sources, Usman (2005, p.
361) concludes that Igbomina was affected by the challenges of political insecurity from
the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries because of its location in the periphery of
hegemonic and expansionist political centers, in this case, Old Oyo and Nupe (also see
Aleru, 1998, p. 148). My own recent excavations in Central Yorubaland have also begun to
examine the nature of imperial colonization that Old Oyo initiated in the Upper Osun region
during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. The focus of excavations was on Ede-Ile,
possibly the rst successful military and colonial outpost that Old Oyo established towards
achieving its imperial ambitions. The several remains of horses and arrow-points found at the
site conrm that Ede-Ile was a military town, and the abundance of cowries indicates that the
town was also an important commercial center connected to the Atlantic coastal trade from
where cowries were carried into the hinterlands as currency. Diverse craft productions also
took place at this imperial frontier site as evidenced by the presence of spindle whorls, iron
slag and smelting furnaces. The analysis of the archaeological nds at Ede-Ile is ongoing,
and the results will provide fresh perspectives on the rise of Old Oyo Empire. In fact, we may
be able to understand this process better by studying the peripheries, frontiers, and colonial
outposts of the empire than by focusing on the metropolis itself.
Urbanism: Research agenda
Urbanization, as a feature of cultural evolution and settlement studies, has often been singled
out for archaeological investigation in Nigerian archaeology (Andah, 1982b). For the most
part, archaeologists have been attracted to the study of urban centers associated with so-
ciopolitical centralization such as Oyo-Ile, Ile-Ife, Benin, Birni Gazargamo, and Kano with
a particular focus on mapping their perimeter walls, delineating their public buildings, and
estimating their population and physical sizes. Ile-Ife, the oldest known urban center in the
rainforest belt, received early archaeological attention (Ozanne, 1969). The survey of the
Ife walls shows that the city was enclosed by two major concentric embankments, the inner
and outer walls. The inner wall was about 7 km in circumference with a maximum diameter
of about 2.3 km; and the much bigger outer wall had a circumference of ca. 15 km and a
maximum diameter of approximately 5.2 km (Agbaje-Williams, 2005). There were perhaps
seventy thousand people living in the city at the height of its glory between the thirteenth
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and early fteenth centuries (Kusimba et al., 1999). A characteristic element of this urban
social space is that several of its public roads were paved with potsherds often laid on their
edges in herringbone patterns. It is estimated that an area of about 12 square kilometers of
the city was paved with potsherds between the twelfth and fteenth centuries (Ogunfolakan,
1994). In an experiment carried out by Babatunde Agbaje-Williams in 1996, it took about
thirty-two hours of one-person labor to construct a potsherd pavement in a 2 2 m area
(Agbaje-Williams, 2001). Those who laid the Ife potsherd pavement were possibly more
skillful and efcient than the experimenters, and it is likely that the number of labor hours
per meter was considerably less. Nevertheless, it would have required the mobilization of
a large workforce to construct the numerous paved roads in and around Ile-Ife before the
fteenth century, a phenomenon that etched a permanent imprint on the social memory of
the populace until today (Akinjogbin and Ayandele, 1980, p. 126).
In the savanna of northwest Yoruba lies the capital of Old Oyo Empire. It seems the
occupation of Old Oyo by thriving agricultural communities was well in place around the
ninth century A.D. (Agbaje-Williams, 1983), and by the fteenth century, a fully edged
town had evolved and was on the path of becoming the capital of the largest empire south
of River Niger (Soper and Darling, 1980). The archaeological survey of the city revealed
that ve major wall systems were built between the sixteenth and late eighteenth centuries.
At its peak in the mid-eighteenth century, the imperial capital of Old Oyo covered an area
of more than 5,000 hectares, with diameters of 10 km north-south and 6 km east-west. It
is estimated that between 60,000 and 140,000 people occupied the city in the eighteenth
century (Agbaje-Williams, 1983). The attempt to understand the regional settlement system
in which Oyo-Ile was located has led to the discovery and mapping of substantial towns, such
as Ipapo-Ile and Koso, within 10 km of the city. The role that these satellite towns played in
relation to Oyo-Ile is now a subject of an on-going investigation (Agbaje-Williams, 1989a,
1989b, 1990).
