Download or read book Nok written by Peter Breunig and published by Africa Magna Verlag. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides insights into the archaeological context of the Nok Culture in Nigeria (West Africa). It was first published in German accompanying the same-titled exhibition “Nok – Ein Ursprung afrikanischer Skulptur” at the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung in Frankfurt (30th October 2013 – 23rd March 2014) and has now been translated into English. A team of archaeologists from the Goethe University Frankfurt/Main has been researching the Nok Culture since 2005. The results are now presented to the public. The Nok Culture existed for about 1500 years – from around the mid-second millennium BCE to the turn of the Common Era. It is mainly known by the elaborate terracotta sculptures which were likewise the focus of the exhibition. The research of the archaeologists from Frankfurt, however, not only concerns the terracotta figures. They investigate the Nok Culture from a holistic perspective and put it into the larger context of the search for universal developments in the history of mankind. Such a development – important because it initiated a new era of the past – is the transition from small groups of hunters and gatherers to large communities with complex forms of human co-existence. This process took place almost everywhere in the world in the last 10,000 years, although in very different ways. The Nok Culture represents an African variant of that process. It belongs to a group of archaeological cultures or human groups, who in part subsisted on the crops they were growing and lived in mostly small but permanent settlements in the savanna regions south of the Sahara from the second millennium BCE onwards. The discovery of metallurgy is the next turning point in the development of the first farming cultures. In Africa the first metal used was not copper or bronze as in the Near East and Europe, but iron. The people of the Nok Culture were among the first that produced iron south of the Sahara. This happened in the first millennium BCE – about 1000 years after the agricultural beginning. While iron metallurgy spread rapidly across sub-Saharan Africa, the terracotta sculptures remained a cultural monopoly of the Nok Culture. Nothing comparable existed in Africa outside of Ancient Egypt and the Mediterranean coast. The oldest, securely dated clay figures date back to the early first millennium BCE. Currently, it seems as if they appeared in the Nok Culture before iron metallurgy, reaching their peak in the following centuries. At the end of the first millennium BCE they disappeared from the scene. There is hardly any doubt about the ritual character of the Nok sculptures. Yet, central questions remain unanswered: Why did such an apparently complex world of ritual practices develop in an early farming culture just before or at the beginning of the momentous invention of iron production? Why were the elaborate sculptures – as excavations show – intentionally destroyed? And why did they disappear as suddenly as they emerged?
Download or read book The Nok Culture written by Gert Chesi and published by Prestel Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This publication is the first comprehensive overview of Nok terra cotta sculptures, discovered in an area of modern-day Nigeria known as the cradle of Africa's monumental sculpture. Excavations over the last fifteen years have uncovered many hundred terra cottas and fragments which were central to rites performed in the Nok civilisation 2,500 years ago: the oldest known figurative sculptures south of the Sahara." "About one hundred authenticated Nok figures, the majority published here for the first time, are included in this lavishly illustrated publication, accompanied by two essays that take a closer look at the mysteries of this enigmatic culture."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba written by Suzanne Preston Blier and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-02 with total page 793 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Suzanne Preston Blier examines the intersection of art, risk and creativity in early African arts from the Yoruba center of Ife and the striking ways that ancient Ife artworks inform society, politics, history and religion. Yoruba art offers a unique lens into one of Africa's most important and least understood early civilizations, one whose historic arts have long been of interest to local residents and Westerners alike because of their tour-de-force visual power and technical complexity. Among the complementary subjects explored are questions of art making, art viewing and aesthetics in the famed ancient Nigerian city-state, as well as the attendant risks and danger assumed by artists, patrons and viewers alike in certain forms of subject matter and modes of portrayal, including unique genres of body marking, portraiture, animal symbolism and regalia. This volume celebrates art, history and the shared passion and skill with which the remarkable artists of early Ife sought to define their past for generations of viewers.
Download or read book The Birth of Art in Africa written by Bernard de Grunne and published by Vilo Publishing. This book was released on 1998 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique book presents sculptures from the Nok, Sokoto and Katsina cultures of Nigeria in fascinating detail. The terra-cotta statues, which date from 600BC to 300AD, are the oldest traces of the remarkable tradition of sculpture in sub-Saharan Africa. Varying in size from four-inch miniature amulets to monumental seated and kneeling sculptures, often of kings, priests or soothsayers, the statues also display the very rich variety of headdresses, beads, necklaces and bracelets that existed within these cultures. This book brings is a synthesis of the discoveries made since the groundbreaking 1977 study by Bernard Fagg. An essay on dating methods -- carbon dating and thermoluminescence -- provides the most recent results, as well as detailing new cross-dating techniques. A classification of poses common to the sculptures, and parallel photographic evidence of the continuing decorative tradition, enhance the academic value of this definitive work.
Download or read book The Yoruba from Prehistory to the Present written by Aribidesi Usman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-04 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rich and accessible account of Yoruba history, society and culture from the pre-colonial period to the present.
Download or read book Dynasty and Divinity written by Henry John Drewal and published by National Museum of African Art. This book was released on 2009 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a major part of the extraordinary corpus of ancient Ife art in terra-cotta, stone, and metal, dating from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries.
