New Interpretations And Explorations Into the Nok Culture.

In 1928 alluvial tin miners on Nigeria's Jos Plateau, right outside the village of Nok, made a discovery that would alter the course of African art history. They discovered a small terracotta head, part of a then-unknown artistic tradition. Bernard Fagg would lead subsequent archaeological excavations that would reveal more figurative terracotta sculptures. Stylized images of human beings, animals, and fantastic beasts richly adorned with beads, bracelets, capes, and in true African style elaborately arranged hairstyles. Evidence Iron smelting was soon found at the nearby village of Taruga. The original set of radiocarbon dates would situate both the Nok iron smelting and figurative sculpture tradition between 500 BCE and 200 C.E. This made them the earliest known artistic and ironworking culture in Subsaharan Africa yet discovered. The works are rich in symbolism and complexity. One iconic example shows interconnected figures with alternating sex characteristics (breasts and beards), their simply sculpted arms holding up what appears to be a pangolin. Their bodies meld into a column. On it are intricate reliefs of drummers, hunters, and one of the oldest sculpted depictions of a woman nursing a child in Subsaharan Africa. Such rich iconography and beautifully articulated details would be common features in later sculptural traditions across the continent. The techniques used to create these works suggest that they may be part of an artistic tradition that also included woodcarving. When these pieces were first dated, they appeared to suddenly enter the archeological record fully formed around 500 B.C.E and disappear 700 years later. Early excavations showed no evidence of a formative period or gradual development and decline in techniques. The Nok culture seemed to be an anomaly separated from other sophisticated African artistic cultures by over a millennium. Though often treated as an enigma, many aspects of Nok sculpture are familiar with forms of artistic expression seen across the African continent and in the African diaspora through time and space. The sculptures' elaborate and painstakingly detailed coiffure was still commonly worn in the region when they were first unearthed in the 20th century. Many of them are still worn today by Black people across the globe. The copious strands of tubular stone beads depicted in artworks and found at these sites were common jewelry in West Africa thousands of years after the Nok sculptures were made. The same is also true of hats, bracelets, and other accessories associated with Nok adornment.
Nok Carytadid Figure
Nok Fgurine with elaborate cornrow hairstyle
Since the first archeological surveys of the Nok cultural area, much has been revealed. More recent excavations in the region have established the origins of the Nok culture over 1000 years prior to the original dates provided by Fagg. Around 1500 BCE, the earliest settlements associated with the nok culture were established by agriculturalists farming pearl millet. The center for domestication for this crop lies within the Sahel zone of West Africa, suggesting that the ancestors of these peoples may have migrated from these regions. The earliest sites include elaborately decorated and sophisticatedly molded pottery. Recent excavations in Ounjougou, Mali in the niger delta have yielded samples of pottery dated to the 10th-millennium B.C.E (9,500-9000 B.C), Making the West African ceramic tradition one of the oldest in the world and already ancient at the time of the early Nok period. Fragments of figurative sculptures were found, but the sites are too disturbed by illegal excavations to date them adequately. Present evidence suggests that these fragments are not connected to this early period in the Nok artistic tradition. The oldest figurative sculptures appear as early as the 10th and 9th gesture B.C.E ( between 950 and 850 BCE). The majority of the iconic Nok figurative terra cotta pieces date between the 10th century and the beginning of the 4th-century B.C.E during what Archeologists are now called the middle nok period. Analysis of styles and techniques utilized has allowed for a limited periodization of these middle Nok artifacts over the 500 years they were produced. Images of boats among the sculptures recovered from these sites suggest that riverine transportation was used for people and goods. The remnants of megalithic stone walls with bases cut carefully and skillfully from granite basements enclosing mountain peak settlements show evidence of a sophisticated architectural tradition. Between the 4th century B.C.E and the Ist Century C.E, new reports show that there was a drastic decrease in the production of sculpture in the region. No artifacts showing characteristics unifying the pottery styles of the early (1500-950/850 B.C.E), middle (950/850 B.C.E - 400 B.C.E), and late (400 B.C.E - 1 C.E) Nok artifacts have yet been discovered with dates after the first century C.E. This evidence suggests that a recalibrated chronology of the Nok cultural complex dates between 1500 B.C.E and the first-century C.E.
Nok Relief depicting boatmen in a dugout canoe:
Subsequent archeological digs from other parts of West Africa show the Nok culture was not as anomalous as once thought. Southeast of the Nok plateau, evidence of iron metallurgy in Igboland at Lejja and Opi has yielded dates between 2000 B.C.E and 750 B.C.E. However, these dates are controversial. More conservative dates to the start of the West African iron age date to the 9th-century B.C.E, making the nok people one of a number of ironworking cultures in Subsaharan Africa at the time. Excavation in Mauretania and Mali has yielded early urban and proto-urban sites dating back as far as the middle of the second millennium B.C.E . Some of these sites ( such as those on the Tagant cliffs of Mauritania) utilize defensive dry stone masonry similar to those seen in middle Nok sites. Some contemporary historians and linguists such as Chris Ehret have opined that technologies associated with woodcarving, drum making, cloth, and basket weaving were already in use by West Africans long before the early Nok period, suggesting there there may have a even richer artistic tradition in more perishable materials used by the Nok and their yet to be known neighbors.