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The Nok Culture of Central Nigeria is known for its sophisticated terracotta figurines initially described in the 1950s by the British archaeologist Bernard Fagg. Since 2009, the Nok Culture has been the subject of research at the Goethe University Frankfurt within the scope of a long-term project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). This book is the outcome of a PhD thesis that involved pXRF analysis of features associated with the Nok Culture, namely stone-pot-arrangements and pit features.
Stone-pot-arrangements are considered to be burials, indicated by arranged and modified stones associated with complete pots and, in a few cases, a necklace made of stone beads. However, the absence of bones and other skeletal remains meant that their interpretation as burials was unresolved. The interpretation of pits or pit-like structures, of various shapes and sizes, also remained inconclusive.
Employing pXRF analysis succeeded in revealing traces of a decomposed body, supporting the hypothesis of stone-pot-arrangements being interments. Together with the analysis of pits, new ideas about the formation and use of Nok sites were advanced. These culminated in a 'patchwork model' that assumes a repetitive cycle of utilising land for farming, settlements and burials, followed by abandonment and subsequent re-visiting and re-use of the formerly abandoned land.
Since 2009 has the central Nigerian Nok Culture – until then primarily known for its highly artistic terracotta figurines and early evidence of iron working in the first millennium BCE – been the focus of a research project by the Goethe University Frankfurt/Main, Germany. The analysis of Nok sculptures has so far been almost entirely restricted to their stylistic features which show such great similarities that one hypothesis of the Frankfurt project has been the possible central production of these artfully crafted figurines.
This volume, written within the scope of a dissertation project completed in 2015, challenges this hypothesis by using scientific materials analysis. Combining the results of the mineralogical and geochemical analyses as well as geographic and geological observations, an alternative model for the organisation and procedure of the manufacture of the famous Nok terracottas is suggested.
They were – as the domestic pottery that is used for comparison and differentiation in this study – manufactured with locally available raw materials (clay and temper) but in different manufacturing sequences with regard to temper and clay composition. The terracottas’ clay was obviously reserved for their production only, demonstrating – aside from stylistic similarities – the value these figurines had during the Nok Culture.
The Central Nigerian Nok Culture has been well known for its elaborate terracotta sculptures and evidence of iron metallurgy since its discovery by British archaeologist Bernard Fagg in the 1940s. With a date in the first millennium BCE, both, sculptures and ironworking, belong to the earliest of their kind in sub-Saharan Africa. After a period of destruction of Nok sites by looting, scientific research resumed in 2006, when a team of archaeologists from Goethe University in Germany started to explore different Nok Culture aspects, one of which focused on chronology. Establishing a chronology for the Nok Culture employed two approaches: a comprehensive pottery analysis based on decoration and form elements and a wealth of radiocarbon dates from a large number of excavated sites. This volume presents the radiocarbon dates and the methods, data and results of the chronological pottery analysis, conducted within the scope of a dissertation project completed in 2015. Combining the two strands of information, a chronology emerges, dividing the Nok Culture into three phases from the middle of the second millennium BCE to the last centuries BCE and defining seven pottery groups that can be arranged to some extent in a chronological order.