Taruga (place of discovery)
Coordinates: 8 ° 25 '0 " N , 7 ° 15' 0" O
Taruga is a site of the Nok culture . The site is about 40 km southeast of the Nigerian capital Abuja .
Excavations by the British archaeologist Bernard Fagg in the 1960s not only revealed fragments of terracotta , but also the oldest dating of iron smelting for West Africa. Taruga has long been the only site of the Nok culture that has been thoroughly described and documented.
A new research project at the University of Frankfurt allowed several new ones to be added.
literature
- Abiye E. Ichaba: The Iron Working Industry in Precolonial Nigeria: An Appraisal , in: Africanology 1,1 (2014) 33-39, here: p. 36 f. ( online )