Nok Terracotta

The first pieces were recovered in the 1920s and 1930s during tin mining on and around the Jos Plateau, where alluvial workings brought fragments to the surface near the village of Nok. Because so much of the material came from disturbed mining ground rather than undisturbed layers, its context was often lost. Dated by some estimates to a long span running from roughly the middle of the first millennium BC into the first millennium AD, the sculpture is associated by archaeologists with early iron-working communities in the area. No settled line of descent to any specific modern ethnic group has been established, and claims of direct continuity should be treated as unproven.

The figures were built up from coarse clay containing sand and gravel, modelled by hand rather than moulded, sometimes hollowed and pierced so they would not burst, and fired at relatively low temperatures. Heads are often disproportionately large, with pierced eyes, nostrils and mouths, elaborate coiffures and beadwork rendered in clay. Most surviving pieces are fragments, and full figures are rare.

What the sculptures were made for is not known with confidence; funerary, commemorative and shrine functions have all been proposed by archaeologists. Their importance is as evidence that communities in central Nigeria were producing sophisticated sculpture and working iron very early, and the material has also been badly affected by looting, which destroys the archaeological context on which interpretation depends.

The sculpture belongs to the deep history covered in pre-colonial Nigeria, and much of it surfaced through the tin mining field of the Jos Plateau.