The Town at the Center of the Universe: The Archaeology and Arts of Ilé-Ifè, the West African City of Gods, in Global Perspective (c.1000 AD to the Present)

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"Ife is as full of holy relics as Rome. Each grove and shrine is sacred to an orisha or demi-god, who is not merely the guardian and patron but the progenitor of a clan. For once upon a time the gods lived on earth, and there is no Yoruba who cannot trace his ancestry back to one of them... Not merely the Yoruba nation but the world itself came to birth at Ife." - Elspeth Huxley (1954: 207) Viewed traditionally as the birthplace of humankind in Yorùbá cosmology, the Medieval West African city of Ilé-Ifè, Nigeria, boasts an artistic record perhaps unparalleled in West and Central Africa. During its zenith in the 11th to 15th centuries AD, the city was likely the capital of a powerful, influential kingdom, and the heart of technologically and stylistically complex industries of brass, copper, terracotta, glass, stone, and ceramic art which profoundly influenced the history of the region. Considered in the present as a sacred center, traditions hold Ife to be the source of a number of West African dynasties, and the monarchs, priests, and people of several later West African kingdoms held it in deep reverence, such as the kingdoms of Dahomey, Benin, and Oyó. Today, Ifè is considered the spiritual core of a world religion: the reverence of the drisà - the powerful deities of southern Nigeria, now also worshipped as far as Brazil, Cuba, Trinidad, and New York under new manifestations in diasporic religions such as Candomblé, Santerïa, and Orisha. Despite the kingdom's incredible artistic record, the prominence of it and its king (the Ooni) as a sort of Rome or Vatican City of West Africa, and its central role in global spirituality, its history remains mysterious. In the face of a general lack of early written accounts and often conflicting oral traditions, the archaeology and arts of Ifè come to the fore as crucial sources of evidence that sheds light on the city's illustrious past, the nature of its society, and the technological expertise, artistic talent, and aesthetic values of its early inhabitants.