User:Diweh Lankar/Iwo Eleru-Nigeria

The Iwo Eleru archaeological site and context.

The Iwo Eleru archaeological site is found in the Western part of Africa. It was discovered in an area called Iwo Eleru in Yoruba land, present day Nigeria (1965) by Thurstan Shaw of the University of Ibadan and his team. At this site, a skeleton was excavated from a rock shelter. This burial was found in level with the Late Stone Age( LSA ) artefacts. Though significant burials have since been excavated elsewhere in West Africa like the one at Shum Laka and Gobero, Iwo Eleru maintains its status as the earliest burial of such in the region. The findings were published in 1971 in the journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute by Don Brothwell, who found out the skeleton was of an adult, probably a male. He linked the skull to recent west African populations but discovered its lower vault and frontal profile were unusual. Fig one below shows the location of the Iwo Eleru site in Nigeria, western part of Africa.

The site is 24 km north-west of Akure, 25km south of the present northern limit of the forest zone. When Thurstan Shaw first visited this site, he observed that the artifacts indicative of the Late Stone Age were eroding out of the talus slope in front of the platform which clearly contained some depth of deposit. The excavations were carried out over a four month period. The total number of excavated squares was 810 but for analytical purposes only few trenches were used. From the site as a whole, more than 500,000 artifacts were recovered. The sequence of events at the site was determined to a large extent by the statistical analysis of the stone artifacts which made up the great bulk of the finds. Charcoal was found in the immediate vicinity of the burial. Pottery was found near the surface but suspected to be recent. The only type of pottery attributed to the late stone age was the comb stamped ware. The environmental history of the site was interpreted in terms of its geographical situation and what was known about the climatic history of West Africa in general. Shaw assumed depending on evidence from Lake Chad and other places that west Africa was generally dry. Based on this assumption, the area around Iwo Eleru on the beginning of its occupation would have been generally a dry savannah area. The burial was found in square D 23 and there is a radiocarbon date obtained on charcoal found in the immediate vicinity of the area. The skeletal remains were found in a space between and below two rocks. The corpse of this person according to Shaw “had been placed not far from bedrock…and covered with a shallow depth of soil, early on in the shelter’s use”( Shaw and Daniels,1984: 4-5). The excavators believed the body had probably been buried in a tightly contracted position. The poorly preserved skeleton as earlier seen was of an adult and probably male individual. The Skull was reconstructed and studied by Brothel. He linked it to recent west African populations but discovered that its lower vault and frontal profile were unusual.

After the report on Iwo Eleru, two other sites with skeletal remains were located in the region as earlier mentioned: Shum Laka and Gobero which are relevant to Iwo Eleru. Shum Laka is a rock shelter 15km south-west of Bamenda in western Cameroon. There is equally another page on the Iwo Eleru Skull on [|Iwo Eleru Skull-Wikipedia]

References

Brothel, D., T. Shaw. A Late Upper Pleistocene Proto-west African Negro from Nigria. Man, (new series) 1971. (221-227) Shaw, T. “The Prehistory of West Africa”. In ed. J.F. Ade Ajayi and M.Crowder, History Of West Africa. 1985. Vol 1, Longmans: 48-86. Shaw ,T., S.G.H. Daniels. “Excavations at Iwo Eleru, Endo State, Nigeria.” West African Journal of Archaeology, vol. 14. Alsworth, P., K. Harvati. “The Archaeological Context of Iwo Eleru Cranium from Nigeria and Preliminary Results of New Morphometric Studies”. White Rose research online