So many of our questions about a history of Yoruba art, society, and culture revolve around the mythic status of Ife1 as the source, the cradle (Akinjogbin 1992), the very genesis (Fabunmi 1985) of Yoruba, with the mythic descent of the gods from the sky at the beginning of time. This is a popular view. On the other hand, there is the more mundane recognition that “Yoruba” is a modern ethnicity emerging, more or less, in the period 1850–1950 (Peel 2000). In this reading, “Yoruba” is a coming together of several centers, each with its specificity; Ife is but one—mightily important of course, but still only one—among a series of overlapping centers and peripheries, each with its own name and identity, that comprise the “more-or-less” region that today we have learned to call “Yoruba,” or “the Yoruba,” or “Yoruba-land,” or “the Yoruba-speaking peoples.”...

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