Talk:Nok culture

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Untitled

The informations about Nok are not precise in many ways. --89.59.143.132 17:24, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Don't forget the germans who started an archaeological project on Nok in 2005! I added some references.

I added more information about the Nok that I got through the French Wikipedia article. Hopefully I can finish translating some more later today, but if anybody would like to pick up where I left off and check to make sure I got everything right. Also, before I editted the article, it claimed the Nok civilization dated back to 3000 BC. The French article states 1000 BC. I did some research and I can't seem to find anything putting the date at 3000 BC - in fact, going as far as 1000 BC seemed a little liberal from what all I found.--Edaru 14:44, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

[1] - this edit was a copyright violation from [2] which I didn't note in the edit summary reverting it. --Cherry blossom tree 16:45, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

The Italian-language Wikipedia it:Nok gives the tenth century BC. I think we should go with what the French & Italian articles say (1000 BC) rather than 3000 BC, in the absence of any reliable sources. I will make that change. --Mathew5000 13:25, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

reversions

I have reverted Nok Culture to it earlier status. This version contains a more accurate map by Locutus Borg and an inclusion into the series on Northern Nigeria. please do not undo without giving appropriate reasons --Alaminalpha (talk) 22:32, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

date

I think it's pretty clear that the previous figure of "3000 BC" was a typo for "3000 years ago" - this would square with all the other figures of 1000 BC. The article, unfortunately, still needs sources. --Storkk 10:42, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Litearture

I remember there was an article about the Nok culture in Scientific American a couple of years ago (in the 80s?). Who still has a copy. Please cite. Nannus 21:25, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

bad phrase

Nok culture terracottas are heralded as the prime evidence of pre-colonial civilization in sub-Saharan Africa the above sentence is a problem, it is one of those apologiese for a racist opinion and in the apology is the assumption of racism. pre-colonial African civilizations are not in dispute to state it like this assumes that they could be any dispute to this fact and thus introduce reasonable doubt.--HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ) 21:12, 1 January 2007 (UTC) Looks fine to me, it must be your inherent favouring of unsourced statements in favour of "Nok" that is causing the problem here. 81.149.82.243 10:57, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Weasle words and condescending tone

I just realized that this artcile needs a weasle word,tag there is a lot of double speak and strange language which is almost assumping it is a mystery that Blacks could have an Iron age. Until the article can be clean this warning is needed.--Halqh حَلَقَة הלכהሐላቃህ 18:22, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't notice any condescending tone, they must of changed the edit? I'll see if I can dig up some reliable information on Nok civilization in order to contribute..Mahmud II 21:36, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

There actually seems to be no sources to claim that they were in the "Iron Age" listed here so unfortunatly that could be a problem, and in all fairness this is the only article I know claiming that Africa did have an Iron age without outside interferance. Also the article didnt seemt to be condescending in the slightest, in fact it seemed to look favourably on something with almost no sources to back up it's claims 81.149.82.243 10:55, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Removed original research

I know understand the other users frustrations:

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, slaves, 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.

there is absolutly nothing that excuses this from being called OR. It cannot stay in the article until it becomes an encyclopedic section, not original opinion. "they introduced a new way of life because these tribe grew grain" who said this, where is the ref, it is an editors opinion.--Halqh حَلَقَة הלכהሐላቃህ 18:27, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

It is far to OR to be used, also the fact that some of it isnt even slightly referencable against anything else that must exclude it from the main article. 81.149.82.243 10:57, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Dating

Why does it say that they started in 500 BC and then say that carbon dating has dated the terracotta sculptures to 2500 years ago? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.188.66.196 (talk) 23:13, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

...¿because 500 BC ~= 2500 years ago?.--Seba5618 (talk) 20:13, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Figurine of the Nok rider

The caption reads "Nok rider and horse". Were there horses in Africa in the 500BC??84.222.237.213 (talk) 14:28, 13 May 2009 (UTC) It's me again... The caption of the female statue reads: "Age: 900 to 1,500 years", which means 500 - 1100 AD, much later after the vanishing of the Nok civilization as stated in the intro (200AD). So is it or isn't it a Nok a figurine?84.222.237.168 (talk) 12:18, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

