Nok culture
The Nok culture is a population whose material remains are named after the Ham village of Nok in southern Kaduna State of Nigeria, where their terracotta sculptures were first discovered in 1928. The Nok people and the Gajiganna people may have migrated from the Central Sahara, along with pearl millet and pottery, and diverged prior to arriving in the northern region of modern-day Nigeria. This may have led to their respective settlements in the regions of Gajiganna and Nok. Nok people may have also migrated from the West African Sahel to the region of Nok. Nok culture may have emerged in 1500 BCE and continued to persist until 1 BCE.
Nok people may have developed terracotta sculptures, through large-scale economic production, as part of a complex funerary culture that may have included practices such as feasting. The earliest Nok terracotta sculptures may have developed in 900 BCE. Some Nok terracotta sculptures portray figures wielding slingshots, as well as bows and arrows, which may be indicative of Nok people engaging in the hunting, or trapping, of undomesticated animals. A Nok sculpture portrays two individuals, along with their goods, in a dugout canoe. Both of the anthropomorphic figures in the watercraft are paddling. The Nok terracotta depiction of a dugout canoe may indicate that Nok people used dugout canoes to transport cargo, along tributaries of the Niger River, and exchanged them in a regional trade network. The Nok terracotta depiction of a figure with a seashell on its head may indicate that the span of these riverine trade routes may have extended to the Atlantic coast. In the maritime history of Africa, there is the earlier Dufuna canoe, which was constructed approximately 8000 years ago in the northern region of Nigeria; as the second earliest form of water vessel known in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Nok terracotta depiction of a dugout canoe was created in the central region of Nigeria during the first millennium BCE. As part of Nok traditional medicine, Nok ceramics may have been used to process roots and bark as medicinal plants for the production of medicinal decoctions.
Excluding ancient Egyptian figurative art, Nok sculptures are regarded to be the earliest examples of large three-dimensional figurative art in continental Africa. Latter artistic traditions of West Africa – Bura of Niger, Koma of Ghana, Igbo-Ukwu of Nigeria, Jenne-Jeno of Mali, and Ile Ife of Nigeria – may have been shaped by the earlier West African clay terracotta tradition of the Nok culture. Nok settlement sites are often found on mountaintops. Iron metallurgy may have independently developed in the Nok culture between 750 BCE and 550 BCE.
Origin
Breunig and Rupp stated: "Their origin is unknown, but since the plants they used as crops are indigenous to the Sahel region, a northern homeland is more probable than any other." Breunig expounded: "The people of the Nok culture must have come from somewhere else. So far, however, we have not found out what region, though we suspect the Sahel zone in West Africa." Champion et al. suggested that they may have come from the Central Sahara, and stated:The cultivation of pearl millet diffused from the desiccating West and Central Sahara into the West African savanna zone after 2500 BCE, in the context of southwards population movements …The presence of pearl millet without roulette decorations or chaff temper, as seen in the Nok and early Gajiganna sites, suggests that the third diffusion originated directly from the central Sahara and possibly split before reaching northern Nigeria, accounting for the differences in Nok and Gajiganna pottery.
File:West African sites with archaeobotanical remains from third to first millennium cal bc.webp|thumb|250px|West African sites with archaeobotanical remains from third to first millennium cal bc. The arrows indicate directions of pearl millet diffusion into sub-Saharan West Africa, including 5. Nok region sites.
Archaeology
The first Nok terracotta was discovered in 1928 by Colonel Dent Young, a co-owner of a mining partnership, near the village of Nok in Kaduna State, Nigeria. The terracotta was accidentally unearthed at a level of from an alluvial tin mine. Young presented the sculptures to the Museum of the Department of Mines in Jos.Fifteen years later, in 1943 near the village of Nok, in the center of Nigeria, a new series of clay figurines were discovered by accident while mining tin. A clerk in charge of the mine had found a head and had taken it back to his home for use as a scarecrow, a role that it filled for a year in a yam field. This scarecrow was eventually noticed by Bernard Fagg who at the time was an administrative officer who had studied archaeology at the University of Cambridge. Fagg noticed that the head on the scarecrow looked similar to the sculpture that Young had found. He traveled to Jos where Young showed Fagg other recently uncovered terracotta figures. Eventually it became clear that the tin mining in Nok and Jema'a areas was revealing and destroying archaeological material.
Preliminary excavations at the beginning of January 1961 began near a remote valley named Taruga near the village of Takushara. The trial excavations took place during a period of eight days. The finds included objects of wrought iron, a quantity of iron slag, fragments of tuyere, pottery, figurine fragments, red ocher, quartz hammer-stones, and small concentrations of charcoal. The most famous finds at the site were the pottery graters which were shallow, flat-bottomed dishes which were deeply scored inside with diced patterns to produce a sharp abrasive surface. These pottery graters were probably used for food preparation. In the preliminary excavation a proton magnetometer survey was used to try and locate furnaces. The survey revealed a total of 61 magnetic anomalies which were mostly located in a flat, central area which probably indicated the limits of actual occupation. Twenty of the anomalies revealed concentrations of slag and nine of them contained in situ structures of furnace walls and bases. The most common type of artefact found was domestic pottery which can be divided into two different types. One type are bowls or shallow basins without lips and the other are globular pots which have averted lips. Because of this preliminary excavation, the Nok Culture would start being regarded as belonging to the Iron Age.
