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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Igbo-Ukwu and the Nile |
Author: | Sutton, John E.G. |
Year: | 2001 |
Periodical: | African Archaeological Review |
Volume: | 18 |
Issue: | 1 |
Period: | March |
Pages: | 49-62 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Nigeria |
Subjects: | mercantile history trade routes Bronze Age Anthropology and Archaeology History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
External link: | https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006792806737 |
Abstract: | The external connections of Igbo-Ukwu, in the forest belt of southeastern Nigeria, around the 9th century AD, are demonstrated by the large numbers of glass beads, apparently from Egyptian manufacture, and are implicit in the rich collection of bronze artwork that lacks known prototypes. Although the metals were mined locally, the labour and the expert alloying and casting of numerous ritual or ornamental objects indicate an accumulation of wealth derived from distant trade of special commodities. The identification of these commodities, however, and the routes by which they - and in the reversed direction the beads - would have travelled, remain unsatisfactorily resolved. A preference is repeated in this paper for an eastern Sahelian routing from Lake Chad to the Middle Nile kingdoms then at their height, thus avoiding the Sahara. The alternative direction suggested recently (T. Insoll and T. Shaw, 1997), through Gao on the Niger bend and across the west-central Sahara, seems less likely on grounds of geography and chronology. Bibliogr., notes, sum. in French and English. |