Akinwumi Ogundiran

Distinguished guests, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, I respectfully acknowledge all the previously established protocols. I bring you greetings with as-salāmu ‘alaykum in Arabic, sälam in Amharic, hujambo in Swahili, e· kú'kàleè· in Yoruba, ndewo in Igbo and sawubona in Zulu. I am grateful to the local organising committee for giving me the honour and privilege to address this second joint conference of the PanAfrican Association for Prehistory and Related Studies (PAA) and the Society for Africanist Archaeologists (SAfA). I dedicate this talk to the founding fathers and mothers of our two associations, and to the younger generation of African and Africanist archaeologists.

I would like to start my brief remarks by sharing with you a story from the vast repertoire of Yoruba mythology. This is the story of Èṣù and two best friends. These two friends were archaeologists. They were in the field one summer digging at adjacent sites when Èṣù, one of the major deities in the Yoruba pantheon, passed by. He walked on the narrow path that divided the sites of the two friends. That fateful day, Èṣù was wearing a very tall hat, blue on one side and red on the other. He exchanged pleasantries with both men. Later in the day, while the two friends were taking a break, they talked about the man with the gorgeous hat. One of the friends referred to him as the redhat man. The other called him the blue-hat man. Then they stopped to ask each other whether they were talking about the same man. They agreed that indeed it was the same person but they could not agree on the colour of his hat. The two friends argued passionately, each saying he saw and knew the true colour of the hat that Èṣù was wearing. They exchanged unpleasant words as each man professed to know the right answer and demanded to be acknowledged as the victor in the emerging violent discussion. They were on the verge of destroying their long-standing friendship when Èṣù suddenly reappeared. He stopped the quarrel. The friends explained their disagreement.

Introduction

The topics of origins and intergroup relations in Yoruba-Edo region have attracted the attention of historians, archaeologists, and linguists alike, but the long-term chronological and cultural historical scheme needed to understand the origins, changes, and continuities of the cultural institutions in the region has been lacking (see Figure 4.1). In fact, one can argue that the pre-nineteenth-century historiography of Yoruba-Edo region has been poor in research themes, in historical explanations of cultural innovations, and in long-term perspectives of structural change and continuity, partly because an historical periodization scheme that encompasses the region has yet to be defined. A major manifestation of this historiographical poverty is that the vision of the precolonial cultural history has been predominantly limited to the nineteenth century. This study brings the achievements of over fifty years of archaeological and historical research together for developing a long-term chronological scheme using archaeological data (chronometric dates and artifacts) and oral historical traditions. The historical themes that define the periodization and cultural-historical schemes focus on factors internal to Yoruba-Edo region and not on the episodes of external contacts. This study involves an integration of local and site-specific regional chronology, and the reworking of chronological schemes that were based on narrow or specific types of cultural behavior (e.g., artistic traditions) (see Table 4.1). Although background information is provided on the possibilities of much earlier human occupation in the region, the period covered in this study stretches from ca. 500 B.C. to A.D. 1800.

There are some justifications for this exercise. The general lack of long-term chronological and cultural historical frameworks for most regions of Africa especially for the vast period that is often referred to as “precolonial” or “Iron Age” has encouraged the wrong view of African cultural institutions as a fixed timeless past or a floating ethnographic present for which there is a status quo ante. This chapter demonstrates that traditions have history and that archaeology provides a pathway to the understanding of the long-term history of these traditions (read: cultures and structures). In other words, the goal is to demonstrate that inherited artifacts, technology, ideas, values, institutions, sociopolitical organizations, and social actions of Yoruba-Edo region are “historically produced as organized and organizing schemes of action that are meaningful to the individuals (and societies) involved,” just as historical experience is also culturally mediated.