Connah has also revealed the remains of the city walls of Benin City possibly built
between the thirteenth and mid-fteenth century (Connah, 1964, 1972, 1975). The main and
innermost wall system consisted of a bank and ditch. The embankment averaged 17.4 m
in height with a circumference of about 11.6 km. Connah estimates that if the construction
of the wall system had been completed within a dry season (three months), it would have
required 5000 people working 10 h. Connahs survey also discovered an interlocking system
of enclosures totaling 145 kmin length within and in the outskirts of the innermost and major
wall system of Benin. These smaller enclosures, similar to the ones identied by Darling
(1984) in the Esan area, marked the boundaries of several towns and villages in the Benin
area and possibly date to the rst millennium A.D. Connah (1975) has concluded that Benin
City and its walls evolved from the coalescing of populations in those pre-existing villages
and towns.
Likewise, archaeological surveys have been conducted in different parts of Hausaland to
understand the size and layout of pre-colonial cities and towns in the region. A more detailed
investigation and publication have come out of the research at Turunku, the capital of the
ancient state of Zazzau, 42 km south of modern Zaria. Turunku had two wall (earth rampart)
systems, the outer one covers an area of 6 km
2
. and the inner one encloses 0.3 km
2
. The high
density of structural debris within the inner wall contrasts with the sparse archaeological
remains between the inner and the outer wall, an indication that the latter area was used for
farming activities, in order to ensure access to food during times of siege (Effah-Gyam,
1986).
In recent years, there has been a shift of research interest fromthe major political capitals to
the lesser-known towns in the hinterlands or periphery of the major metropolises, especially
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in north-central Yorubaland (Aleru, 1998; Usman, 2001), central Yorubaland (Ogundiran,
2002c), and the Edo-Esan area (also see Darling, 1984). The diverse material culture of
these townships reveals that they were multifunctional communities of farmers, traders,
beadworkers, iron-smelters, blacksmiths, potters, dyers and weavers, etc. Nevertheless, the
orientation of most of the studies of urbanism is the same: toward assessing the sizes of cities
and towns, rather than the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural aspects of urban life. In fact,
much more emphasis has been placed on the style of wall construction and their layout than
on the broad spectrum of material culture. Most studies have not been informative on the
nature of demography (with the exception of the population estimates of Old Oyo by Agbaje-
Williams, 1983), social stratication, political organization, and economic specialization, and
the nature of everyday life. Therefore, we still do not have a clear idea how to differentiate a
town or a city from its rural hinterland, or whether such an urban-rural dichotomy is realistic
for pre-colonial Nigeria. Since an urban center represents to a large extent the macrocosm of
an extended family compound, and given the wider networks of social relationships that were
made possible by urban communities, future studies would be better served in considering
how urbanism affected the social construction of gender, family, and individuality. Rather
than treating urbanismas an artifact to be mapped and described, attention should be devoted
to excavating the residential units and compounds within the town and city walls in order
to begin to address urbanism as a sociocultural system, and thereby highlight the quotidian
lives of the urban populace.
Due to the conation of the study of cities and towns with that of city-states and so-
ciopolitical centralization, the advent of urbanism in Nigeria has so far been associated in
the literature with the rise of divine kingships and militaristic/hegemonic monarchs between
the ninth and fteenth centuries (Andah, 1982b). The presence of walled settlement clusters
such as those documented in predynastic Benin and Esan and possibly also in predynastic
Ile-Ife and Kano, make us question the dominant idea of urbanism as monolithic structures,
imposed by a coercive state apparatus forcing a heterogenous population to crowd together
(McIntosh, 1991, p. 199). The predynastic clustering of settlements in Nigeria seems to be
similar to the situation in the Inland Niger Delta (at Jenne-jeno, Mali) whereby the set-
tlement cluster around Jenne-jeno formed a constellation of craft/occupational specialists
as a strategy for maintaining boundaries between specialist communities, simultaneously
allowing these corporations to exploit proximity to clients and suppliers of other services
without surrendering their identity and independence to a single urban center and a bu-
reaucracy (McIntosh, 1991, p. 204; also see McIntosh and McIntosh, 1993). The Jenne-jeno
situation has important implications for the conceptualization of urbanism in pre-colonial
Nigeria. However, we need to focus on the regional settlement patterns and their artifactual
composition, rather than on single urban centers. The former approach is most likely to yield
information on the causes and circumstances of urbanism (McIntosh and McIntosh, 1984:
94). This approach is already anticipated in the work of Babatunde Agbaje-Williams (1983,
1989a, 1989b) with his focus on the city of Old Oyo and its satellite towns of Koso, Ipapo,
and Igboho.
