ABSTRACT

Almost seventy years ago a man was digging a cistern near his house in the town of Igbo-Ukwu in eastern Nigeria. Although the area had abundant rainfall, water supply could be a problem during the annual dry season and so underground storage that filled during the wet season was frequently resorted to. He had got to a depth of about half a metre when he began to dig out bronze objects that looked very old. An official of the then British colonial government heard about this discovery and purchased the items. He published an account of the Igbo-Ukwu finds and subsequently presented them to Nigeria’s principal museum but there the matter rested for over twenty years. Only then were archaeological excavations carried out at this place, where it appeared that discoveries had been made at various times in three different locations. The technical and artistic quality of the artefacts that had been given to the museum was so high, and so little was then known of the human history of the area from which they had come, that it was obviously important to ascertain who had made them and when. The general assumption was that they had been made by the Igbo people who live in this part of Nigeria but were not very old. However, the results of the excavations were to astonish everyone and even cause some to doubt their findings. Now, many years later, the Igbo-Ukwu evidence still raises questions and continues to be a challenge from the past, requiring that we reexamine long-held ideas.