• 1 The “Royal Pair” and the Ooni figure were dated by thermoluminescence using the clay core left in t (...)

1On the morning of November 22, 1957, Mr. Adebayo’s attention was drawn to a laborer bending down into the trench he was digging. Unlike the thousands of other strikes into clay, his pickaxe had just made a distinct sound by perforating an object whose green patina stood out against the bright red of the soil. Mr Adebayo, who supervised the construction of the Ife Cooperative Produce Marketing Union headquarters at Ita Yemoo, in the outskirts of Ile-Ife, saw the laborer grab an object and remove the clay stuck to it. He was holding a copper alloy statuette depicting two figures, one of whom had had his head severed by the pickaxe.1 The intrigued supervisor ordered workers to search for the missing head. The laborers went back to work, now carefully probing, delicately excavating and sieving through spoil heaps. Not only was the head found by the end of the day—although severely damaged by the pickaxe’s initial blow—but six other copper alloy objects were retrieved from newly excavated ground. Three days passed before news of the discovery reached the paramount chief of Ife, the Ooni, who demanded that the objects be deposited and stored in his palace. On the same day, the Nigerian Antiquities Service, created by colonial authorities in 1943 and the powers of which were considerably strengthened after the passing of the 1953 Antiquities Ordinance, took over the management of the site and fenced it in (Willett 1959a: 135; Basu & Damodaran 2015: 257–261). Two weeks later, Frank Willett, a young archaeologist arrived from Manchester started rescue work at Ita Yemoo while preparing the publication of the newly excavated Ita Yemoo “bronzes.” In addition to the “arm-in-arm” couple, the first object found, he described the bust of an elite figure, two “masses” each decorated with two gagged heads, two canes each ending in a human head, one of which was gagged, and a container in the shape of a four-legged stool. In academic circles, Ile-Ife was again causing a sensation (Willett 1959a, 1959b, 2006).

• 2 Hunterian Museum and University of Glasgow Archives & Special Collections, Willett collection, GB24 (...)
• 3 See below, footnote 32.

2Since the beginning of the 20th century, material remains of the past unearthed at Ile-Ife are unlike any others in West Africa. In 1910, the German anthropologist Leo Frobenius was the first European scholar to excavate here, searching for iconographic treasures (Frobenius 1913). He described the unique features of Ife antiquities, in particular the Olokun brass head, which has since become an iconic symbol of Ife’s rich past (Craddock et al. 2013). From the 1930s onwards, the modernization and rapid expansion of urban infrastructures meant construction workers started excavating at an accelerated pace in areas formerly covered with farms, leading to many new archaeological discoveries. In 1938, the accidental unearthing in the courtyard of the Wunmonjie compound of an impressive cache of new brass heads shook the Western perception of African art and revived the interest of researchers in this ancient city. Indeed, local oral traditions suggest that Ife was where both humanity and civilization emerged (Bascom 1938; Willett 1960). In 1948, the colonial administration funded the construction of a museum at Ife which opened to the public in April 1953.2 Bernard Fagg, an archaeologist who had previously distinguished himself for his rediscovery of the Nok culture in central Nigeria, was the first to conduct controlled excavations in Ife. In 1949, he supervised the excavation of a dozen test pits located across town. Four years later, he excavated several other test pits, which were focused on sacred sites throughout the city (Willett 1960: 239–241).3 The archaeologists’ main objectives were then to find exceptional objects, document monumental structures, and propose a minimal contextual discourse connected as closely as possible to oral traditions. This first generation of trenches exploratory pits dug by well-diggers did not generate much in the way of publication or surviving records, and only a scattering of information about them appeared. Work by Frank Willett was about to change that.

• 4 See biographies of Frank Willett in Picton 2007 and Pole 2007, and the notice “Professor Frank Will (...)

