Waja

Ohioma Ifounu Pogoson
Institute of African Studies
University of Ibadan
Ibadan.

Abstract
The history of Northern Edo land, Nigeria has been subsumed in the history of
Benin kingdom and indeed, due to oversimplification, northern Edo history has
been reduced to the history of Benin. Presently, the only available means to salvage
the history of Northern Edo land remains the art objects collected by Northcote
Thomas from Edo land, between 1908 and 1914. The collection is now domiciled at
the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) of the University of
Cambridge, unutilized. The paper therefore undertook a comparative iconographic
study of selected objects from the Thomas’ collection with Benin art, in an attempt
to make some more specific and perhaps categorical statements about a possible
Benin-Northern Edo artistic relationship. Some of the works analysed from the
collection include kola nut bowls from Otuo, Uzebba decorated kola nut bowls,
Agbede bowls, and Okpe decorated ladle out of others. Evidently these artworks are
prestigious objects, yet the Edo north community is devoid of such powerful central
administrative system that could be in demand of such objects. This raises questions
about the peopling of the region. From the available evidential materials, under
consideration, it was then postulated that there could have been the possibility of
north-south movement and a later south-north movement in that region, which has
caused a thinning-out of the culture that produced the Thomas’ collection. The
paper concluded that the makers of the selected objects from the Thomas’ collection
might be different from the present day inhabitants of the region.