This was not a civilization

This was not a civilization, this was a culture. I changed "civilization" with "culture" throughout the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brotherboer (talk • contribs) 20:42, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

you did a good job on that. its difinatly a culture and not a civilization becasue if it was a civilization then the true name of the nation state would be known. as of now we still do not know what the nok people would have been calling them selfs as a people .in europe we find people like this that were cultures as well before the advent of civilization and also we would never learn the names of there nationalities either such as early indo european cuiltures. they were named after the sites they were discovered or a major industry like Urn field culture or La tene culture. so your correct that nok was not a civilization but a culture. it is true they were advanced to such a point that they would have been concidered civilized by other sub-saharn africans but Nok culture vanished and eventually bantu culture apears. centuries later still we have modern groups like yoruba ,Benin and igbo. 69.221.169.111 (talk) 20:04, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

"Not a civilization becasue if it was a civilization then the true name of the nation state would be known" That has nothing to do with anything. Look at the Indus Valley Civilzation, the Norte Chico Civilization, and the Erlitou Sites... Collectively considered three of the first six civilizations and we don't know their historical name because they either lacked writing or we can't decipher their writing. Anyway, there is no universally accepted criteria for what defines a civilization and it varies greatly between archeologists/scientists. Some may very well consider the Nok a Civilization; it is a similar level of advancement to Norte Chico which is considered a civilization despite not having writing, ceramics, metal working, or advanced agriculture. It usually ultimately depends on levels of social organization and government and it may simply be that we don't have enough data to form an acceptable theory surrounding Nok government to properly classify them. 173.56.79.75 (talk) 16:30, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Racist?

I removed this; "This controversial theory can be regarded as racist." from the end of this "Proto Yorubas were the creators of Nok civilization, and the mystery of the disappearance of the Nok civilization is attributed to the disappearance of Yorubas from northern Nigeria due to racial assimilation. This controversial theory can be regarded as racist." as it was uncited and unexplained in the article. Came out of left field. Who's it even meant to be racist against? The Nok? Why would anyone being racist against some people who disappeared about 1511 years ago, so I assume not.121.73.221.187 (talk) 09:36, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

i agree with you the conection between Nok and modern yoruba was never identified. if there was a proto-yoruban it would have to have been a missing link between the bantu in 1000 AD and the apearance of modern yoruba in 1600 AD if there was a proto-yoruban it would have been in nigeria around 1300 AD. and once again your also right becasue yoruba probably has nothing to do with nok culture. it would be like trying to compare modern italiens in the year 1860 AD with the italic tribes of the roman empire and try claim there the exact same ethnic group which is false becasue of centuries of inter-marrige with other cultures. 69.221.169.111 (talk) 20:12, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

my information about Bantu in nigeria is out of date. it was based on the old theory of Bantu disfusion in africa that i was tought in school in my history text book . acording to the new theory Bantu culture came first in nigeria then eventualy nok apeared. not the other way around. but my orginal point still stands that from 500 AD to 1600 AD theres missing information as to what cultures or peoples would have been living in nigeria. 69.221.169.111 (talk) 16:48, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Yoruba claims

An editor went through this article (and others) adding claims by A.O. Olubunmi that the Nok were an early form of the Yoruba. I'm not familiar at all with this topic but it appeared that a lot of undue weight was being given to a fringe theory. Olubunmi is said to be physiologist and engineer which makes me question whether he is a reliable source. Anyway, I toned down the prose and condensed it while retaining the basic claim. If anyone is familiar enough with the subject maybe you can look it over and see if it belongs or perhaps can even be expanded again. SQGibbon (talk) 01:50, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Bad Picture:

The Terracotta sculpture is not still in the Louvre  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.113.212.147 (talk) 13:58, 19 March 2014 (UTC) 

Bibliography

Anon 2015 Research continues into 3000 year-old Nok culture of sub-saharan Africa. Adventures in Archaeology. Archaeology News from Past Horizons, February 8.

Breunig, Peter, Universität Frankfurt am Main, Nigeria. National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Liebieghaus, and Peter Breunig 2014 Nok: African sculpture in archaeological context. Frankfurt am Main: Africa Magna Verlag.

Brodie, Neil, and Donna Yates 2012 Nok Terracottas. Trafficking Culture: Researching the Global Traffic in Looted Cultural Objects.

Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas 2000 Nok Terracottas (500 B.C.–200 A.D.). The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.

Fagg, Bernard 1959 THE NOK CULTURE IN PREHISTORY. Journal of Historical Society of Nigeria 1(4).

Fagg, Bernard 1969 Recent work in west Africa: New light on the Nok culture. World Archaeology 1(1): 41–50.

de Grunne, Bernard, and Banque Generale Du Luxembourg Staff 1999 The birth of art in Africa: Nok statuary in Nigeria. Vilo International, Paris, September 1.

Magazine, New African 2013 Nigeria: Nok has more wonders yet for the world! Culture. New African Magazine, December 3.

