Nok Terracottas
Author: Bernard Fagg
Publisher: National Museum Lagos
Published: 1977
Total Pages: 218
ISBN-13:
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Author: Bernard Fagg
Publisher: National Museum Lagos
Published: 1977
Total Pages: 218
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAuthor: Peter Breunig
Publisher: Africa Magna Verlag
Published: 2014-10-15
Total Pages: 103
ISBN-13: 3937248463
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book provides insights into the archaeological context of the Nok Culture in Nigeria (West Africa). It was first published in German accompanying the same-titled exhibition “Nok – Ein Ursprung afrikanischer Skulptur” at the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung in Frankfurt (30th October 2013 – 23rd March 2014) and has now been translated into English. A team of archaeologists from the Goethe University Frankfurt/Main has been researching the Nok Culture since 2005. The results are now presented to the public. The Nok Culture existed for about 1500 years – from around the mid-second millennium BCE to the turn of the Common Era. It is mainly known by the elaborate terracotta sculptures which were likewise the focus of the exhibition. The research of the archaeologists from Frankfurt, however, not only concerns the terracotta figures. They investigate the Nok Culture from a holistic perspective and put it into the larger context of the search for universal developments in the history of mankind. Such a development – important because it initiated a new era of the past – is the transition from small groups of hunters and gatherers to large communities with complex forms of human co-existence. This process took place almost everywhere in the world in the last 10,000 years, although in very different ways. The Nok Culture represents an African variant of that process. It belongs to a group of archaeological cultures or human groups, who in part subsisted on the crops they were growing and lived in mostly small but permanent settlements in the savanna regions south of the Sahara from the second millennium BCE onwards. The discovery of metallurgy is the next turning point in the development of the first farming cultures. In Africa the first metal used was not copper or bronze as in the Near East and Europe, but iron. The people of the Nok Culture were among the first that produced iron south of the Sahara. This happened in the first millennium BCE – about 1000 years after the agricultural beginning. While iron metallurgy spread rapidly across sub-Saharan Africa, the terracotta sculptures remained a cultural monopoly of the Nok Culture. Nothing comparable existed in Africa outside of Ancient Egypt and the Mediterranean coast. The oldest, securely dated clay figures date back to the early first millennium BCE. Currently, it seems as if they appeared in the Nok Culture before iron metallurgy, reaching their peak in the following centuries. At the end of the first millennium BCE they disappeared from the scene. There is hardly any doubt about the ritual character of the Nok sculptures. Yet, central questions remain unanswered: Why did such an apparently complex world of ritual practices develop in an early farming culture just before or at the beginning of the momentous invention of iron production? Why were the elaborate sculptures – as excavations show – intentionally destroyed? And why did they disappear as suddenly as they emerged?
Author: Graham Connah
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2004-08-19
Total Pages: 214
ISBN-13: 113440302X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKForgotten Africa introduces the general reader and beginning student to Africa's past, emphasizing those aspects only known or best known from archaeological and related evidence. It covers four million years of history across the continent, examining important aspects of Africa's momentous human story. Graham Connah is concerned to raise public awareness, both inside and outside Africa, to this frequently overlooked and often forgotten subject. Forgotten Africa examines: * human origins, * the material culture of hunter gatherers * the beginnings of African farming, the development of metallurgy * the emergence of distinctive artistic traditions * the growth of cities and states * the expansion of trading networks * the impact of European and other external contacts. The result is a fascinating and important story told in a straightforward and readable manner.
Author: Kevin Shillington
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2005
Total Pages: 1112
ISBN-13: 1579582451
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOffers more than one thousand entries covering all aspects of African history, civilization, and culture.
Author: Marla Berns
Publisher:
Published: 1989
Total Pages: 36
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAuthor: Francois G Richard
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-07-01
Total Pages: 333
ISBN-13: 1315428997
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe collective inquiries in this volume address ethnicity in ancient Africa as social fact and political artifact along numerous dimensions. Is ethnicity a useful analytic? What can archaeology say about the kinds of deeper time questions which scholars have asked of identities in Africa? Eleven authors engage with contemporary anthropological, historical and archaeological perspectives to examine how ideas of self-understanding, belonging, and difference in Africa were made and unmade. They examine how these intersect with other salient domains of social experience: states, landscapes, discourses, memory, technology, politics, and power. The various chapters cover broad geographic and temporal ground, following an arc across Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and East Africa, spanning from prehistory to the colonial period.
Author: Heather A. Von Manowski
Publisher:
Published: 1971
Total Pages: 116
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAuthor: Avner Shakarov
Publisher: McFarland
Published: 2015-07-06
Total Pages: 171
ISBN-13: 0786498749
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe art of sub-Saharan Africa reveals the marvelous achievements of unknown artists over thousands of years. Their aesthetic ideal finds form in wood, ivory, fabric, bronze and iron. This illustrated study of traditional African art includes pieces from Western Sudan, the Congolese Basin, the Guinea coast, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo and East and South Africa. Each piece is characterized by its own traditions and artistic forms. The earliest works date from the beginning of the first millennium, the most recent from the early 20th century. Unique and rare examples are documented, many heretofore virtually unknown.
Author: John Onians
Publisher: Laurence King Publishing
Published: 2004
Total Pages: 364
ISBN-13: 1856693775
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCombines a survey of world art with maps showing the associations and dissemination of culture across the globe.
Author: Bernard de Grunne
Publisher: Vilo Publishing
Published: 1998
Total Pages: 134
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis unique book presents sculptures from the Nok, Sokoto and Katsina cultures of Nigeria in fascinating detail. The terra-cotta statues, which date from 600BC to 300AD, are the oldest traces of the remarkable tradition of sculpture in sub-Saharan Africa. Varying in size from four-inch miniature amulets to monumental seated and kneeling sculptures, often of kings, priests or soothsayers, the statues also display the very rich variety of headdresses, beads, necklaces and bracelets that existed within these cultures. This book brings is a synthesis of the discoveries made since the groundbreaking 1977 study by Bernard Fagg. An essay on dating methods -- carbon dating and thermoluminescence -- provides the most recent results, as well as detailing new cross-dating techniques. A classification of poses common to the sculptures, and parallel photographic evidence of the continuing decorative tradition, enhance the academic value of this definitive work.