Nri and the Igbo World
The Igbo-Ukwu bronzes and their 9th-10th century dates, the Nri ritual kingdom and its priests, Igbo political organisation through elders, age grades, title societies and assemblies, the Aro confederacy and the Arochukwu oracle, the Bight of Biafra in the Atlantic trade, and the British conquest including the 1901-02 Aro expedition.
Bronzes, priests and assemblies
Igbo-Ukwu's bronzes, made by lost-wax casting with remarkable detail (a vessel in the form of a shell, a pot surrounded by rope work), show a sophisticated metal-working tradition and long-distance trade: some beads came from far beyond West Africa. Their early dates helped overturn assumptions that West African bronze casting was learned from outside.
Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958) gave the world a portrait of an Igbo community under these institutions at the moment of colonial arrival, and remains a widely read source on how Igbo society saw itself.
Thurstan Shaw, Igbo-Ukwu: An Account of Archaeological Discoveries in Eastern Nigeria (1970); M. Angulu Onwuejeogwu, An Igbo Civilization: Nri Kingdom and Hegemony (1981); Elizabeth Isichei, A History of the Igbo People (1976); Kenneth Onwuka Dike and Felicia Ekejiuba, The Aro of South-eastern Nigeria, 1650-1980 (1990).