3Although Ita Yemoo is only a small district within the much larger ancient urban complex of Ife—all contained within the modern city of Ile-Ife, in southwestern Nigeria—and one among many dozens of sites excavated there, it occupies a prominent place in the academic literature. The discovery of new copper alloy sculptures in 1957—the first since 1938—was enough to promote Ita Yemoo to the rank of an exceptional archaeological site and, in turn, boost Willett’s international career and reputation. As time went by, the name of Ita Yemoo became inextricably linked to that of Frank Willett. Based on presentations and publications, Willett made Ita Yemoo a reference and touchstone in West African archaeology. Owing to the dearth of material referencing West African archaeology, publishers and editors eagerly made room for descriptions of Ita Yemoo in the most influential journals of the day. This paved the way to Willett’s successful career at prestigious institutions, first at the Nuffield College, Oxford, then at Northwestern University, and finally as the first director of the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, a position he held from 1976 to retirement in 1990.4 However, as he explored new career opportunities along the way, Frank Willett became less of an archaeologist and more of an art historian. As a result, the Ita Yemoo excavations remained largely unpublished, while its distinctive material culture was described and discussed at length in popular and scholarly accounts.

• 5 Contemporary oral traditions circulating in Ife associate Yemoo with Obatala, one of the famous lea (...)

4Today, the toponym ‘Ita Yemoo’ remains synony­mous with the small area of Ife, where Willett conducted many of his pioneering, yet unpublished, archaeological excavations.5 Visitors coming to Ife can visit Ita Yemoo, which has remained a property of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) and an annex to the Ife Museum which still stands next to the Ooni’s palace. They can see the potsherd pavement Willett excavated in 1957, now contained under a roofed structure (Fig. 1). Still, there is no interpretative center or other visible trace of the excavations that made the site a reference point in world archaeology. Ita Yemoo is now covered with recent buildings that have impacted the integrity of the site and hidden past archaeological research. Where did Willett conduct his excavations, visitors ask, and what exactly did he find? In what contexts did he find the rich material culture he described? What parts of Ita Yemoo are yet to be excavated, and how can we preserve them for the sake of future generations?

• 6 Willett’s correspondence can be found in HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, boxes 16, 17, 32, 35 and 38.

6Frank Willett never published a full report of his excavations at Ita Yemoo. In an article published a few months before his death, he expressed his intention to work towards it: “With my study of the art of Ife now available [reference to Willett 2004], I now turn to complete my final reports on my excavations” (Willett 2006: 155). He did not live long enough to achieve this objective. His archives of notes, gray literature, and photographic material were not integrated into a comprehensive publication of the sites he excavated. He was nevertheless a prolific scholar with no less than fifty books, chapters of edited volumes, and articles on Ife published between 1958 and 2006. On the whole, these primarily focused on the description and interpretation of the prestigious material culture that made up Ife’s reputation among art historians and museum curators. In addition to inventorying these extraordinary objects and writing accounts of the circumstances of their rediscovery, Willett also contributed extensively to debates with other Africanist archaeologists of his time and maintained an impressive correspondence with scholars in Africa, continental Europe, and North America.6 For example, he developed a long-lasting interest in the question of the composition and elemental analysis of Ife copper alloy casts and the circulation of metals in medieval West Africa (Willett 1964, 1977, 1981, 1983, 2000a; Willett & Werner 1975; Willett & Fleming 1976; Willett et al. 1994; Willett et al. 1995; Willett & Sayre 2006). Frank Willett also engaged more broadly with the long-term comparative history of techniques and styles in the arts of Nigeria—including those of Nok, Igbo-Ukwu, Owo, and Benin (Willett 1966a, 1968, 1973, 1975, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1992, 1997). By cultivating his contacts among art collectors, he also developed an expertise in the touchy question of art trafficking (Willett 1976, 2000b).

• 7 Willett recorded 16 pavements at Ita Yemoo, each referenced with this notation system in his archiv (...)

