Nok is a village in Jaba Local Government Area of

Kaduna State Kaduna State ( ha, Jihar Kaduna جىِهَر كَدُنا; ff, Leydi Kaduna, script=Latn, ; kcg, Sitet Kaduna) is a state in northern Nigeria. The state capital is its namesake, the city of Kaduna which happened to be the 8th largest city in ...

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

. The village is an

archeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...

Archaeology

The discovery of terracotta figurines at this location caused its name to be used for the

Nok culture The Nok culture (or Nok civilization) is a population whose material remains are named after the Ham village of Nok in Kaduna State of Nigeria, where their terracotta sculptures were first discovered in 1928. The Nok culture appeared in Nige ...

, of which these figurines are typical, which flourished in Nigeria in the period 1500 BC - 500 AD.Breunig, Peter. 2014. Nok: African Sculpture in Archaeological Context: p. 21. The artifacts were discovered in 1943 during mining operations. The archaeologist

Bernard Fagg Bernard Evelyn Buller Fagg MBE, (8 December 1915 – 14 August 1987) was a British archaeologist and museum curator who undertook extensive work in Nigeria before and after the Second World War. Biography Fagg was born in Upper Norwood to ...

investigated the site, and with the help of locals discovered many other artifacts. Iron smelting furnaces were also found at Nok. Occupation dates far before the first iron smelting. A sample of carbonized wood found in the "main paddock" at Nok in 1951 was dated to around 3660 BC though there are questions about the reliability of this conclusion.

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{{Authority control Archaeological sites in Nigeria Populated places in Kaduna State Sacred sites in traditional African religions Archaeological sites of Western Africa