Why is metal so significant in Africa? Here are some context and reasons why.

1. Jessica Moore & Edice Hua

2. .
1. Origins and Spread
.
2. The Meroitic connection
.
3. The Carthaginian connection
.
4. The Local Connection
.
5. Early Ironworking in Nigeria

3. • The region of West Africa has undeniably been the
subject of much richer ethnographic and
archaeological research by both Europeans and
Africans, from the days of Mungo Park (1813) to
the ethnographic present, than have other parts of
Africa.
• Abundant data have been gathered about West
African Metallurgical technology, and the region
has been long recognized by researchers as being
particularly suited to iron technology.
• Although some antique origins were theorized for
iron production in West Africa, little archaeological
information, from which to construct any type of
chronological framework for the industry, existed
until the recognition of the Nok Culture in central
Nigeria.
Mungo Park

4. • The terracotta figurines that have been recovered from the
Nok Valley were found mixed, in the same alluvial deposits,
with items such as polished stone axes and iron fragments.
The archaeological context were unclear and unsafe to
consider them belonging to the same period until
association was established ‘in situ’ typically means "in the
reaction mixture."
• This happened in 1960 with the excavations at Taruga and
the finding of iron, Nok terracottas and domestic debris in
good association, dated to the late first millennium B.C.
making it clear the region was producing its own iron by
atleast 4th century B.C.
– The early dates undoubtedly make the Taruga iron-
smelting furnaces the earliest ones known in West
Africa.
• There are some specialists on this subject that have seen
evidence of an independent invention of iron metallurgy in
West Africa, but there are others who have studied the
technical aspects of the question, and have argued that this
is unlikely except in
Mauritania, West Africa had no Bronze Age.
• Everywhere in Africa, south of the Sahara, the use of iron
succeeds the use of stone for implements and weapons
everywhere else in Africa south of the Sahara. Without any
intermediate copper and bronze metallurgy, it is difficult to
see how late Stone Age people could have discovered the
use of iron by themselves and mastered it so quickly
without any outside influence.

5. • The discovery of iron and steel is said to have taken place among
the Calybes of Armenia, about the end of the first half of the second
millennium B.C., and the knowledge of ironworking in all of Europe
and Western Asia by 100 B.C. became fairly general throughout
South-West Asia.
• Iron appears to have been rare in Egypt and was used mainly for
magical and ornamental purposes, prior to the seventh century B.C.
• During the Saite period (665–525 B.C.) iron manufacturing became
evident in Egypt. Iron came into general use in Egypt later, that is, by
the fifth century B.C.
• Based mostly on excavations of royal cemeteries from 450 B.C. to
the fourth century A.D., there is a complete archaeological sequence
for Meroe. Iron objects that are dated 750 B.C. to c. 400 B.C. tend to
be small and infrequent.

6. • The presence of iron objects predating 400 B.C. at Napata is evidence of
trade, since there is no positive evidence of iron production.
• It was not until the end of Meroitic power in A.D. 350 that the nature of iron
objects changed. Iron technology turned to tool manufacture and large-
scale production, thereby increasing productivity.
• It is believed that the Meroites first started to produce iron, that the early
Iron Age phase at Meroe is represented by small brown furnaces found at a
level immediately above one dated at 280 B.C.
•
• These furnaces are not at all similar to Taruga (archaeological site in Nigeria)
shaft furnaces. Conclusions about the sequence of iron technology at
Meroe, the dates for ironworking at Taruga and the dissimilarity of Taruga
and early Meroitic iron-smelting furnaces, make it improbable that Meroe
was a centre of iron technology distribution to West Africa.
• Consideration the Meroitic culture to have been exclusively oriented
towards the Nile River on the basis of the fact that no Meroitic material has
been found further west than the banks of the Nile.

7. • Daima is one of the few fairly well documented archaeological sites in
Nigeria spanning the transition from a stone, and bone, technology to an
iron one. If indeed ironworking techniques reached West Africa from Meroe,
they must have passed through Daima.
• one would expect to find evidence of use of iron at Daima at a date much
earlier than the dates attributed to the Nok culture site of Taruga
• Present evidence does not support this. In fact, it rather suggests that iron
was being produced at Taruga some 600–800 years before it reached
Daima.
• This element and the fact that the iron industry at Meroe employed Roman-
type slag -tapping would indicate that neither iron objects nor iron
technology diffused from Meroe to the Nok, contrary to what has often
been proposed

8. The Carthagian route was
founded at the end of the
ninth century B.C by the
Phoenecians who had
settled there as early as
1100 B.C.
Interestingly, these ancient
societies used iron much
earlier than the Egyptians!

9. They even
influenced the
people from the
North Coast of
Africa (Gulf of
Gabes &
Gibaltar Strait).
Amazingly,
radiocarbon dates
for an early Iron
Age have also been
set for the savanna
belt, especially
Jenne-Jeno in the
inland Niger Delta
in Mali. (pp. 37)
.

10. With all the resources gathered and analyzed, it is
becoming increasingly evident that the diffusionist theory,
tends to be simplistic.
.
How ironworking actually arose south of the Sahara
remains unclear.
The new evidence for copper working preceding iron
metallurgy in Niger may turn out to be important, but
scholars are still far from understanding the social and
economic context that precipitated this important
technological transformation

11. With all the resources gathered
and analyzed, it is becoming
increasingly evident that the
diffusionist theory, tends to be
simplistic.
How ironworking actually arose
south of the Sahara remains
unclear.
The new evidence for copper working
preceding iron metallurgy in Niger may turn
out to be important, but scholars are still far
from understanding the social and economic
context that precipitated this important
technological transformation.
The fact that there is no evidence of
metallurgical know-how prior to
knowledge of iron metallurgy in the Nok
culture and Opi areas cannot be used as
an argument against a local development
of iron technology.
Thus, it impossible for an Iron Age
to have developed without passing
through copper and bronze
metallurgy.

12. 1
•Presence of furnaces found in Taruga (archeological site in Nigeria)
that were distinctive from the Meroitic furnaces.
2
•Surprisingly, this shows advancement in technology.
3
•One more important thing to take note of: the inquiries conducted
by archeologists and linguistics has revealed that, in the savanna
region of northern Nigeria and indeed most parts of Nigeria and
West Africa in general, iron technology has been widespread and
abundant for over twenty-five centuries, in other words since
before the coming of the Europeans, CONTRARY to some of the
early European literature to the effect that West Africans had no
knowledge of iron until the arrival of the white man.

13. The establishment of British rule in
Nigeria put an end to this once
prosperous local industry.
Everywhere the inhabitants were
forced to abandon the traditional
art of iron smelting in favour of the
cheaper iron imported from Europe.

14. • Hamady, Bocoum. "The Beginnings of
Iron Metallurgy in West Africa-Joseph
Fazing Jemkur." In The origins of iron
metallurgy in Africa: new light on its
antiquity: West and Central Africa.
Paris: UNESCO, 2004.