7Willett recounted multiple times how construction workers recovered brass objects at Ita Yemoo in November 1957. The different versions of this account always include the circumstances of the discovery, a description of the artifacts found, and a summary description of the ensuing rescue excavations on the site during his first season from December 1957 to January 1958 (Willett 1959a, 1959b, 1959c, 1959d, 1960). However, details on the rescue excavations are minimal. For instance, he never provided a site map to allow readers to comprehend the scale and the spatial relations between the different areas he excavated. Potsherd pavements featured preeminently in the early publications as markers of ancient living surfaces on which archaeologists might find in situ material assemblages. Despite the early adoption of a numbering system for pavements characterized by the abbreviation “psp-n” (where “psp” stands for “potsherd pavement” and “n” for a cardinal number starting at 1, indicating the order in which the pavements were rediscovered), it is often difficult to identify which of the many pavements recovered at Ita Yemoo he discusses in his published material.7 The only pavement described in some detail is the first one he encountered (pavement #1), a large potsherd pavement, which he later had fenced, roofed, and registered as a national monument (Fig. 1). One significant feature found on top of one of these pavements was a group of terracottas Willett referred to as Shrine I. Although he later published the individual terracotta heads in some detail (Willett 1967: pl. VII, VIII, IX), the overall feature and its archaeological context remain poorly described.

• 8 For a draft of this article, see HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo, containing (...)
• 9 In particular in Willett 2004: I-2 [28–34] and II-2. The CD-ROM is now difficult to access due to i (...)

8In later publications, we find some mentions of this first excavation season at Ita Yemoo, with a few additional details (Willett 1960: 242; 1966b: 180–182;8 1983: 65–68). The most detailed account is available in The Art of Ife (2004)—Willett’s last important work, published on CD-ROM—where he provided a new synthesis of his work at Ita Yemoo, including hitherto unpublished information and original photographs derived from his notes and personal archive.9 The CD-ROM is primarily a photographic inventory of Ife’s prestigious material culture; however, the write-ups on the archaeological sites included new information that complemented his earlier publications.

• 10 See below: “First season, 1957–1958: Shrine I and the Oguusi house.”
• 11 Davison is the first to have provided data on chemical composition on samples of glass beads from I (...)
• 12 This author sometimes confuses Ita Yemoo with another site excavated by Willett at the Saint David (...)
• 13 The Ife-Sungbo Archaeological Project began in 2015, with Gérard Chouin and Adisa Ogunfolakan as co (...)

10Many scholars have mentioned Willett’s published scholarship on Ita Yemoo, but few have made an original contribution to further our understanding of his work. In his autobiography, British historian Roland Oliver briefly described his stay at Ile-Ife in January 1958 and his participation in the excavation of Shrine I (Oliver 1997: 186–189).10 James William Mueller, then a graduate student preparing a Master of Arts thesis at the University of Arizona, studied local ceramics excavated by Willett in Trench XIII at Ita Yemoo in 1962–1963 (Mueller 1971). He had access to Willett himself, who was then teaching at Northwestern University, and reproduced some original material such as the stratigraphic section of Trench XIII. Although Mueller’s thesis does not stand as an outstanding contribution to Ife’s local ceramic study, it provides an overview—sometimes confusing—of Willett’s work at Ita Yemoo. In her Ph.D. thesis defended in 1972, Claire Davison studied the chemical composition of glass beads, including samples from Ita Yemoo (Davison et al. 1971; Davison 1972).11 Work on Ife glass beads, including some from Ita Yemoo, has recently gained traction, resulting in significant progress in our understanding of Ife’s glass production technology (Lankton et al. 2006; Ogundiran & Ige 2015; Babalola 2015, 2021; Babalola et al. 2020). Dola Angèle Aguigah included Ita Yemoo in her study of pavements in the Gulf of Benin,12 and she reproduced a number of unpublished documents provided by Willett, including photographs of some of Ita Yemoo’s pavements, a partial site map, and one photograph of Trench XIII (Aguigah 1995: 154, 360, 365, 460; 2018: 262). In 2009, a team of Nigerian scholars published an inquiry about ceramic composition at Ife and selected surrounding sites (Ige et al. 2009). This petrographic and geochemical study was based on a sample of 246 sherds, including 122 sherds picked from potsherd pavements destroyed at Ita Yemoo during the digging of the foundations of a new building (the “hall”) in 2006. In 2015, in the early stage of the Ife-Sungbo Archaeological Project, a team from the Department of Geology of Obafemi Awolowo University carried out a geophysical survey of the defensive earthwork at Ita Yemoo (Olorunfemi et al. 2015). It used electrical resistivity and magnetic methods to record subsurface archaeological features. It also helped determine priority areas for the excavations conducted from 2015 to 2017 in the framework of the Ife-Sungbo Archaeological Project.13

• 14 The pandemic that led to the closure of the archive service since Spring 2020 prevented us from exa (...)