Atlantic encounter and its impact, 15001900
Asignicant portion of archaeological research in Nigeria has focused on the last ve hundred
years, and the material evidence of the entanglement of the different regions of Nigeria in
the Atlantic economic system has been widely documented. Beginning ca. A.D. 1600, the
archaeological record shows that the Atlantic-oriented commerce signicantly added to
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the repertoire of everyday material life, initially more in the coastal regions than in the
hinterlands. By the early eighteenth century, however, the material signature of the Atlantic
economy had become ubiquitous in the hinterlands of West Africa (e.g., Connah, 1975; see
chapters in DeCorse, 2001; Stahl, 2001; Ogundiran, 2002c). The most detailed excavations,
to reveal the immense diversity that the entanglement in the Atlantic commerce wrought on
the material life of a Nigerian hinterland are those conducted by Connah (1975) in Benin.
The imported artifacts documented at the sites- bronze/brass, clay pipes, buttons, cowries,
European ceramics, glass beads, musket balls, swords, and iron- conrm the intimate trading
relations that developed between Benin and various European nations in A.D. 15001850.
The majority of the port sites in the Bight of Benin that served as early centers of economic
exchanges between Europeans and Africans - Ughoton, Ode-Itsekiri, Ijebu Lagoon-side -
have not been excavated.
So far, the imported objects, such as moneta cowries, beads, and tobacco pipes, have been
used as type-fossils for chronological inferences (Walker, 1975; York, 1972). The use of
these objects for studying how the expanding global economic system shaped daily mate-
rial life, social relations, and household and extra-household production and consumption,
with explicit research designs and relevant theoretical frameworks, is only just beginning
(Ogundiran, 2006). This emerging interest in the archaeology of the Atlantic period focuses
on contextual interpretations of the Atlantic imports, marrying the historicity of world sys-
tems theory with comprehensive understanding of the local cultural systems. One component
of this research seeks to understand how the Atlantic imports were used as objects of cultural
and political capital, with major impacts on the physical and cognitive realities of the people
of the Bight of Benin, and the impacts of the new varieties and sheer volume of the new
commodities on the overall cultural transformations in the region (Ogundiran, 2002d).
It was, however, not only imported commodities that transformed the material and socio-
cultural lives, but also the introduction of American food cropsespecially maize, cassava,
and varieties of beans. The understanding of the impacts of these American cultigens on
African populations remains rudimentary partly because their evidence is tenuous or un-
recoverable in the archaeological record. The imported crop that played the most critical
role in daily lives was maize (Miracle, 1966). Maize cob impressions on ceramics were
present by the seventeenth century, and gained so much currency that by the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries, maize-cob-rouletted motifs (with or without seeds) increas-
ingly displaced the twisted cord motifs, especially on large vessels, in Central Yorubaland
(Ogundiran, 2002c; Shaw, 1985, p. 52). The lower investment of labor required in maize
cultivation than other Western African crops, especially yams, might have made maize a
prime food item in the seventeenth century, especially during the several drought years of
that century (Brooks, 2003, pp. 102103). Archaeologists have yet to assess the forms of
agro-ecological and landscape transformations, and changes in farming techniques that re-
sulted from the adoption of American crops, not only in Nigeria but also in West Africa
as a whole. In addition, the impacts of the Euro-American Atlantic slave system on the
Nigerian hinterlands, and its articulation with the trans-Saharan/sudanic slave system, have
received preliminary archaeological attention, especially in reference to the defensive strate-
gies against enslavement that developed in many parts of Nigeria, mostly among small-scale
societies (e.g., Gronenborn, 2001; MacEachern, 2001).
