Professor Christopher D. Roy
The University of Iowa
T
here are no dates associated with most of the objects in the Art and Life in Africa program because the African artists who created them neither signed their names nor dated the objects. (It should be noted that many European artists of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance did not sign or date their work either.) Because most African art is made of wood, and wood does not usually last long in harsh African environments, most of the wooden objects in the program probably date from the late 19th or early 20th century. Even this much is based on guesswork, and as a result, we have chosen not to list the dates repeatedly as "late 19th or early 20th century."T
here is, however, a very important exception: the objects in the "Ancient Africa" section are for the most part made of fired clay, bronze, gold, or other very durable materials that have not only survived the centuries, but have been found in an archeological context or associated with archaeological sites. Therefore, we have dates that can be attributed to these objects. The "Ancient Africa" chapter was intended to provide some of the historical or chronological depth that is missing elsewhere due to the lack of dates. The chapter was written expressly to make it clear that African art has been created for millennia, and that many of the objects in the world's museums are indeed ancient.E
xamples of some of the oldest objects are from the so-called Nok culture, which have been roughly dated from 500 BC to 200 AD. The very elaborate and important objects from Igbo-Ukwu, in eastern Nigeria, have been dated by the archaeologist Thurston Shaw to the 9th or 10th century AD. The ancient Djenné culture on the Niger River in Mali has been dated from about 500 to 1400 AD, although most of the objects in museums have not been found by archaeologists, and so dating the objects themselves is problematic. The naturalistic memorial heads of deceased kings of Ife are dated to the middle of the 13th century by archaeologists. Finally, Professor William Dewey, who wrote the "Ancient Africa" chapter, provides a series of dates, from the 5th to the 19th century, for the material from the Benin Kingdom in Nigeria.Revised January 21, 1999