Ancient History of Technology in West Africa: The Indigenous Glass/Glass Bead Industry and the Society in Early Ile-Ife, Southwest Nigeria

Abstract

The technology of glassmaking is complex. This complexity has been cited for the exclusion of the development of ancient glass technology from certain regions of the world, especially Africa, South of the Sahara. Thus, much of the existing scholarship on the technology of ancient glass has focused on the Middle East, Mediterranean, and Southeast and South Asia. Although the discourse on indigenous African technology has gained traction in Black studies, the study of ancient glass seems to have been left mainly in the hands of specialists in other disciplines. Drawing from archaeological and historical evidence from Ile-Ife, Southwest Nigeria, in tandem with the result of compositional analysis, this article examines the first recognized indigenous Sub-Saharan African glass technology dated to early second millennium ad or earlier. The development of the local glass recipe and the making of beads not only ushered in a social, religious, and economic transformation in Yorubaland as well as the other West African societies but also redressed the place of Sub-Saharan African in the historiographical map of ancient global technology and commerce.