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Nigeria

Nigerian culture is illustrated through art and folklore. Nigeria draws its inspiration for their art from traditional folk heritage of the region. There are different types of artwork from the Nigerian culture. Some of these works of art can be stone carvings, potteries, glass work, wood carvings and bronze works. Benin and Awka are considered to be the central places for wood carving. Woodcarvers have been thriving throughout the south of Nigeria from time immemorial.

Examples of Nigerian Traditional Art

Masks

Masks are a piece of the animist confidence of the Yoruba individuals. The veils are painted, and fans wear them at memorial services and different functions to mollify the spirits.

Pottery

Pottery has a long custom in Nigeria. Pottery was well known from 100 B.C. These days Suleja, Abuja and Ilorin are viewed as significant figures of customary ceramics. Potters in Nigeria are frequently female, and usually practice for the methods to be passed on through families.

Textiles

Yorubas utilize a bush to make indigo-shaded batik-colored fabric. Ladies generally do the withering, while in the north, the specialty is drilled only by men. Weavers everywhere throughout the nation produce a splendid texture with ribbon structures. Oyo state is known for its fine loom materials while fabric from Abia state utilizes a broadloom strategy.

The Nok culture is an early Iron Age population whose material remains are named after the Ham village of Nok in Kaduna State of Nigeria, where their famous terracotta sculptures were first discovered in 1928. The Nok Culture appeared in northern Nigeria around 1500 BC and vanished under unknown circumstances around 500 AD, thus having lasted approximately 2,000 years.

The function of Nok terracotta sculptures remains unknown. For the most part, the terracotta is preserved in the form of scattered fragments. That is why Nok art is best 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 terracotta statues found there are hidden, rolled, polished, and broken. Rarely are works of great size conserved intact making them highly valued on the international art market. The terracotta figures are hollow, coil built, nearly life-sized human heads and bodies that are depicted with highly stylized features, abundant jewelry, and varied postures.

Little is known of the original function of the pieces, but theories include ancestor portrayal, grave markers, and charms to prevent crop failure, infertility, and illness. Also, based on the dome-shaped bases found on several figures, they could have been used as finials for the roofs of ancient structures. Margaret Young-Sanchez, Associate Curator of Art of the Americas, Africa, and Oceania in The Cleveland Museum of Art, explains that most Nok ceramics were shaped by hand from coarse-grained clay and subtractively sculpted in a manner that suggests an influence from wood carving. After some drying, the sculptures were covered with slip and burnished to produce a smooth, glossy surface. The figures are hollow, with several openings to facilitate thorough drying and firing. The firing process most likely resembled that used today in Nigeria, in which the pieces are covered with grass, twigs, and leaves and burned for several hours.

As a result of natural erosion and deposition, Nok terracottas were scattered at various depths throughout the Sahel grasslands, causing difficulty in the dating and classification of the mysterious artifacts. Two archaeological sites, Samun Dukiya and Taruga, were found containing Nok art that had remained unmoved. Radiocarbon and thermo-luminescence tests narrowed the sculptures’ age down to between 2,000 and 2,500 years ago, making them some of the oldest in Western Africa. Many further dates were retrieved in the course of new archaeological excavations, extending the beginnings of the Nok tradition even further back in time.

Because of the similarities between the two sites, archaeologist Graham Connah believes that "Nok artwork represents a style that was adopted by a range of iron-using farming societies of varying cultures, rather than being the diagnostic feature of a particular human group as has often been claimed."