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The Nok civilization appeared in Nigeria around 1000 B.C. and mysteriously vanished in the late first millennium A.D., perhaps because of disease or famine. Today, the civilization’s social system appears to have been extremely advanced, considering that the rest of Africa was just entering the Neolithic age. Some theorize that the Nok civilization is a direct descendent of the Egyptian civilization. The Nok civilization was considered to be the greatest sub-Saharan producer of Terra Cotta.
Nok Civilization
Some have postulated that the Nok are an immediate descendent of the Ancient Egyptians. This would explain a part of the maturity of this civilization, considered the oldest producer of terra cotta in addition to being one of the greatest in the Sub-Saharan. The pieces of art that have been preserved for us through time, in the form of spectacular terra cotta, express the advanced technology of the potters in the fields of cooking and ceramics as well as the great quality of artists and sculptors. The subjects of the art are principally of dignitaries, leaders, animals, and reliquaries preserved, for the most part, in the form of scattered fragments. That is why Nok art is well known today only for the heads, both male and female, whose hairstyles are particularly detailed and refined. The statues are in fragments because the discoveries are usually made from alluvial mud, in terrain made by the erosion of water. The terra cotta statues found there are hidden, rolled, polished, and broken. Rarely are works of great size conserved intact; this explains their high value on the black market.
Nok1.jpg|left|180p|Female Statue ''Height 48 cm Age: 900 to 1,500 years'']]
History of Rediscovery
The Nok civilization was rediscovered in 1929 on the Jos Plateau during research on mineral layers. The first pieces were unearthed but then forgotten. In 1932, a group of 11 statues in perfect condition were discovered near the city of Sokoto. Since that time, statues coming from the city of Katsina were brought to light.
Later still, 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. He asked all of the miners to inform him of all of their discoveries and was able to amass more than 150 pieces. Afterwards, Bernard and Angela Fagg ordered systematic excavations that revealed many more profitable lucky finds dispersed over a vast area, much larger than the original site. In 1977, the number of terra cotta objects discovered in the course of the mining excavation amounted to 153 units, mostly from secondary deposits (the statuettes had been carted by floods near the valleys) situated in dried-up riverbeds in savannahs in Northern and Central Nigeria (the Southwestern portion of the Jos Plateau).
Later, new discoveries had been found in an increasingly larger area, including the Middle Niger Valley and the Lower Benue Valley.
Descendant of an Older Culture?
The first history of Africa was written in terra cotta. The oldest figures found were made of earth. The great age, the oldest being up to 3,000 years (dating by thermoluminescence tests), was initially explained by a lack of materials. Over the course of history metals were melted and reformed and wood became the prey of termites. Terra cotta, seen as being of minimal value, was rarely employed again.
Terra cotta had the other advantage of being able to be worked by bare hands, without tools. For millennia, utilitarian pottery was used for such things as cooking. Certain works were sun-dried; others were cooked in the ashes of an open hearth, in the vicinity of 300°C, still others at higher temperatures for more durability. Artisans who worked around the Nok used the same material they used for their utility pottery for their model figurines, a coarse grain clay.
Certain statues could reach 1.20 meters, suggesting an excellent control of modeling techniques such as cooking in open air. As many of the statues are hollow, the sculptors took care to maintain an equal thickness in all parts and hollowed out the parts that could have exploded when fired.
Nok2.jpg|right|180p|Nok rider and horse ''Height: 53 cm Age: 1,400 to 2,000 years'']]
This technical skill, like the stylistic control noted in these works, suggests that Nok art could have been the descendant of an already long artistic tradition. Nowhere does one detect experimentation. The characteristics of the style are already precise. The eye draws the attention by its importance. It is sometimes an arc and sometimes a triangle above which an eyebrow counterbalances the curve of the higher eyelid.
Trans-Saharan Commerce
The sub-Saharan region of Africa at that time was divided into two large zones: the savannah, where small communities of farmers lived in northern fertile regions with favorable agriculture, and the tropical forest which covered the majority of the southern zone where hunter-gatherers lived along the coastal areas.
About 2,500 years ago, the populations of Northern Africa were forced south by drought (with women, children, cattle, weapons, and luggage) to the Gulf of Guinea and the south of the continent. They introduced a new way of life because these tribes grew grain and vegetables and raised cows, sheep, and goats. The men knew metallurgy (iron); each group had its own ceramic style. It was the beginning of the Iron Age in Africa and the Nok culture was the first known iron-working community in Western Africa. Merchants probably began to cross the Sahara in the course of the first millennium BC with horse-drawn chariots. The West Africans exchanged gold, slavery, ivory, salted animal products, cloth, ceramic, glass, fruits, and horses. Impressed by this last animal, Nok artists modeled statuettes of riders, dignitaries on horseback, pieces today that are very rare and of great value on the art market.
References
Most of this article was originally a translation of this version of fr:Nok (civilisation) in the French-language Wikipedia.
External links
"Nok"