12Although abundant, the literature on Ita Yemoo lacks a comprehensive discussion of the archaeological works conducted at the site. With this in mind, the authors of this article propose to broaden our understanding of Willett’s activities at Ita Yemoo, through a deep description of his excavations between 1957 and 1963, using little-known archival materials.14

• 15 The archives consist of a main collection (ACCN 3120) available since 2007 and two additional depos (...)
• 16 As examples, this includes field notes by Fagg, internal reports by the Service of Antiquities duri (...)

13The papers of Professor Frank Willett, preserved by the University of Glasgow Archive Service, comprise forty archival boxes occupying 18.6 linear meters.15 The collection contains a wide range of documents, including field notebooks and excavation records, photographic prints, diaries, several small field sketches, abundant scientific correspondence, press cuttings, notes on seminars and conferences, preliminary notes and drafts of articles and books, unpublished texts, index cards on various topics, analysis reports, drawings of ceramic and lithic material, and even samples of material culture from excavations. In addition, Frank Willett had himself gathered originals and copies of papers on research work in Nigeria.16 This gray literature contains a wealth of details that enable us to immerse ourselves in Willett’s day-to-day field activities and reexamine the archaeology of Ife from the perspective of this primary documentation.

• 17 For instance, there is some material on excavations on the site of Saint John, Ilode, Ife in the co (...)

14For this study, we undertook a comprehensive survey of files of the Federal Department of Antiquities, Lagos, deposited at the National Archives of Ibadan. This collection is located in the Special Archives repository and covers the period 1946–1973. We could not find much in these files that relates to Ita Yemoo. Nevertheless, personal and administrative files provide clues on the working of the Department of Antiquities and occasionally contain material that can throw light on some lesser-known excavations.17 At Ife, there is no accessible archive we could use at present. Efforts are still being made to obtain authorizations to explore potential holdings of the Ife Museum under the auspices of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments. Similarly, aside from the most outstanding objects kept in the Nigerian National Museum’s safes, the material excavated by Willett is probably housed in the stores of the National Museum at Ile-Ife. However, the memory of where these collections are has long faded. Recent finds by one of the authors of previously unknown surveyor’s maps of Ita Yemoo show how important it is to survey these resources for documentary shreds of evidence of past archaeological works. These survey maps, drafted between 1961 and 1962, were found in the small and long-unattended library of the Ita Yemoo annex of the National Museum. They provided us with crucial indications on the location of some of Willett’s excavations, making it possible to position them on a modern aerial view of Ita Yemoo (Fig. 2).

• 18 Willett 1959a: 135. The area purchased by the government in 1961, and which is still today an annex (...)
• 19 Willett described the scenery: “The surrounding area showed that it had been typical mixed farmland (...)
• 20 Its frontage was to stand 75 feet away from the main road (HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, Ita  (...)
• 21 The area “leveled” extended 275 feet (84 meters) away from the road, and the ditch ran parallel to (...)

17When Frank Willett arrived at Ita Yemoo on December 9, 1957 (Willett 1959a: 35), he found the site as it had been left by construction workers two weeks earlier, after the government had erected a light wooden fence around it and posted guards. The enclosure covered about 870 square meters,18 bordered on its western side by a tarred road leading to Ilesha. It was within this perimeter that laborers had recovered the copper alloy artifacts. Although most of the area was still farmland (Fig. 3),19 it was fast developing and some buildings were already standing on both sides of the Ilesha road. Immediately outside the perimeter of the fence, Willett found two unfinished buildings. One was an almost completed one-story house, which he would later transform into a field office (Fig. 4). It still stands today as the Pottery Museum. The other structure, known as Adesiyan’s house, was being built next to the field office along the Ilesha road. When Willett arrived, foundations were in place (Fig. 5), and mud bricks were being made on-site with clay extracted from a nearby pit. Outside the fence, he found the construction trenches of the different buildings that were to become the Ife Cooperative Marketing Union’s headquarters (ICMU). This was to be a large complex consisting of “two large cocoa stores at the back of the area, with a large parking area in front, flanked on the west by an assembly hall and offices, and by a library.”20 Before digging the foundation trenches, workers had “cleared and leveled” the area on which the complex was to stand. Some of the topsoil was removed to fill a ditch, which “had probably served as a quarry for road metal when making the Ilesha road” and to “produce a level building surface.”21 It is unclear how much of the topsoil the laborers had removed and where it had been placed. But as Willett noted:

• 23 Describing his initial encounter of the site, Willett wrote: “The cleared area of bright red, sun-b (...)

