Aribidesi Usman and Toyin Falola: The Yoruba from Prehistory to the Present
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BOOK REVIEW
Aribidesi Usman and Toyin Falola: The Yoruba from Prehistory to the Present Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2019, 496 pp., ISBN 978-1-107-68394-5 Caleb Adebayo Folorunso
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
The book has 20 chapters assembled into six parts which, following an introductory chapter, largely trace a chronology of Yoruba history and culture. Chapter 1 (Geography and Society) sets the stage for what constitutes the Yoruba. The chapter affirms that people became known as Yoruba in recent times, and subgroups were previously known as Egba, Egbado, Ijebu, Oyo, Ijesha, Igbomina, Ekiti, Ondo, Ilaje, etc. The assertion that Yoruba town associations engage in development projects “such as a new church or mosque” (p. 23) is, however, doubtful because religious beliefs are personal and people would not ordinarily participate in projects of other religious groups. In Chapter 2 (Prehistory and Protohistory), the authors employ periodization terminologies such as Prehistory, Protohistory, Medieval, and Classical periods. For the Prehistoric period, the chapter mentions the occurrence of a probable ESA/MSA tools found in disturbed contexts of gravel and terrace deposits in parts of Yorubaland and presents the Late Stone Age to be fairly represented in the region with the site of Iwo Eleru being the most prominent among others such as Ifetedo, Itaakpa, and Mejiro. Protohistory is explicitly defined as “the period when written records and oral traditions are scanty and inadequate” (p. 31). The chapter mentions only one Iron Age site, Oluwaju rockshelter in the northeast Yoruba region, and rightly observes that the
C. A. Folorunso (*) University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria e-mail: [email protected]
“early Iron Age in the Yoruba region was a period of significant technological and sociocultural changes” (p. 44). However, other early iron working sites in Yorubaland are not cited to support this statement. The description of Early Settlement Development (AD 500– 1000) is probably based mostly on oral historical sources and on limited archaeological evidence. The Classical period in Ife (ca. AD 1000–1400) is identified with the transition from village polities and village confederacies to a centralized political system with an urban capital. The period also witnessed the establishment of a royal dynasty; a complex social hierarchy of political and ritual officials; the development of paraphernalia such as crowns and shell beads; the erection of stone monoliths; the use of stones to create figurative representation of human personalities; the construction of concentric walls, roads, and courtyards with potsherd pavements; and artifacts such as glass beads, life-size naturalistic terracotta sculptures, copper alloy figures sculpted in brass and bronze. Chapter 3 (Growth of Complex Societies) focuses on those societies believed to be associated with kingship in Yorubaland. The emphasis is again on Ife where archaeological investigations by people such as William Fagg
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