The British colonial transformations, 18501940
The material consequences of European colonialism are often visible in the uppermost
horizons of archaeological sites all over the country. These horizons, mostly dating to
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156 J World Prehist (2005) 19:133168
between ca. 1850 and 1940, indicate of the development of modern tastes and consumption
patterns, and could offer insights into the process of incorporation of Nigeria into the colonial
political economy, especially the British imperial market system. The excavation of sites
from the late nineteenth through the early twentieth century, especially in the southern half
of Nigeria, reveals a wider range and greater quantity of imports than in the earlier centuries.
These imports included beads, ball-clay and clay smoking pipes, glass bottles, imported
ceramics such as porcelain, stoneware, and glassware, plastic-ware fragments, gunints
and bullet casings, and various imported metal objects including iron nails, door handles,
bolts, buckles, and rods, among others (e.g., Alabi, 1998; Connah, 1975; Aremu, 1984,
1990a, 1990b; Oguagha and Okpoko, 1984; Aleru, 1998; Ogedengbe, 1998; Wesler, 1992).
During the early decades of the twentieth century, when colonial rule was in full swing, we
begin to encounter objects of the colonial economy, such as British and French coins, and
of industrialization, such as bicycle parts, plastic toys, and beer and gin bottles, imported
shoes and sandals (Andah et al., 1992; Connah, 1975, pp. 67, 233235; Oguagha and
Okpoko, 1984, pp. 3235; Wesler, 1992, p. 112). Weslers (1992) preliminary comparison
of the nineteenth and early twentieth century imported ceramics at four sites in Nigeria
(Oketekakini in Idah, Ipole settlement near Ilorin, abandoned villages at the University of
Ibadan and International Institute of Tropical Agriculture campuses in Ibadan, and Clerks
Quarter site in Benin City) serves as a pointer to the kinds of research questions that these
imported items could answer. Comparison indicates that the adoption of imported ceramics in
Nigeria was sudden and took place in the context of the establishment of the British colonial
economy, but the study also illuminates how these wares were immediately transformed into
objects of social distinctions at the local levels. The study of colonial-period sites in Nigeria
has implications for understanding how the everyday industrial objects were utilized at the
intimate domestic levels among the colonized, for structuring social relationships, dening
aspirations, identities, and citizenship in the new colonial states, and articulating multiple
discourses- resistance and accommodation - in relation to European colonialism.
Recent studies have also paid attention to howthe British colonial institutions modied the
landscape through the building of barracks and military garrisons, prisons, hospitals, schools,
residences, and cemeteries. For example, Ogedengbe (1998) has examined the impacts of the
colonized landscape in obliterating the pre-colonial settlements in Zungeru, a town that was
the gateway to the colonization of what later became Northern Nigeria. Limited excavations
in and around the colonial settlement at Zungeru yielded glass bottles, plastic containers,
and metal objects. The abundance of military artifacts, such as bullets and gun fragments
shows the militaristic and coercive nature of the colonial enterprise. The Zungeru project
has potential to reveal the mundane brutalities of colonial dispossession and resistance at
local levels, and how the mundane objects of everyday life and the imposing architecture and
weapons of colonial authority created new material, cognitive, and ideological references
for the colonized (Hall, 2000, p. 15).
Archaeology of the living: Ethnoarchaeology and cultural resource management
For various reasons, Africanist archaeologists generally pay close attention to the dynamics of
change and continuity in present-day indigenous technologies, material life, and settlement
patterns, under the rubric of ethnoarchaeology (Lane, 2005; MacEachern, 1996b). This
interest has increased since the early 1980s in Nigerian archaeology, motivated by two
goals: (1) to answer specic questions deriving from archaeological investigations; and (2)
to document the material life of the present populations as an end in itself, sometimes on the
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justication of salvaging or resuscitating a supposedly dying tradition. The former is usually
conducted as a supplement to archaeological excavations/artifact analysis and it tends to focus
on pottery manufacture. Most ethnoarchaeological studies are direct-historical in approach
they generally assume historical continuity between the present-day indigenous technology,
object, and settlement-subsistence strategies and the archaeological past. Moreover, almost
all are descriptive and do not try to use their results to generate middle range theories
that could be used to interpret relevant but historically unrelated archaeological contexts.
