The arts of Nigeria are among the most studied of all African arts and yet there are still exceptional works about which we know very little. In this paper we offer an investigation of copper alloy works from the Lower Niger that demonstrate the extraordinary creativity and aesthetic power to which Fagg refers. These bell heads and their fantastic imagery have encouraged us to take a multidisciplinary approach, a synthesis that allows us to draw conclusions about the dating of these works and about the persistence of particular ways of thinking as embodied in ritual practices though several hundred years. Specifically, we investigate that period in sub-Saharan Africa from the inception of an art making use of copper and its alloys to the entry of coastal West Africa and its hinterlands into the Atlantic sea trade from the late fifteenth century onwards.
What we are concerned with is that provisional...