Metallurgical Traditions in West Africa: Technology, Production, and Exchange of Iron and Copper in Nigeria from 700 BC to AD 1800

METALS aims to explore the Metallurgical Traditions in West Africa with emphasis on the Technology, Production, and Exchange of Copper in Nigeria from 700 BC to AD 1800.

This period is significant in Nigeria’s past due to evidence of intense metalworking traditions with emergence of social complexity.

There are two questions central to this project: first, what was the evolution of metallurgical traditions in early Nigeria in relation to technical processes and development and raw material choices?

Second, how did prehistoric craftspeople in Nigeria interact with the wider region in terms of navigating production and consumption of copper and its alloys through the social network system?

METALS will prioritize copper metallurgy as the more elusive technology, but will consider iron metallurgy equally alongside the copper research, not least to lay the foundation for a follow-on project proposal targeting Nigeria’s early iron metallurgy.

The project will select materials from collections of museums both in Nigeria and Europe, while training-through-research will take place on an existing assemblage at the Host institute from a site in Morocco for an in-depth study on metallurgical production and development.

The Nigerian museum assemblages will be complemented by materials from targeted archaeological fieldwork at areas of prime potential in southern Nigeria.

Optical microscopy, handheld X-ray Fluorescence, SEM-EDS, and lead isotope analysis will be used to reconstruct the mineralogical and compositional constituent the metal and the chaîne opératoire of their production.

METALS is designed as an interdisciplinary project that integrate material science, archaeology, anthropology, geochemistry, museum studies, anthropological theory and African/global history.

This project will significantly expand knowledge of Africa’s contributions to metallurgy in global perspectives, and construct an open access online database of elemental composition of early metal objects.