Rupp, Nicole, James Ameje, and Peter Breunig 2005 New studies on the Nok culture of central Nigeria. Journal of African Archaeology 3(2): 283–290.

Rupp, Nicole, Peter Breunig, and Stefanie Kahlheber 2008 Exploring the Nok Enigma. Antiquity 82(316).

Shaw, Thurstan 1981 The Nok sculptures of Nigeria. Scientific American 244(2): 154–166.

(AmaranthRose (talk) 14:33, 17 October 2016 (UTC))

@AmaranthRose: Good start on the refs! I need to see some text now. I do think the existing article could use a bit of reorganization -putting the archaeological evidence for the Nok culture in a separate section will help. If the Breunig book hasn't come in yet, here are a few details about that project: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/02/2015/research-continues-into-3000-year-old-nok-culture-of-sub-saharan-africa. You'll also want to read all about the looting issues: http://traffickingculture.org/encyclopedia/case-studies/nok-terracottas/. Very interesting!! Ninafundisha (talk) 03:33, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Introduction:

The Nok culture is an early Iron Age population whose material remains are named after the Jaba village of Nok in Nigeria, Africa where their famous terracotta sculptures were first discovered in 1928.

Discovery:

Colonel Dent Young, a co-owner of a mining partnership near the village of Nok discovered one of the well-fired Nok terra-cotta sculpture which had washed out of tin-bearing gravels in 1928. Young presented the sculpture to the embryonic museum of the Department of Mines in Jos. Fifteen years later a clerk in charge of the mine discovered another terra-cotta sculpture was found which he took home and used as a scarecrow. The scarecrow was noticed by Bernard Fagg who was an administrative officer who had studied archaeology at the University of Cambridge. Fagg noticed that the head on the scarecrow looked similar to the sculpture that Young had found and so he went and visited the museum in Jos where Young showed Fagg other recently uncovered terra-cotta figures. Eventually it became clear that the tin mining in the Nok and Jema'a areas were revealing and destroying archaeological material.

Preliminary Archaeology:

The preliminary excavation at the beginning of January 1961 began near a remote valley named Taruga near the village of Takushara. The trial excavations took place during a period of eight days. The finds included objects of wrought iron, a quantity of iron slag, fragments of tuyere, pottery, figurine fragments, red ocher, quartz hammer-stones, and small concentrations of charcoal. The most famous finds at the site were the pottery graters which were shallow, flat-bottomed dishes which were deeply scored inside with diced patterns to produce a sharp abrasive surface. These pottery graters were proably used for food preparation. In the preliminary excavation a proton magnetometer survey was used to try and locate furnaces. The survey revealed a total of 61 magnetic anomalies which were mostly located in a flat, central area which probably indicated the limits of actual occupation. Twenty of the anomalies revealed concentrations of slag and nine of them contained in situ structures of furnace walls and bases. The most common type or artifact found was domestic pottery which can be divided into two different types. One type are bowls or shallow basins without lips and the other are globular pots which have everted lips. Because of this preliminary excavation the Nok Culture would start being regarded as belonging to the Iron Age.

Looting&Repatriation

Since the 1970's and onwards the terracotta firgures have been heavily looted. Large scale looting commenced in the cultural area in the middle of 1994 and by 1995 two main local traders emerged. Each of the main traders could employ about 1,000 diggers. At the height of the looking it is estimated that about 10 terracottas were being unearthed each day and although the majority of them were jsut procen pieces some were intact and sellable. In 1979 Nigeria's National Commission of Museums and Monuments Decree which established the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) which is used to manage Nigeria's cultural heritage. NCMM Decree number 77 made it illegal for anyone other than authorized personel to buy or sell antiquities within Nigeria or export an antiquity without a permit from the NCMM. Today the terracotta sculptures are very highly sought after on the international art market and so artifacts continue to be dug up without documentation of the context in which they were buried in as well as a lack of extensive archaeological study that has severly limited our understanding the Nok cultures.