18All pavements, however, were not dug away or exposed during the leveling of the site. Some were cut by foundation trenches,23 while others were discovered in test excavations and later excavated by Willett. Thus, modern leveling did not exactly mould the topography of the past occupation but disturbed it in ways we cannot precisely reconstruct.

• 24 Some of the questions and answers were recorded in the notebook (HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16 (...)
• 25 Willett estimated the size of the archaeological cluster around Ita Yemoo as being 25 acres. HMUG, (...)
• 26 Following Kenneth Murray, Bernard Fagg was from 1957 Director of the Colonial Antiquities Service b (...)
• 27 The term “rescue operation” is used in an unpublished handwritten paper entitled “Preliminary Inves (...)

21Upon arrival, Willett’s first concern was to inspect, measure, and describe the artifacts excavated the previous month. They had been deposited in the Ife Museum, next to the Ooni’s palace. He also mentioned having “treated them at once with sodium sesquicarbonate to arrest the corrosion from which they were suffering” (Willett 1959a: 135). The copious notes he took are already very articulate, and they formed the basis of the several published descriptions that ensued. During the process, Willett met with the Ooni of Ile-Ife, Adesoji Aderemi (1930–1980) and collected some brief answers to some general questions relative to Ita Yemoo and the artifacts.24 Next, Willett walked through the area in and outside the fence and made a rapid inventory of features that required urgent attention.25 We do not precisely know the instructions he had received from Fagg.26 Nevertheless, his intervention was considered a “rescue operation,” as construction work was supposed to resume (which turned out not to be the case in the end). One of his priorities was to recover the “face of the damaged bronze pair” unearthed the previous month.27

• 28 See below, footnote 32.
• 29 Willet noted most of them were in fact Bura people from Borno. HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, (...)
• 30 Willet affirmed that each man could carefully go through 4 feet of sediment a day with this method. (...)

22The first excavations at the site were a series of circular test pits, called “shafts” in Willett’s notes. Fagg had imposed this method, which he had used routinely at Ife since 1949.28 Roland Oliver, who spent some days on the site with Willett in January 1958, reported that, upon arrival at Ife, Willett had met a “team of Hausa29 well diggers sent down by Fagg from his headquarters at Jos in the Northern Region” (Oliver 1997: 187). In his notes, Willett mentioned the shafts were about 2 feet in diameter (ca. 61 cm). He claimed to have used the technique “in a very cautious way,” explaining that although they were “in no sense a substitute for proper archaeological excavation,” they were nonetheless “a rapid and inexpensive way of making a survey of an archaeological site for the purpose of deciding the most suitable place to excavate.”30 He described the technique in an unpublished paper:

• 32 We know little about the first campaigns of test excavations led by Fagg at Ife. In 1949, he had le (...)
• 33 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, file “Ita Yemoo”: [3].

23At Ita Yemoo, Willet observed that the foundation trenches of the cooperative’s buildings cut through several potsherd pavements. Therefore, the shaft technique was used to test the site, both within and outside the fenced area for the presence or absence of ancient pavements. The exact number of shafts dug during this early phase of the excavation is unclear. The earliest shaft recorded in Willett’s notebook bears number 220, suggesting that he started his numbering from a list of previously excavated shafts at Ife.32 Shaft #232 is the last one recorded in his notebook in December 1957, implying that he sank at least 13 circular shafts (#220 through #232). Eleven of them were located outside the fence, in the area marked to be developed as the future assembly hall and office spaces of the ICMU’s headquarters. Shafts were dug every 15 feet (ca. 4.5 m) along three lines parallel to the existing foundation trenches.33 In three shafts (#221, #225 and #226), well-diggers Hassan, Sule, and Saidu found potsherd pavements. Little did they know that they had found the first complete potsherd pavement excavated at Ife, one that Willett would excavate in its entirety as pavement #1, then would have roofed over and listed as a national monument (Fig. 1). The depth of the sediment over the pavement was recorded as 13 inches (ca. 33 cm) in shaft #226, 15 inches (ca. 38 cm) in shaft #225, and plunged to 33 inches (ca. 84 cm) in shaft #221. This profile corresponds well with the intriguing irregular surface of pavement #1 as we know it today. Only in shaft #221 did Willett provide stratigraphic information. He distinguished three layers, including a 9-inch (ca. 23 cm) thick brown upper level (topsoil), followed by a 1-inch (ca. 2.5 cm) black level with charcoal inclusions. He noted reddish-brown lateritic sediment between the black layer and the pavement, which would have been 23 inches (ca. 58 cm) deep.