With the exception of the early work by Nicholas David on the Fulani domestic space and
pottery (David, 1971; David and Henning, 1972), most ethnoarchaeological studies have
shunned positivist approach of processual archaeology with its explicit formulation of
testable relationships between ethnographically- and archaeologically-observed behavioral
contexts (MacEachern, 1996b, p. 260).
There are three contexts in which ethnoarchaeological studies are conducted to answer
specic archaeological question: (1) the documentation of the characteristics of settlement
and land-use patterns, domestic space, and subsistence strategies; (2) the study of forms
and functions of specic categories of material culture such as granaries and pottery; and
the process of industrial activities such as dyestuff manufacture, textile production, metal
manufacture, and salt-making; and (3) experimental archaeology involving the replication
of indigenous practices (e.g., technology) or archaeological formation patterns/processes.
The rst type has been conducted in the Middle Benue Valley (MBV) and at Old Oyo,
among others. The series of studies in the MBV concentrated on the mapping of settlement
units, and recording the material and non-material aspects of economic, social and political
organization of living populations in order to interpret archaeological sites. The justication
is that the spatial arrangement and circular structure of the present-day settlements on the
plains of the Benue Valley are similar to the archaeological settlement patterns observed on
the nearby hilltops dating no earlier than the fteenth century (Folorunso and Ogundele, 1998,
pp. 280286; Ogundele, 1989, 1991a). This has recently been broadened into a comparative
study that seeks to understand aspects of domestic space and spatial behaviour among the
Tiv and Ungwai peoples of Central Nigeria in the River Benue and River Niger Valleys
respectively (Ogundele, 2005). These two ethnolinguistic groups occupy similar ecological
niches (hilltop for ancient settlers and lowlands for the contemporary peoples), and have
similar sociopolitical organizations. Despite the rootedness of this type of research in the
functionalist ecological paradigm, it has immense potential for generating well grounded
empirical data that could be used to test a wide range of hypotheses on the settlement
ecology and settlement patterns of Nigerias River Valleys, especially in the Guinea savanna
belt.
The second type of ethnoarchaeological study focus on individual classes of artifacts
and material culture- is most common, and the majority of these studies focus on pottery
production. Again, in the MBV, where long-term studies have been carried out since 1975,
archaeologists have studied the manufacture, decorations, morphology, and functions of
present-day pottery in Tivland in order to gain some insight into the pottery in the archae-
ological records, especially the socio-cultural adaptations of the ancient Tiv people who
settled on the nearby . . . hill-tops and slopes (Ogundele, 1991b, p. 119, also see Folorunso,
1992). Although archaeologists recognize that some changes would have taken place in
the technology and functions of the pottery between the fteenth century and the present,
they have not developed a means of identifying these changes and factoring them into the
interpretation of the archaeological record. Another example of archaeologically oriented
ethnographic study of material culture is the work conducted at Obo-Ayegunle by David
Aremu on brass-casting techniques. This study has shed light on the production processes
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158 J World Prehist (2005) 19:133168
that characterized the excavated brass artifacts from the abandoned settlement of Ipole, of
which Obo-Ayegunle was an offshoot (Aremu, 1990a, 1998).
