The document summarizes the history and significance of Ife and Nok sculptures from Nigeria. It describes how the Ife produced naturalistic terracotta, stone, brass and copper sculptures between the 12th-15th centuries, depicting royal figures and ideals of beauty. It also discusses the accidental 1943 discovery of Nok terracotta figures dating back to 500 BC, which revealed an early civilization that mysteriously vanished around 200 AD, leaving behind advanced sculptures.

1.  The figurative terracotta sculptures, which represent the largest group of works,
capture the diverse nature of Ife society at the time.
 In Ife, two groves in particular have revealed numerous sculptures: the Ore Grove
with its stone monoliths, human and animal figures and the Iwinrin Grove which is
associated with terracotta heads and fragments from life-size figures.

2.  Other heads are almost life-size copper alloy heads which
reveal an idealized, naturalistic uniformity although each
head has notable individual characteristics. It is suggested
that they were produced over a relatively short period of
time, maybe in a single workshop.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWLJ8d5_Ygc
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS-59lMs03s

3. Oni Head with Crown 12-15th Cent. Bronze Ife Nigeria
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/Z1CgMudYTJWzpTi-TW1IAA

4. Ife is rightly regarded as the birthplace of
some of the highest achievements of
African art and culture, combining
technical accomplishment with strong
aesthetic appeal. From the 12th to the
15th centuries, Ife flourished as a powerful,
cosmopolitan and wealthy city- state in
West Africa, in what is now modern
Nigeria. It was an influential center of
trade connected to extensive local and
long-distance trade networks which
enabled the region to prosper. Ife
developed a refined and highly naturalistic
sculptural tradition in stone, terracotta,
brass and copper-alloy to create a style
unlike any in Africa at the time.

5.  Head of a Queen, Ife 12th - 15th Century Nigeria
These include human heads and figures
depicting idealized crowned royalty and
their attendants, as well as images of
diseased, deformed, or captive persons. The
delicately rendered vertical facial striations
that appear on many of the sculptures may
represent scarification patterns.

6. Oduduwa, Olofin Adimula, Emperor
and First Suzerain of the Yoruba, was
the Oba of Ile-Ife. His name,
phonetically written by Yoruba language-
speakers as Odùduwà and sometimes
contracted as Odudua or Oòdua, is generally
ascribed to the ancestral dynasty
of Yorubaland (spanning across Nigeria, Benin
and Togo) due to the fact that he is held by
the Yoruba to have been the ancestor of their
numerous crowned kings

7. The discovery of terracotta figurines at this location caused its name to be used for
the Nok culture, of which these figurines are typical, which flourished in Nigeria in the
period 1000 BC - 500 AD.[1] The artifacts were discovered in 1943 during mining
operation http://nokculture.com/

8. Nok Terracotta's

9. • The seated Tada figure, dated to the late thirteenth or early
fourteenth century and named for the village in which it was found,
is one of the finest works in this tradition. It is hollow-cast and, at
fifty-four centimeters tall, half-life size. The sculpture was cast in
several separate pourings.
• By the time the art world first learned of this piece, it had been
reintegrated into contemporary ritual practice. The sculpture of the
seated man was scrubbed every Friday with gravel from the Niger's
riverbed by Tada villagers, who believed that this ritual would ensure
their own fertility and that of the fish on which they subsist. The abraded
surface of the Tada man is the result of this weekly ritual scrubbing

10. Nok history
 Nok village is located in Kaduna State. It is about 160 kilometres northeast of
Baro. The Nok civilisation was discovered in 1943 due to tin mining that was
happening in the area and earned its name due to the Nok civilisation that used to
inhabit the area from around 500 BC. Mysteriously the people of the village
vanished in about 200 AD.
These people were known for their extremely advanced social system and were
the earliest producers of life-sized Terracotta in the Sub-Sahara. Hugely historical,
archaeologists have found human skeletons, stone tools and rock paintings
around this area, not to mention the main act. The inhabitants of what is now
called Nok Village, were known to make some of the oldest and culturally
intriguing sculptures found in Africa.

11. 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 worker had found a head
and had taken it back to his home for use as a scarecrow, a role that it filled
(successfully) for a year in a yam field. It then drew the attention of the director of
the mine who bought it. He brought it to the city of Jos and showed it to the
trainee civil administrator, Bernard Fagg, an archaeologist who immediately
understood its importance

12. Based on discoveries that have been found in an increasingly larger
area, including the Middle Niger Valley and the Lower Benue Valley,
the physiologist and engineer A. O. Olubunmi argues that proto-
Yorubas were the creators of the Nok civilization. He attributes the
mystery of the disappearance of the Nok civilization to the
disappearance of Yorubas from northern Nigeria due to massacre,
expulsion and racial assimilation prior to and following the arrival of
Islam
 https://africa.si.edu/
 https://www.africa.com/countries/nigeria/museum-guide/ In Nigeria there are
many museums. For decades, Nigerian people have valued the formality of the
museum to help preserve culture and teach people about their art and traditions.

13. If you’ve enjoyed the early Art from
Nigeria, check the art from the 14th
– 18th Century (see the Owo, Ijebu, and
Yoruba people of Nigeria.