Archaeological culture · c. 1500 BCE – 1 CE
Nok culture
An Iron Age people of central Nigeria, named after the village of Nok where their sculptures were first found in 1928. From about 900 BCE they made hollow terracotta figures and heads with striking eyes and elaborate hairstyles, probably for funeral customs, and by the 4th–3rd centuries BCE some of their sites, such as Taruga, were smelting iron.
See Nok culture on the map in 1500 BCE
- On the map
- 1500–1 BCE
How we know
No writing existed; known from terracotta sculptures, settlements and iron furnaces, dated by radiocarbon and luminescence.