In 1989, German scientists were working in northeastern Nigeria's Chad Basin as part of a cooperative project between the University of Maiduguri located in Borno State, Nigeria, and archaeologists of Goethe University Frankfurt. This project examined the beginnings of sedentary farming societies in the Chad Basin. Questions arose about whether there were other societies like those in the Chad Basin, and these questions led the team to investigate the Nok Culture. In the early steps of the Frankfurt Nok Project, researchers had difficulty finding sites to excavate. The team began collaborating with Umaru Yusuf Potiskum and they started finding distinct Nok culture sites, although most were looted. Scientific field work began in 2005 to systematically investigate Nok archaeological sites and to better understand Nok terracotta sculptures within their Iron Age archaeological context, and was subsequently concluded in 2021.
Sculptures
The function of Nok terracotta sculptures is still unknown. For the most part, the terracotta is preserved in the form of scattered fragments. That is why Nok art is well known today only for the heads, both male and female, whose hairstyles are particularly detailed and refined. The statues are in fragments because the discoveries are usually made from alluvial mud, in terrain made by the erosion of water. The terracotta statues found there are hidden, rolled, polished, and broken. Rarely are works of great size conserved intact making them highly valued on the international art market.The terracotta figures are hollow, coil built, nearly life sized human heads and bodies that are depicted with highly stylized features, abundant jewelry, and varied postures. Because of the homogeneous composition of the scultptures across the Nok cultural, in contrast to the varying compositions of Nok pottery, it is thought that Nok sculpture was made from a few clay deposits, suggesting a centralized and specialized production.
Little is known of the original function of the pieces, but theories include ancestor portrayal, grave markers, and charms to prevent crop failure, infertility, and illness. Also, based on the dome-shaped bases found on several figures, they could have been used as finials for the roofs of ancient structures.
Margaret Young-Sanchez, Associate Curator of Art of the Americas, Africa, and Oceania in The Cleveland Museum of Art, explains that most Nok ceramics were shaped by hand from coarse-grained clay and subtractively sculpted in a manner that suggests an influence from wood carving. After some drying, the sculptures were covered with slip and burnished to produce a smooth, glossy surface. The figures are hollow, with several openings to facilitate thorough drying and firing. The firing process most likely resembled that used today in Nigeria, in which the pieces are covered with grass, twigs, and leaves and burned for several hours.
As a result of natural erosion and deposition, Nok terracottas were scattered at various depths throughout the Sahel grasslands, causing difficulty in the dating and classification of the mysterious artifacts. Luckily, two archaeological sites, Samun Dukiya and Taruga, were found containing Nok art that had remained unmoved. Radiocarbon and thermo-luminescence tests dated the sculptures to a range of dates between about 2,900 and 2,000 years ago, making them some of the oldest in Western Africa. Many further dates were retrieved in the course of new archaeological excavations, extending the beginnings of the Nok tradition even further back in time.
Because of the similarities between the two sites, archaeologist Graham Connah believes that "Nok artwork represents a style that was adopted by a range of iron-using farming societies of varying cultures, rather than being the diagnostic feature of a particular human group as has often been claimed."
Nok people may have developed terracotta sculptures through large-scale economic production. Among Nok terracotta sculptures at Pangwari, there are sculptures portraying a large teeth-bearing therianthropic figure and the torso of a seated figure wearing a belt around their waist and a necklace, which had added features ; there are also sculptures portraying the head of a human figure that has a bird beak and the head of a male figure with a seashell on it, which may have been created by the same sculptor. Additionally, there are sculptures portraying figures wielding slingshots, as well as bows and arrows, which may be indicative of Nok people engaging in the hunting, or trapping, of untamed animals.
One Nok sculpture portrays two individuals, along with their goods, in a dugout canoe. Both of the anthropomorphic figures in the watercraft are paddling. The Nok terracotta depiction of a dugout canoe may indicate that Nok people utilized dugout canoes to transport cargo, along tributaries of the Niger River, and exchanged them in a regional trade network. The Nok terracotta depiction of a figure with a seashell on its head may indicate that the span of these riverine trade routes may have extended to the Atlantic coast. In the maritime history of Africa, there is the earlier Dufuna canoe, which was constructed approximately 8000 years ago in the northern region of Nigeria; as the second earliest form of water vessel known in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Nok terracotta depiction of a dugout canoe was created in the central region of Nigeria during the first millennium BCE.
Based on evidence from the sites of Nok archaeological culture, such as considerable quantities of charcoal layered among Nok sculptures, goods found in burial pits that support the view of them serving as grave sites, difference in soil coloring of burial pits and their immediate geographic area, and burial pits containing materials from organic substances, this supports the conclusion that Nok sculptures were part of a complex funerary culture.
Excluding ancient Egyptian figurative art, Nok sculptures are regarded to be the most early, large figurative art in continental Africa. Later artistic traditions of West Africa: Bura of Niger, Koma of Ghana, Igbo-Ukwu of Nigeria, Jenne-Jeno of Mali, and Ile Ife of Nigeria – may have been shaped by the earlier West African clay terracotta tradition of the Nok culture.