Experimental archaeology the third type is often not regarded as ethnoarchaeology
on the grounds that the particular behaviors that experimental studies aim to capture are no
longer part of the daily routines of contemporary life. However, experimental archaeology
in Nigeria shows that such studies are often based on living oral traditions and information
from contemporary populations. For example, at Aivoji Estate in coastal southwest Nigeria,
present-day potting traditions and ethnohistorical sources made the recreation of the ancient
salt-production methods possible (Wesler, 1998, p. 23). Oral historical sources and archae-
ological evidence indicate that the mounds of ashes at Aivoji, Gberefu and Agorin sites in
Badagry were residues of salt-making activities, via the boiling of seawater, between the
fteenth and nineteenth centuries (Alabi, 2002; Allsworth-Jones and Wesler, 1998). Experi-
mental research into the technology and methods of seawater boiling, the tools and resources
deployed, and the intensity of labor and time involved have helped in understanding the na-
ture of debris and archaeological formation patterns that this manufacturing endeavor would
generate. The conclusions are that salt making in Badagry was done at an industrial scale,
and that the large-scale production of these salts meant that the commodities were widely
distributed at the regional level.
Several ethnoarchaeological studies are, however, not based on the a priori assumption that
ethnoarchaeological research will have direct archaeological relevance to a site-specic
archaeological problem or cultural history (MacEachern, 1996b, p. 250). Rather, they were
designed to study the relationships between human behavior and forms or patterns of material
culture in contemporary societies. David (1971), a pioneer of this genre, has demonstrated
the usefulness of relating forms of architecture and domestic space to the social system and
then using this relationship to dene broad cultural groups. His team has studied grinding
activities associated with articial rock hollows in Sukur (central Nigeria) in order to develop
a typology of grinding rock hollows, identify their primary and secondary functions, estimate
their use lives, interpret the gender-behavior dimensions in the life-cycle of the hollows, and
make inferences on the population density of the Sukur plateau. The study demonstrates the
usefulness of grinding rock hollows not only for understanding regional culture history in
Sukur but also for the history of cultural landscapes in other parts of the world (David, 1998,
p. 61).
Overall, poor funding for basic archaeological research and perceived national priorities
have also increased interests in ethnoarchaeological studies since the 1980s. The pressure
on academic institutions to make themselves relevant to society, through involvement in
preserving indigenous technology either as a relic for touristic opportunities or as a basis for
home-grown development, have led the archaeological community to embrace ethnoar-
chaeology and cultural resource management in their research agenda and writings (e.g.,
Agbaje-Williams and Ogundiran, 1992; Fatunsin, 1992; Okpoko, 1999). To this end, several
studies (including many unpublished B.A. and M.Sc. theses) have examined the indigenous
technological change and continuity in different parts of Nigeria during the twentieth century
(see Aremu, 2005 and Ogundiran, 2002a). Several of these investigations are seen as con-
tributing to the federal governments cultural policy: to provide a technological infrastructure
that will have roots in indigenous traditions and to boost local cottage industries in the rural
and urban centers (Bello, 1991; Federal Ministry of Information and Culture, 1988). Thus,
experimental studies aimed at rediscovering and resuscitating the extinct or near-extinct
ancient technologies have been initiated by the Archaeology Department at University of
Nigeria, Nsukka, concerned with iron smelting and smithing processes in southeastern Nige-
ria (Okafor, 1993), while the Archaeological Unit at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife,
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J World Prehist (2005) 19:133168 159
began an experimental project in 1985 to reconstruct the techniques of ancient glass bead
industries at Ile-Ife (Eluyemi, 1987). Similarly, Kolawole Aiyedun initiated an ethnoarchae-
ological study in west-central Nigeria, with government funding, to document the material
components of supposedly vanishing everyday life in the rural areas. The archival research
and ethnographic eldwork collected information on food-production and food-sourcing
strategies - hunting, shing, and farming; indigenous technologies - iron smelting/smithing,
pottery, and hide-working; indigenous architectural forms and settlement patterns; funerary
practices; the use of nutritional and medicinal plants; and the use life and discard patterns
of objects (Aiyedun, 1991a, 1991b). Many of these rescue ethnoarchaeological studies have
produced a wealth of information on the use of local knowledge, technique, infrastructure,
and entrepreneurial skill for the mechanical and chemical transformation of agricultural
and mineral resources into consumable manufactured products at both domestic and cottage
industry levels. However, a major aw in most of them is their assumption that all these
indigenous practices have remained pristine, static and unchanging until the recent years.
In fact, much of what is observed today may have little to do with the archaeological past.
