Development of complex societies in sub-Saharan Africa: The Nigerian Nok Culture
Final Report Abstract
The DFG long-term project "Development of complex societies in sub-Saharan Africa: The Nigerian Nok Culture" focused on the question of whether the Nok culture represents one of the earliest complex societies in sub-Saharan Africa. The assumption was based on the elaborate terracotta figurines, whose origin before the work of the project hardly seemed explainable without a stratified social community. To investigate this, 84 excavations were carried out, including large-scale settlement excavations, selected from almost 500 localised and securely classified Nok sites. They provided extensive find material and information on the nature of the sites and set the stage for addressing the core themes of the project. These included chronology, settlement patterns and social structure, economy and environment, distribution, regional differences, and the analysis of pottery, terracotta and stone artefacts as well as the remains of iron metallurgy. Chemical investigations dealt with the composition of the clays of terracotta figurines and pottery vessels, the sediment composition in special features and lipids in pottery vessels. 270 14C dates on organic samples of secure context and the analysis of the pottery made it possible to describe the duration and development and to redefine the complex. According to this, the Nok culture appears around 1500 BC and ends with the turn of the era. The first phase (1500-900 BC) comprises the immigration of the farming community, which mainly cultivated millet. The second phase (900-400 BC) is characterised by a sudden increase in settlement density, the beginning of the production of large quantities of terracotta sculptures and, in the more recent part, the emergence of iron metallurgy recorded by furnaces but hardly by objects. The last phase (400 BC - turn of the era) is marked by the abrupt decline of settlement activity and finally the disappearance of the Nok culture. In no case was evidence of permanent buildings found. The small amount of finds and the size of the sites, as well as the scarcity of features and the low thickness of the deposits, indicate a settlement pattern dominated by scattered settlements with houses made of perishable material. This refuted the assumption that the Nok culture was a complex society and replaced it with a model of simple, semi-sedentary farming communities with a predominantly family-based social structure. The association of terracotta depositions with graves led to the explanation of the purpose of terracotta sculptures as a component of complex burial rituals. The archaeobotanical studies included the analysis of charcoal, charred fruits and seeds and a detailed investigation of chemical residues in pottery. We found no clear evidence for animal husbandry; instead, hunting of wild animals seems to have been important. Subsistence was mainly based on pearl millet and cowpea, which the people of the Nok Culture had introduced from the North, possibly coming directly from the Central Sahara. The oil plant Canarium schweinfurthii, tuber plants and possibly the use of honey point to cultural contacts of the immigrants with autochthonous hunter-gatherers. For the first time in Africa, chemical residue analysis could show the processing of leafy vegetables. The dominance of pearl millet caryopses and the absence of pearl millet chaff in 50 studied Nok sites is remarkable and unique for the archaeobotany of West Africa. We interpret this as an indication for the use of clean grain for feasting in the context of funeral rituals. The vegetation around the Nok sites consisted of a mosaic of dry forests and savannas. Nok agriculture was based on shifting cultivation, which did not lead to a serious degradation of the environment. However, increasing wood use for iron metallurgy from the middle of the 1st millennium BC onwards might have resulted in erosion on the fields and fallows. This, together with a climate shift around 400 BC and a conservative, inflexible agricultural system contributed to the end of the Nok Culture. Only after the turn of the era, new crops appear – the cereal fonio and the oil palm – together with a new population. The long-term project has achieved its goal of comprehensively describing the Nok culture and has shown perspectives for continuing the research. Some areas, such as the graves and their connection with terracotta depositions, were only discovered after slowly growing experience due to partial preservation and rarity. Especially here, but also for the project as a whole, the successful conclusion is primarily due to long-term funding.
Publications
- (2014) Nok – African Sculpture in Archaeological Context. Africa Magna Verlag, Frankfurt/Main
Breunig, P. (Hrsg.)
- (2016) A chronology of the central Nigerian Nok Culture – 1500 BC to the beginning of the Common Era. J. Afr. Arch. 14 (3), 257–289
Franke, G.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3213/2191-5784-10297) - (2016) An outline of recent studies on the Nigerian Nok Culture. J. Afr. Arch. 14 (3), 237–255
Breunig, P. & Rupp, N.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3213/2191-5784-10298) - (2016) Nok early iron production in central Nigeria – new finds and features. J. Afr. Arch. 14 (3), 291–311
Junius, H.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3213/2191-5784-10299) - (2016) The Nok terracotta sculptures of Pangwari. J. Afr. Arch. 14 (3), 313–329
Männel, T. & Breunig, P.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3213/2191-5784-10300) - (2016) The palaeovegetation of Janruwa (Nigeria) and its implications for the decline of the Nok Culture. J. Afr. Arch. 14 (3), 331–353
Höhn, A. & Neumann, K.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3213/2191-5784-10296) - (2017). Early West African iron smelting: the legacy of Taruga in light of recent Nok research. Afr. Arch. Rev. 34, 321–343
Fagg Rackham, A., Franke, G., Junius, H., Männel, T.M. & Beck, C.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-017-9262-2) - (2020) Pits, pots and plants at Pangwari – Deciphering the nature of a Nok Culture site. Azania: Arch. Res. Afr. 55(2), 129–188
Franke, G., Höhn, A., Schmidt, A., Ozainne, S., Breunig, P. & Neumann, K.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/0067270X.2020.1757902) - (2021) Honey-collecting in prehistoric West Africa from 3500 years ago. Nature Comm. 12, 2227
Dunne, J., Höhn, A., Franke, G., Neumann, K., Breunig, P., Gillard, T., Walton-Doyle, C. & Evershed, R.P.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22425-4) - (2022) Making the invisible visible: tracing the origins of plants in West African cuisine through archaeobotanical and organic residue analysis. Arch. Anthropol. Sci. 14:30
Dunne, J., Höhn, A., Neumann, K., Franke, G., Breunig, P., Champion, L., Gillard, T., Walter-Doyle, C. & Evershed, R.P.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-021-01476-0)
