Igbo-Ukwu

The town gives its name to the Igbo-Ukwu archaeological complex, one of the most important archaeological discoveries in West Africa. Excavations revealed extraordinarily elaborate copper and copper-alloy objects, pottery, textiles, ivory and more than 150,000 glass and stone beads. The principal deposits date broadly from the late first to the early second millennium CE, with current research placing much of the activity between about the ninth and twelfth centuries. The finds demonstrated that communities in the forest zone of south-eastern Nigeria participated in sophisticated craft production and far-reaching exchange networks long before European contact.