Thus, attention must be paid, in the design and execution of ethnoarchaeological studies, to
both continuity and change in indigenous sociocultural practices. Otherwise, these studies
will simply be ethnography instead of ethnoarchaeology.
Conclusions
Our current state of knowledge in Nigerian archaeology challenges the standard evolutionary
narrative that, according to Stahl (2004), equates foraging with the Late Stone Age, pastoral-
ism and cultivation with the Neolithic, and complex societies with the Iron Age. These
archaeological terms are restrictive and ill-suited to cultural historical sequences in Nigeria
as in other parts of Africa (see Connah, 1998; Phillipson, 2005; Stahl, 2005). Moreover, the
implied dichotomy between the Late Stone Age and Iron Age is problematic because the
beginning of iron production was neither a fundamental and total change in technology nor
an immediate transformation in sociopolitical organization, economy, and cultural lives. In
another dimension, the strong evidence that pastoralists were the harbingers of plant culti-
vation in the basin challenges the notions that sedentism is a crucial factor in the shift to
agriculture (Neumann, 2005, p. 260). Rather than being mere farmers, the stone-tool users of
the last two millennia B.C. were hunters and shers, who practiced strategic foraging as their
modern descendants still do, especially in rural hinterlands. They also raised cattle, sheep,
and goats wherever the ecology permitted. The immense challenges involved in scheduling
and coordinating these multiple food-sourcing activities in unpredictable environmental and
climatic conditions testify to the ingenuity of the LSA populations in mastering not only the
short- and long-term climatic patterns, but also in developing sophisticated understanding
of the water-table levels, the use values of the surrounding fauna and ora, and in devising
creative ways of combining sedentarism with mobility in order to cope with the changing
environmental conditions. All these must have affected sensibilities about space, land, ma-
terial property, and knowledge production among LSA communities. However, beyond the
descriptive analysis of the tool-kit and plant and animal remains of the LSA, we have a poor
understanding of the social components of daily lives. It may be helpful to pay attention to the
ethnoarchaeological research being conducted in the neighboring Houlouf region (Cameroon
side) of the Chad Basin, among both agricultural and pastoral-nomad populations. Similar
studies in the southern sahel and savanna areas may help us to understand how site-location
strategies, settlement layout, material culture items, and subsistence strategies developed
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160 J World Prehist (2005) 19:133168
in the fragile environmental settings and in a context of complementary and competing
socio-economic systems (Holl and Levy, 1993, p. 169).
Despite the advances that have been made in the last sixty years, the basic cultural
historical framework is still lacking for most regions of the country. Unfortunately, questions
of sociocultural processes can hardly be asked and satisfactorily answered without such
frameworks. Moreover, the reliance on chronometric dates for developing chronology, to the
exclusion of sound seriation of stylistic components of artifacts such as pottery, has often led
to poorly contextualized chronological schemes. Thus, we know that occupation of Oyo-Ile
reached back to the ninth century A.D. based on radiocarbon dates (Agbaje-Williams, 1983),
but we do not understand the range of stylistic and formal properties of artifacts, settlement
systems, food-sourcing techniques, the range of daily life activities, and behavioral patterns
that characterized the ninth century occupation level.
Perhaps because of better archaeological visibility and a less humid climate, archaeologists
from Germany and North America have concentrated on the Chad Basin, and almost all
of recent archaeological efforts in southern Nigeria have been carried out by Nigerians
themselves. Thus far, the long-term cultural historical sequence in the Chad Basin is far
better understood than the cultural history of any other part of Nigeria. We know very
little about the cultural history of the central sudan west of the Chad Basin, despite the
fascinating development of social complexity there after A.D 1000 (Last, 1985). In the last
twenty years, archaeological eldwork, mostly in form of dissertation research, has been
stepped up in southwestern Nigeria covering the LSA period to the last century (Akinade,
2003; Alabi, 1998; Aleru, 1998; Aremu, 1990b; Ogundiran, 2002c; Oyelaran, 1991; Usman,
2001). A substantial component of these studies have concentrated on the period after A.D.