Archaeology

1989 German scientists were working in north-eastern Nigeria's Chad Basin as part of a cooperative project between the *University of Maiduguri* located in *Borno State*, Nigeria, and archaeologists of *Goethe University Frankfurt.*

Nok Culture Sites

Taruga, Katsina Ala, and Samun Dukiya

Stone Tools

Stone tools within Nok Sites tend to be implements are a permanent inventory. There is little change done throughout shapes throughout the span of the Nok Culture. What tends to stike researchers is that there seems to be a lack in cutting tools. Apart from stone axes there have not been any tools found with a cutting edge. Projectile points are also not found throughout the site either from iron or stone

Grinding tools are very common in Nok Culture although they are rarely preserved in one piece but can still illustrate the different varieties of shapes and sizes being used throughout the Nok Culture. Grinding stones were made of quartzite, granitic pr metamorphic rock. At the site of Ungwar Kura grinding stones seemed to be placed in a certain order and at the site of Ido huge grinding slabs were arranged in an upright position with tow pots and stone beads next to them which is assumed as ritualistic context. Most of the grinders are merely hand sized. Throughout Nok sites there are an abundance of grinding slabs but there seems to be a low number of hand stones. It is a possibility that those of the Nok Culture used these grinders until they reached a certain state of wear and then were used as a sort of pestle. Another material used by the Nok are ground stone axes which seemed to be used for mostly food production which is typically made from fine grained volcanic rock and a few made from siliceous rock.These ax blades end to be smaller in size, the largest reaching 20 centimeters. Stone Balls appear at almost every Nok site and are approximately palm sized. They were probably used as hammer stones or for roughening the surface of a grinding stone. Not all of them are ball shaped and many have chipping marks all over or at least in one place. These stone balls likely would have served as mobile grinding stones.These ax blades end to be smaller in size, the largest reaching 20 centimeters.

Stone rings have also been found at Nok Culture sites. They are normally just fragments but can be distinguished as rings because of their flat, oval or triacular cross sections and the shapes. These stone rings are very rare and their purpose is unknown but are carefully worked. Another rare find is that of stone beads which are typically found situatred as if arrayed on a string. They tend to be carefully made out of hard siliceous rock such as quartz, chalcedony, jasper, or carnelian. There are three types of different beads, the most occurent are cyndrical in shape and the two other are rod and ring shaped beads.

Ceramics

Potsherds are the most abundant archaeological artifacts at a Nok Site. Since 2009 excavated pottery has been undergoing systematic analysis with a central aim to try and establish a chronology. Certain attributes of the pottery such as decoration, shape and size appear with an increasing frequency and then disappear being replaced with different pottery attributes. This change can sometime allow one to divide the progression into different intervals based on the different attributes. In total approximately 90,000 potsherds have been collected and out of that 15,000 have been considered diagnostic meaning that they are decorated, sherds from the rim or the bottom of the vessel or have holes or handles in them. The results of the analysis of the pottery can be delineated into three distinct time periods, early, middle and late.

Early Nok Period Ceramics

From approximately ca.1500-900 BC the pottery of the Early Nok Period are mostly small and not very well preserved. They seem to be be richly decorated with various elaborate patterns directly below the vessels' rims and covering a large part of the ceramic body. The lines made on the pottery seem to be remarkably fine or curving lines. There tends to be many lines which are close together and some even have criss-crossing lines beneath the rim. Pottery frequently had everted and broad, thick rims.

Middle Nok Period Ceramics

The Middle Nok Period is approximately from ca. 900-300 BC and with this time period there is a dramatic increase of sites, terracotta fragments and iron objects. Instead of the early period's decoration which tended to cover most of the pot instead there is a decorative band which is bordered by deep horizontal lines. This band appears on the pots' upper half or directly under the rim of the bowls. Some bands have a sharp ends as well as impressed zigzag lines or an incised wave or arc. Unlike the Early Nok period the Middle Nok ceramics tend to have more variety in the rim with everted rims, open bowls, bowls with inverted rims and incised line ornaments on the rims' lips.

Late Nok Period

The late Nok period is from approximately ca. 300- 1 BC and has only a few known sites. there is little pottery available for analysis but from the pottery that was found there is a decrease in the strictness of the ornamental band. While the band is still used they are being more complexly decorated with additional patterning. There also tends to be a returning pattern of body decoration. The variety of rim sizes and types seem to be increasing even more than in the Middle Nok period.

Iron Technology

The Nok Culture is known for its iron working which is an art of using high temperatures to produce iron from its ores. Metallurgy allows stone tools to be replaced enabling the production of sturdy tools and weapons. Although iron working is only found at later sites of Nok Culture dated to about 500 BC but still belonging to the earliest relics of sub-Saharan metallurgy. Even with the usage of Iron stone tools were still used throughout the entire Nok periods. At sites of the Nok archaeologists find reduction furnaces which are associated with tuyeres and waste products which mostly are iron slags as well as rare iron objects. The furnaces seem to be isolated outside of settlements appearing in groups arrayed next to one another. Iron slags are found near them because that is where the products are being produced. Iron ore seems to be small in quantity and so researchers believe that the iron objects produced were most likely used as status symbols and burial objects.