一个陶土雕塑 - Nok - 尼日利亚 (没有保留价)

This female terracotta figure is attributed to the Nok culture in the area of present-day Kaduna State in central Nigeria. Characteristic features include the highly stylized facial features, with narrow, clearly outlined eyes, a broad nose, and a slightly open mouth, as well as the carefully elaborated hairstyle. A large disc-shaped ear ornament and a multi-strand neck or chest ornament emphasize the figure’s representative appearance. The slender torso and the arms held close to the body are articulated by incised decoration and sculpturally modelled details. The lower part survives only in fragmentary condition. The precise meaning of such representations is unknown. Interpretations identifying them as ancestral figures, deities, members of a social elite, or objects associated with funerary or ritual contexts remain hypothetical. Incl stand.

Nok terracottas are among the earliest known large-scale figurative sculptures from sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, more recent archaeological research has qualified the earlier image of a centralized, hierarchically organized “Nok civilization.” In particular, the long-term investigations conducted by Prof. Peter Breunig and his team at Goethe University Frankfurt point instead to a predominantly rural society characterized by smaller settlements and farming communities. No monumental centres or palace complexes that would indicate a centralized kingdom have so far been identified. This makes the formal and technical affinities evident among terracottas across a wide geographical area all the more remarkable. Their function and the social or religious concepts associated with them remain subjects of ongoing research.

Research into the Nok culture is inseparably linked to the problems of looting and the international art trade. Particularly since the final decades of the twentieth century, growing demand on the international market has led to extensive unauthorized excavations. Numerous terracottas and fragments were thereby removed from their original archaeological contexts. For archaeology, this represents an irretrievable loss of information: even when an individual object survives, uncontrolled recovery destroys its relationships with pottery, charcoal, settlement remains, evidence of ironworking, other terracottas, or possible burial contexts. It is precisely these associations that would be crucial for establishing chronology, function, and cultural-historical interpretation.

The debate surrounding the protection of Nok archaeological sites also has a social and economic dimension. Olugbile Holloway, Director-General of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), has drawn attention, in connection with the Nok issue, to the difficult position of local communities. Nigerian law criminalizes unauthorized excavations as well as the unauthorized trade and export of archaeological objects. Such regulations are necessary for the protection of cultural heritage. At the same time, there is a risk that they primarily criminalize members of often economically disadvantaged rural communities who stand at the beginning of a much larger commercial chain. The considerable market value of Nok terracottas arises only through international demand and the subsequent stages of trade involving local intermediaries, international dealers, and collectors.

Breunig’s research likewise illustrates the ambiguity of this situation. The destruction of archaeological sites through commercial digging seriously jeopardizes the scholarly reconstruction of Nok culture. At the same time, the phenomenon cannot be understood solely as a local problem of illegal excavation. The economic conditions in the regions where the objects are found and international demand for Nok terracottas are part of the same context. Responsibility for the loss of archaeological contexts therefore cannot be attributed exclusively to the people who excavate the objects locally.

In this context, Prof. Peter Breunig points to another perspective that is important for assessing these excavations. According to his account, among parts of the rural population in the Kaduna region there exists an idea resembling a form of intergenerational compact between the living and their ancestors: the remains of earlier generations lying in the ground are understood not exclusively as archaeological heritage to be administered by the state, but also as something left to subsequent generations and available to benefit them in times of economic hardship. From this perspective, recovering and selling a terracotta may carry a different meaning than it does from the standpoint of state cultural-heritage protection or archaeology. This is precisely where the complexity of the situation becomes apparent: what under existing law constitutes illegal excavation and the destruction of an archaeological context may, within local understandings, simultaneously be regarded as legitimate access to property or resources handed down by earlier generations. The concept described by Breunig, in essence, as a kind of “intergenerational compact” neither fully explains nor justifies looting; it does, however, broaden the discussion by incorporating the perspective of the communities on whose land the archaeological sites are located.

The history of Nok terracottas therefore raises questions that extend beyond the art-historical consideration of the individual work. Archaeological context, economic inequality, cultural-heritage protection, and the role of the international art market are closely interconnected. In assessing an individual work preserved outside a documented excavation context, it is therefore important to distinguish between its art-historical classification and statements concerning its specific provenance. Without a documented archaeological find context, neither its original function nor its precise dating or the particular historical circumstances of its discovery can be determined from the object alone.

Selected Literature

Breunig, Peter (ed.), Nok: African Sculpture in Archaeological Context, Frankfurt am Main: Africa Magna Verlag, 2014. [Fundamental publication of the German-Nigerian research project; 303 pages.]

Breunig, Peter (ed.), Nok – Ein Ursprung afrikanischer Skulptur, exhibition catalogue, Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, Frankfurt am Main: Africa Magna Verlag, 2013.

Breunig, Peter; Franke, Gabriele; Männel, Tanja, Das Geheimnis der Nok-Kultur. Frühe Kunst in Afrika, Freiburg: Herder, 2025.

Rupp, Nicole; Ameje, James; Breunig, Peter, “New Studies on the Nok Culture of Central Nigeria,” Journal of African Archaeology 3/2 (2005), pp. 283–290.

Rupp, Nicole; Breunig, Peter; Kahlheber, Stefanie, “Exploring the Nok Enigma,” Antiquity 82/316 (2008).

Männel, Tanja; Breunig, Peter, “The Nok Terracotta Sculptures of Pangwari,” Journal of African Archaeology (2016).

Franke, Gabriele, “The Archaeology of Nok Culture in Nigeria (2nd/1st Millennium BCE),” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, Oxford University Press, 2024. [Particularly relevant to the current state of research on rural settlement structures and social organization.]

Fagg, Bernard, “The Nok Culture in Prehistory,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 1/4 (1959), pp. 288–293.

Fagg, Bernard, Nok Terracottas, Lagos: National Commission for Museums and Monuments, 1990.

Atwood, Roger, “The Nok of Nigeria,” Archaeology, July/August 2011, pp. 34–38.

Boullier, Claire; Person, Alain; Saliège, Jean-François; Polet, Jean, “Bilan chronologique de la culture Nok et nouvelles datations sur des sculptures,” Afrique: Archéologie & Arts 2 (2001), pp. 9–28.

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Some of the information has been generated using artificial intelligence and is based on published sources in the fields of ethnography, archaeology, and art history.

Inv. No. MAZ22200

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