Bernard Fagg

Bernard Fagg (born December 8, 1915 in Upper Norwood , today a district of the London Borough of Croydon , † August 14, 1987 in Oxford , England , Great Britain ) was a British archaeologist and museum curator .

Life

Fagg studied classical archeology and ethnology at Downing College of the University of Cambridge . After graduating there, he began working for the British colonial administration in the city of Jos in Nigeria in 1939. In 1944 he carried out excavations in the Rop rock shelter , an abri in the Jos Plateau in the middle of the country. Tools from the Early Stone Age and about 2000 year old ceramic shards were found there.

Fagg was the first archaeologist to discover the complex, later known as the Nok Culture , after the first terracotta figures were found in Nok . He carried out the first scientific excavations in Taruga Square . Both terracotta figures and iron slag with traces of charcoal were found, which make it possible to date them to the fourth and third centuries BC.

After the establishment of the Department of Antiquities in Nigeria in 1947, he was transferred to this department by the colonial administration. In 1952 he set up the country's first museum open to the public in Jos, in which his finds could also be exhibited, and in 1957 he became director of the museum. After Nigeria's independence in 1960, Fagg became curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum in the university city of Oxford, England, in 1963 .

Fonts

• Nok Terracottas. Ethnographica for the National Museum, Lagos et al. 1977, ISBN 0-905788-00-1 .

literature

• Kit W. Wessler (Ed.): Historical Archeology in Nigeria. Africa World Press, Trenton NJ et al. 1998, ISBN 0-86543-610-X .
• Roland Oliver , Brian M. Fagan : Africa in the Iron Age. c. 500 BC to AD 1400. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1975, ISBN 0-521-09900-5 .