The Resonance of Osun across a Millennium of Lower Niger History

… [T]his is no mere miscellany of pieces unaccounted for, but in my estimation the very pinnacle of Nigerian artistic achievement

(Fagg 1963:39).

The arts of Nigeria are among the most studied of all African arts and yet there are still exceptional works about which we know very little. In this paper we offer an investigation of copper alloy works from the Lower Niger that demonstrate the extraordinary creativity and aesthetic power to which Fagg refers. These bell heads and their fantastic imagery have encouraged us to take a multidisciplinary approach, a synthesis that allows us to draw conclusions about the dating of these works and about the persistence of particular ways of thinking as embodied in ritual practices though several hundred years. Specifically, we investigate that period in sub-Saharan Africa from the inception of an art making use of copper and its alloys to the entry of coastal West Africa and its hinterlands into the Atlantic sea trade from the late fifteenth century onwards.

What we are concerned with is that provisional category of works identified by William Fagg as the Lower Niger Bronze Industry (LNBI) (Fig. 1), sometimes pluralized, and sometimes including the group of castings known as the “Tsoede bronzes,” as well as the works excavated at Igbo-Ukwu (Fagg 1960, 1963, 1970; see also Anderson and Peek 2002; Craddock and Picton 1986; Peek 2013; Picton 1995, 2012; Shaw 1970, 1977; Willett 1967). It was Fagg’s hope that with the progress of archaeology the label could be dropped in favor of specific locations and casting sites, a hope yet to be realized. Moreover, in his enthusiasm for this diverse body of work, Fagg considered that the LNBI would prove more significant for the history of art in the Lower Niger region than Benin City, or even Ife, a possibility that is addressed in part in this paper.

To those ends, therefore, this paper first addresses what we know of the archaeology and metallurgy of the Lower Niger region; and secondly proceeds by way of a synthesis of the available ethnographic data in regard to bells, heads, faces, and eyes, and the species represented in the imagery in these bell heads. Thereby, we draw out some ideas about the ritual environment of these works of art. It is in this latter context that we feel able to identify these bell heads with the domain of ritual practice known in Benin City as Osun, the deity¹ and its associated rituals and arts. Finally, in selecting this group of works we hope that other as yet unpublished pieces in public and private collections will be brought to light.

The lower niger bronze industries: archaeology and metallurgy

The Lower Niger region (Fig. 2)—from the Niger-Benue confluence southwards to the Niger Delta, with the Yoruba, Ebira, Edo, Edo-related, and Igbo peoples to its west; the Igala, Basa Nge, and Igbo peoples to its east; and the Urhobo, Isoko, Ijo, Kalabari and other Delta peoples to its south—is one of the best-described regions of Africa (Anderson and Peek 2002, Berns, Kasfir, and Fardon 2011, Cole and Aniakor 1984, Plankensteiner 2007, etc.). Yet it still presents us with many unanswered questions, as demonstrated by a survey of what we know and do not know of its various copper alloy casting traditions. Three of these are rather well described, even if still presenting disputed questions of fact and interpretation. To the east of the Lower Niger, there is Igbo-Ukwu, nineth–tenth centuries ad, a series of three archaeological sites that revealed evidence for working in beaten copper and for alloying and casting in bronze (Shaw 1970, 1977). To the west of the Lower Niger, we have Ife, where casting in brass, and also pure copper, took place probably sometime between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries ad, although if we include the considerable corpus of ceramic sculptures,² some making use of the imagery such as we find on the bell heads of this paper, then evidence for Ife art begins in the eleventh...