West AfricanForests

To a stranger, the tropical forests of west Mrica appear a uniformly for-bidding environment. The zone is in fact a mosaic of different densitiesof vegetation: some easily traversable virgin forest, some impenetrableand now seemingly ageless secondary growth, fallow farm clearingsreverting to bush, and productive farmland. The forest may have beencomparatively densely and permanently settled for many millennia. Itcan be highly productive, producing foods like yams, okra, palm oil,wine and dates, edible fish and snails, and a variety of small creatures.There was potentially profitable trade in such products as ivory, slaves,and kola nuts, one of the few stimulants allowed to Muslims.

The grave and shrines of Igbo-UkwuIgbo- Ukwu lies not far from the eastern bank of the lower Niger River.A farmer began to find many bronze objects here as he dug a cisternnear his house in 1939. This he reported to the authorities-to littleeffect. Many of the objects lay around disregarded for 20 years andmany were given away. Only in 1959 was Thurstan Shaw, a meticulouarchaeologist with wide west African experience, invited to investigatethe site.! His finds were startling: 721 metal objects were recovered.Some, including great bronze basins and other more intricatdyworked containers had it seems once stood on display in a small'" ..shelter or shrine; others were hidden together beneath a thin coYeongof soil. The richest concentration came from a single grave. The graveshaft contained the bones of five people [64].

Igbo- Ukwu posed many new problems: problems of dating, of thesources of the raw material, of the origins of the casting reehnology,and of the nature of the institutions that created so lavish a concenrra~tion of objects. The finds at Igbo-Ukwu broke all precon:~ved i~eas:that such refined technical skills and art could not ottgInate III .a

. th al . one ".jth few ifcountryWlth no known sources of e met ores, Of 111 •

any Contacts with the outside world, or in one with no hisroryo£ rop!courts to support such artistry. .ned l;u:e the. Three of the four radiocarbon dates that were obrai .pburial and shrines in the ninth to tenth centuries CJ;:. These are SO early

64Reconstruction of the burialat Igbo-Ukwu. The corpsewas sat on a stool, wearing adiadem with high sidepieceshis chest covered with a greatpectoral of hammeredcopper, his limbs with longtubular armlets and anklets.He wore several pendantsand crotals and held theceremonial insignia of a stafffan, and fly whisk. Sculpted 'staffs, swords, scabbardsand three elephant tusks'were arranged around h'H 1m.e was further adorned with

over 100,000 glass beads.

65Goilrd-sw-e-re-th-e-ba-s-is-of--

rnanyvesselshapes at lgbo-Ukwa,and actual gourdsweredecorated with bronzestrapworkandhandles.'Evel'jsurface [is] breathinglight,creating rather thanoccupyingspace, immaterialyetmassivewith energy ... aglol'jin light as agent and end... anexquisite explosionWithoutantecedent or issue'(D.Williams, Icon and Image,London,1974, 211).

that they put Igbo-Ukwu bmen. They caused parti ul eyond the reach of north African crafts-resolut I d £ c ar constemati deye ended by Sh on an argument but were

Th aw and have now sai d. e metals used atIgbo-Ukwu ill ow gam, g<n,rnl "rep""'"mgs were not made fr came from a single source' cast-L al om re-sm It d 'oc sources for the al e e or re-used mixtures of alloys.valle km met ores have b 1y, 100 east of! bo- now een ocated in the Benuew~re worked in pre-colgo 'al~' and they show evidence that theynux f ill times 3 S fU ° '"ppe', tin, and Iead th . orne ° these ore, are a """'"kwu bronzes. More that thiat match t?e compositions of the Igbo-

s, the cas tmgs all t . ally-wax casting

waxtechniused in almost alI thequIe of castingwas

obigbo-Ukwu

em. The protofinal obje type of the desiredcovered' etwas sculpted inwax and th

ill astro cl enmoltenmetal ngth ayoutercasing. The

. was enpoured'casmg to meltth into thethemetalalloy, ~waxandreplaceitwith

shape of the w::'Thch :us took the exactUkwucas' . . e tailoftheIgbo-believe tmgs IS so delicate th

a latex, possibly at manyeuphorbia, was used' from a species ofusualbee's wax.. M mstead of the more

t ostIost-wax .castmgs

are hollow castings inwhich c1aycoJeand casing are held apart bymetal pins.At Igbo-Ukwu castings were not hollowbut deeply undercut: a technique thathad ceased to be used in theMediterranean world a thousand year.;before Igbo-Ukwu. '

The most elaborate cast vessel,.scton

a st~d and enmeshed in ropework. '6.lS~~t JJJ several stages which were then)omedtngetherby brazing or burninginmore bronze: a technique not foundabroad.

nll WE.ST AFRICAN FORESTS

high proportion of silver-like the Benue ores. Silver this rich wasrefined out of all similar Mediterranean ores so that it could be fabri-cat~d into more valuable objects: so Mediterranean craftsmen wereunlikely to have been a source for the 19bo-Ukwu castings.

The surface detail of many objects is not only fine, it incorporates'''P""ntarion, of things as ,mall as in=!' that seem to have juslalighted on the surfaces [66]. There are many decorative twirls, discs,rosettes, and nets of what look like fine wire [65]. They are not theyare unexpectedly all integral parts of the castings. None were madeseparately and soldered or rivetted to the bodies of the objects.However masterful the results, to a foreign metalworker of a thousandyears ago the technology oflgbo-Ukwu would have seemed inappro--priate inefficient. and =hai" a _ng in,"",lO' of rhe isolation inwhich it had developed. Far to the north, in the tumul

usof ~intiou

Bara in Senegal and ina ""whop ofT<gda0O''' th"" are th, dight<"hints of another otherwise unknown early tradition of metalworkingand inappropriare Wsl-w.oxoMring.· Ifo;uch a milirion

did in fact """"did it have the same indigenous roots as Igbo-UkwU? . .

