The geological process of erosion and accumulation are of such intensity in West Africa that great movements of earth occurred in the course of only a few centuries. Compared to Europe (as an example), it is extremely difficult to locate archaeological material in West Africa, and finds are discovered almost exclusively by chance. It was a chance find of this kind in the 1940s that brought to light the oldest evidence of African sculpture outside Egypt. Although one head had previously been discovered in the village of Jaba in 1928, this second head was discovered at a tin-mining site called Nok, and so the culture was named.  

 

It was not until the beginning of the 1990s that another site related to Nok culture was discovered farther north, near Sokoto. Its objects - heads, busts, and half figures - display a very similar aesthetic to Nok scultputes, although rather more austere. 

 

Burial sculptures from the so-called Nok, Sokoto, and Katsina cultures all date back as far as 500 BCE, and show clear similarities and mixtures of styles, despite the three sites being separated by a few hundred kilometers (Schaedler, Earth and Ore, 1997). 

 

Thermoluminescence tested by Francine Maurer (Alliance Science Art) in 1994; 2400 +/- 250 years old.

 

Published in Blum, Skulpturen alter Kulturen Afrikas, 1995, Plate 4. 

 

Ex. Lance Entwistle