1200 and are concerned with metallurgical traditions, sociopolitical transformations, and
regional interactions. The results are substantial enough to attempt the rst cultural historical
synthesis for the region (Ogundiran, 2003). In southeastern Nigeria, research has fruitfully
concentrated on the antiquity and technology of metallurgy and the implications of the Igbo-
Ukwu nds for understanding the development of Igbo cultural history. Investigations in
central Nigeria have been committed to early agricultural societies and metal production,
and to the ethnoarchaeological studies of settlement patterns and pottery production (for a
summary, see Folorunso, 2005). Unfortunately, the initial vibrancy in research into the Nok
Culture and the Later Stone Age and Iron Age continuum in central Nigeria seem to have
stalled in recent years (Fagg, 1959, 1969).
Overall, interests in the cultural history of the second millennium A.D. have been the
most consistent. The possibilities of combining oral traditions and contextual historical
ethnographic sources with archaeological data provide us with alternatives to strictly materi-
alist interpretations (Schmidt, 1983; see Ogundiran, 2002d, 2003; Ray, 1987). The processes
of social complexity that heralded the rise of states and empires during the late rst millen-
nium A.D. are however not yet clear. Current research indicates that social complexity based
on a heterarchical mode of organization, possibly dated to ca. 500 B.C. in the Chad Basin,
intensied throughout the second and third quarters of the rst millennium A.D. in various
regions. Long-distance commerce contributed to the development of hegemonic states after
the eighth century A.D., and the formation of a mosaic political landscape composed of
societies of varying scales throughout the second millennium A.D. (Stahl, 2004, p. 153).
Recent archaeometric analyses, especially of glass beads and copper-alloy artifacts, reveal
not only local manufacture of glass, but also local mining of copper. These ndings empha-
size the importance of local economy and regional trade over transcontinental commercial
networks in the foundations of social complexity, especially at Ile-Ife and Igbo-Ukwu in the
last centuries of the rst millennium A.D.
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J World Prehist (2005) 19:133168 161
Meanwhile, the main targets of studies of the period between A.D. 1500 and A.D.
1800 have been how the cultural, technological, and political landscapes were reshaped by
uctuations in regional political economic processes that were connected to the trans-Saharan
and the Atlantic trading networks. Within the same time frame, archaeological interest in
the study of empire has understandably focused on the impacts of imperial expansion on the
hinterlands, especially in Yorubaland and the Chad Basin. Little, however, has been gleaned
on the rise of these empires from the study of the imperial metropolises. Emerging interests
in the intensication of global entanglements after A.D. 1500 are showing the impacts on
the development of new dynamics of local production, consumption and everyday practices
(Stahl, 2001, 2002), which have immense ramications for transformations in social relations
in the widest sense of the term. No doubt, increasing interest in the archaeology of the last
ve hundred years in Nigeria has the potential to critically inform our understanding of the
place of Africa in the development of the modern world (Falola and Ogundiran, 2006).
Acknowledgements This article has beneted from my most recent collaboration with Babatunde Agbaje-
Williams, Raphael Alabi, David Aremu, Peter Breunig, C. A. Folorunso, James Lankton, Sonja Magnavita,
and Aribidesi Usman. I thank several colleagues who have helped me with references over the years. My
gratitude to Susan K. McIntosh and Angela E. Close for facilitating this essay, especially to Angela for her
immense patience given the long delays in delivering this essay to her. Aspects of my own research discussed
here have beneted from grants from The Humanities Foundation of Boston University and The Wenner-Gren
Foundation for Anthropological Research. A 2005 Summer Faculty Research Fund from the ofce of the
Dean of College of Arts and Sciences, Florida International University, assisted with the completion of the
essay. I thank Dean ad interim Mark Szuchman and Dr. Victor Uribe (Chair, Dept. of History) for their
assistance. Also, my profound gratitude to the following individuals: Sam Saverance graciously produced the
illustrations; Ann Stahl, in the planning stage, offered insightful suggestions on the possible directions for the
essay; Raphael Alabi, Babatunde Agbaje-Williams, and two anonymous reviewers read earlier versions and
offered extensive and helpful suggestions. Their comments have improved the quality of the essay but I alone
bear responsibility for any error or omission that may remain.
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