Download or read book The Art of Africa written by Christa Clarke and published by Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book was released on 2006 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A CD-ROM and DVD set extracted from the 'The Art of Africa: A Resource for Educators.' The CD-ROM "contains a PDF of 'The Art of Africa: A Resource for Educators, ' which features forty traditional works of African art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It includes a brief overview of the Metropolitan's collection of African art; a short introduction and history of Africa; an explanation of the role of visual expression in the continent; descriptions of the featured works of art and background about the materials and techniques that were used to created them ... The DVD, 'Ci Wara Invocation, ' "presents the highlights of a dozen ci wara performances in Bamana communities in present-day Mali that were recorded by five different observers between 1970-2002. Among the Bamana, oral traditions credit a mythical being named Ci Wara, a divine being half mortal and half antelope, with the introduction of agriculture to the Bamana. The ci wara performances are part of biannual celebrations that either launch or conclude the farming season."--Container
Download or read book Art Appreciation written by Deborah Gustlin and published by Cognella Academic Publishing. This book was released on 2017-08-18 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Creative Art: Methods and Materials educates readers about a variety of art methods and the ways different civilizations have used them in artistic expression. Each of the fourteen chapters is designed around a specific art method and material, and includes examples of art works and the artists who created them. Students learn about bronze casting, stone carving, clay sculpture, woodcuts and posters, glass work, and installation art. Each method is matched to artists both ancient and modern. Rather than adhering to a standard approach that focuses on white, male, European artists, the book broadens the student's perspective by including often overlooked female artists. Global in approach and comprehensive in coverage of arts forms, representations, and styles throughout history, Creative Art has been developed for sixteen-week courses in art appreciation, or introductory survey courses in art history.
Download or read book Africa written by Peter Stepan and published by Prestel Publishing. This book was released on 2001 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 50 mesterværker - fra arkæologiske fund over middelalderen til det 20. århundredes kunst
Download or read book Die vergessene Kultur written by Hans Scheutz and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2016 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dieses Buch gewährt einen neuen aufschlussreichen Einblick in eine bisher noch weitgehend unerschlossene Kultur Afrikas der Komaland anhand zahlreicher Abbildungen. Die Terrakotta-Objekte des Komalandes wurden erst um 1980 in Nordghana entdeckt und haben sowohl Wissenschaftler als auch Kunstexperten überrascht und eine intensive Beschäftigung mit dieser Kultur notwendig gemacht. Da es keine zeitgenössischen, schriftlichen Quellen über die Komaland-Terrakotten gibt, wurden sie mit denen untergegangener und noch lebender Kulturen (Akan, Djenné, Bulsa, Lobi, Gan) verglichen und nach neustem Stand der archäologischen Forschung wissenschaftlich aufgearbeitet.
Download or read book Caravans of Gold Fragments in Time written by Kathleen Bickford Berzock and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Issued in conjunction with the exhibition Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time, held January 26, 2019-July 21, 2019, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.
Download or read book The Origins of Iron Metallurgy in Africa written by Hamady Bocoum and published by Unesco. This book was released on 2004 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The work of specialists archaeologists, historians, ethnologists, metallographs and sociologists gathered in this volume show the vitality of research being carried out on iron processing in Africa since as early as the third millennium B.C.
Download or read book Abina and the Important Men written by Trevor R. Getz and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2016 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an illustrated "graphic history" based on an 1876 court transcript of a West African woman named Abina, who was wrongfully enslaved and took her case to court. The main scenes of the story take place in the courtroom, where Abina strives to convince a series of "important men"--A British judge, two Euro-African attorneys, a wealthy African country "gentleman," and a jury of local leaders --that her rights matter.--Publisher description.
Download or read book Plants and People in the African Past written by Anna Maria Mercuri and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-07-31 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is an essential connection between humans and plants, cultures and environments, and this is especially evident looking at the long history of the African continent. This book, comprising current research in archaeobotany on Africa, elucidates human adaptation and innovation with respect to the exploitation of plant resources. In the long-term perspective climatic changes of the environment as well as human impact have posed constant challenges to the interaction between peoples and the plants growing in different countries and latitudes. This book provides an insight into/overview of the manifold routes people have taken in various parts Africa in order to make a decent living from the provisions of their environment by bringing together the analyses of macroscopic and microscopic plant remains with ethnographic, botanical, geographical and linguistic research. The numerous chapters cover almost all the continent countries, and were prepared by most of the scholars who study African archaeobotany, i.e. the complex and composite history of plant uses and environmental transformations during the Holocene.
Download or read book Africans written by John Iliffe and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-13 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An updated and comprehensive single-volume history covering all periods from human origins to contemporary African situations.
Download or read book Season of Crimson Blossoms written by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Masterpieces of Nigerian Art written by Ekpo Eyo and published by Chinazor Onianwah. This book was released on 2014-07-21 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Federal Republic of Nigeria maintains a rich artistic legacy that is more than two thousand years old. As such, it provides some interesting counterpoints to Western art history. Nigeria's ancient Nok art, for example, predated the golden age of Greece, and the exquisite bronzes of lgbo Ukwu (9th-10th C), Ife (12th-15th C), and Benin (15th-19th C) compare favorably to European traditions. Furthermore, the art of Benin thrived under the patronage of a single, unbroken dynasty during a time when many European governments rose and fell.Yet, for many reasons, the Western world would not recognize this artistic heritage until modern times. In this volume, Ekpo Eyo explains the prirnitivist viewpoint that once dominated the Western perception of African art and recalls the efforts of certain more open-minded individuals from Nigeria's colonial past who, in their efforts to collect, preserve, and present important sculptures and other artworks, were instrumental in founding the country's first museums. Their successor, today's National Commission for Museums and Monuments, has collected many additional works from their original settings, placing them in the limelight of the world through publications and museum exhibitions, to which the author has contributed much throughout his career. Eyo therefore discusses Nigerian art in the broader context of the world's art history, arguing that the art of Nigeria is fundamentally a testament to universal human creativity. From Shrines to Showcases: Masterpieces of Nigerian Art includes examples selected from all major regions of the country, spanning the distant past to the modern age, which are to be considered amongst the greatest artistic achievements of humanity.
