Development of complex societies in sub-Saharan Africa: The Nigerian Nok Culture

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This long-term project, designed for 12 years, has been researching significant aspects of the Nigerian Nok Culture since 2009. Surveys, excavations and comprehensive data analyses have made considerable contributions with respect to chronology, settlement pattern and structure, subsistence and environment, iron metallurgy, material culture, and distribution area. The 1500-year long Nok Culture begins around 1500 BCE as a Later Stone Age farming complex, with pearl millet being the most important crop. The sophisticated terracotta sculptures, for which the Nok Culture is also known outside of the archaeological community, first appear around 900 BCE – often in deposits in close proximity to grave features. Thus, the terracottas’ function is connected with burial and mortuary rituals. The first Nok iron-smelting furnaces date some centuries later; they are not – as previously thought – temporally connected with the terracotta figurines. The Nok Culture’s decline begins around 400 BCE; some centuries later Nok terracotta and Nok pottery disappear completely. With the comprehensive excavations, the large amount of collected data, the modern scientific methods used, the high number of C14 dates, and the large range of subjects researched, the Nok Culture is among the best-investigated archaeological complexes in West Africa. Excavations are completed, the focus of the final three project years is on the concluding analyses and publications with regard to settlement pattern (WP 4), structure and chronology of Nok sites (WP 1-3) and the material culture (WP 5-7), and on the analysis, organization, long-term storage, and public availability of all project data. The major objective of the archaeobotanical team is to develop a model for subsistence and landscape change from the beginning of the Nok Culture around 1500 BCE until the first centuries CE. By using botanical macro-remains and chemical residue analysis in potsherds we will study the adaptations of the Early Nok settlers to a new, more humid environment (WP 8), the potential landscape degradation in the Middle Nok period (900-400 BCE) and its role for the decline of the Nok Culture after 400 BCE (WP 9), and innovations after the end of the Nok Culture in the first centuries CE (WP 10).