Prehistorians were once startled by demonstratlons that 11"on

WE.ST AF.ltlCAN fORESTS ttl}

66The bronzes of Igbo-UkwuinvIte comparison with thefinest jewellery of RococoEurope or of Carl Faberge.They are characterized aboveall by the intricacy andabundance of their detail anddecoration. They focus on thenatural world and what areusually consideredinsignificant parts of it:Insects. snails, chameleonsor newly hatched birds (as 'here), larger creatures werealso representedOCCasionally.

smelting and kiwor ng were invented d d I .the outside world . A£'.' an eve oped, independentlyol

A£. ' III west Ilca th .nca in the rezi f th III e regIon of Nok and in east

furthb,on 0 e Great L k I b Uer surprise' evid f a es. g 0- kwu now offersa

d. enceo the all' development ofa ri h d equ y III ependent invention and

IC an early Afri . . .The burial at 19b -Ukwu ncan tradition of bronze castmg.

1:[" 0 was of ith bure and death His th . a man WI a solute authority over

b. . au OIlty was tifi. db'olic system-witn d b ra e y a highly developed sym-

himesse y the m " .. He owned ve id any msigrua of office on and aroundry consr erable al h .metalwork but by th ks we t -eVIdenced not just by the

. e tus and bead M . . .extraordinary tech . al d . s. any specialist craftsmen WIthT

rue an art ti killhe Igbo today se IS. c s s were devoted to his service.'. em a people With .' .or lllStltutions that would stirn out any of the SOCIalorgamzatlons

power, supported b . ~ate such a centralization of wealth andspecialist crafts me y sTohSOp~lstIcateda symbolic system or by somany

n. ere IS hsonage who might all ,owever, at least one Igbo public per-N . par e1 the m b . dII,who is the' an une so long before him: the Eze. senior member fn~ surrounding the fertili 0 a corpora~e society concerned withWith no further politi al ty of land and WIth resolving disputes butregalia of the co c p~wer. Several aspects of the burial and of the

d. rpse are said to h .ate with the Igbo EN' ave strong parallels with those assocr

ze nor Ozo institutions.

The YorubaThe Yoruba I1:"-.: peop e of south- '.~vlllg both within th c. western Nigeria and Benin (Dahomey),

di e wrest d J thunme ately to the rth . an ill e woodland and savannadu d . no of It h I c .stere ill large t ' ave ong formed dense populanons:fi; owns and' .om Oyo in the north cmes. Many Yoruba kingdoms grew up,C iden ern savanna +0 Ow .onSI ed the most b ~o 0 ill the east. The Yoruba are{; ally ur an of all A£ .arm defined their' d . " ncan peoples. They have always

1 entlues and loyalties in tenns of their home

120 WEST AFR! CAN FORESTS

cities. As so often in Africa, the concept and label Yoruba, although ithas a linguistic validity, is a comparatively recent invention byMuslimand Christian intellectuals, providing administrative tidiness and a

source of political power.Ife (or more correctly Ile- Ife) , a comparatively modest Yoruba town

with little political, economic, or military power, has long been recog-nized by all Yoruba as having a spiritual primacy. Myths tell in greatdetail how the creator god, Oduduwa, here separated the earth from thewaters and made all sentient creatures. The institution of kingship wasestablished when the sons and daughters of Oduduwa were sent to rulethe twelve major cities of the Yoruba and beyond-as far afield as theEdo city of Benin. They became divine kings and queens. Many Yorubarulers still accept that their authority ultimately derives from the Oni(King) of Ife. During its history, lfe was several times almost entirelyabandoned. Shrines and palaces fell into decay. There was thus a loss ofcontinuity and understanding of the practices that surrounded the earlyart, its roles and significance. Nevertheless Ife more than most Yorubatowns is still a town of shrines, of sacred forest groves, of cults and fra-ternities-popularly called 'secret societies'-all dedicated to andserving different divinities within the compendious Yoruba pantheon.

5

Art in IfeGranite stelae, only minimally worked and sometimes inlaid wit~ ~onnails, and a few granite carvings are assumed to be the earliest survlVlngart ofIfe. A culture of fine craftsmanship developed. Glass beads we~emanufactured on a considerable scale but it is still unclear whether this~ncluded the making of glass or only ~e remelting and ~eworking 01Imported beads. Ceremonial stools (like those shown in brass anpottery in 68 and 69) were made from illrge blocks ofquartz-a1abo~that challenges the imagination, for their shapes are complex and thismost brittle and intractable material could not be carved but had to be

ground to shape. . h th .Buildings were substantial but the consolidated clay of whie elI

walls were made was dug up in situ so that when they decay th.eyare

h I. all . . 'bl d . r bl~t least WIthout

arc aeo OglC y almost lDVlSI e an lfreCOvea '" ~ . wallthe use of modem sensing techniques. All that remains of some hich

s

. . full d from sherds wIS a scatter of small pottery discs, care y groun 'once formed patterned mosaics on the walls:. Many reetan~arcourtyards within buildinQ'S were paved with considerable preClSl~n. . o h d laid on edge III

WI. th lines of quartz pebbles or broken pots er S dh

. . th . . colours aIJ< textureserrillgbone patterns. Frequently e contrastIng '-f

. de' tricate geollletric pato pebbles and sherds were explolte to IOrm 111. t. d rth--south or eas~sterns. Some of these courts were onente nO _.l-.~r th.th . .' _f requirements nll.l~ anWI an exactItude that pOlnts to ntulU

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