• 34 Ibid. Lefax refillable notebook in a green binder: [41–42].
• 35 Ibid. Black binder including a list of small finds and features: [3].

24In the following days, as he excavated a first trench (Trench I) over the pavement, he labeled the upper “brown” level together with the darker horizon he had noticed in shaft #221 as “layer 1”; the lower “reddish-brown” level as “layer 2”; and the potsherd pavement itself as “layer 3.”34 Interestingly, he later described it as “brown humic earth.”35 He noted that the stratigraphy at the northern end—where shaft #221 was located—had been less impacted by the ground leveling done three weeks earlier than the southern end, where layer 2 was now exposed on the surface. As we discuss below, these details are important, as they echo a stratigraphic pattern that we have encountered during excavations conducted at Ife in the framework of the Ife-Sungbo Archaeological Project, between 2015 and 2019.

• 36 Willett was unhappy with the difference in width, probably resulting from a measurement error. He r (...)
• 37 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo,” Lefax refillable notebook in a green binder (...)
• 38 At least one of the men standing on the right side of the photograph must have been part of the Oon (...)
• 39 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 12, box of black & white prints “Ife 1957/8: Ita Yemoo Photographs: (...)

25The excavation of pavement #1 probably started on December 16, 1957, with Trench I, shafts #225 and #226 (Fig. 6). It was 25 feet (ca 7.6 m) long, 5 feet (ca 1.5 m) wide at its northern end and 6 feet (ca 1.8 m) wide at its southern end.36 On December 17–18, Willett laid out two 10-feet (ca. 3 m) extensions on the southern and northern ends “to find out [the] limits of the pavement.”37 This work was completed when Ooni Aderemi Adesoji paid a visit to the site.38 One photograph kept in the archives shows him, side by side with Frank Willett, standing at the northern end of Trench I and looking down at the pavement (Fig. 7).39 In the following days, Trench III would be dug in the space separating the western foundation trench from Trench I. On the eastern side, the excavation of Trench II has just started at its northern end, and we can distinguish the string used by Willett to mark its layout on the ground. In the background stands the city wall, still covered with dense vegetation. Trenches II and III ran parallel to Trench I, separated from it by 2-foot wide balks. On December 22, the excavation of the three trenches was completed and the pavement exposed in all trenches.

• 40 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo,” Lefax refillable notebook in a green binder (...)

27Willett’s notes make reference to drawing trench profiles before removing the balks, a task that was finally completed on December 29, when he took photographs of the complete pavement (Fig. 10).40 This was the first pavement extensively excavated at Ita Yemoo, and it was both impressive in its size and intriguing for its topographic profile:

• 42 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo,” Black binder including a list of small find (...)

28We know little about the material culture Willett found during the excavation of pavement #1. The only reported significant find was a near-complete pot found positioned “right way up” in the middle of Trench III, close to the balk. The pot was excavated as part of the second spit level of the northern section of Trench III (6 inches to 12 inches below the surface). It was part of layer 1 (brown humic earth), and its base rested at the bottom of the spit level, ca. 30 cm below the surface. A snail shell was found in the pot, and Willett noted the presence of “maize impressions” on the body, an observation that would later prove erroneous.42

• 43 The Ita Yemoo pavement bears number 13 in a list published by Kenneth Murray (1966).
• 44 The 1962–1963 season included Trench XIII across the city wall, north of pavement #1; Trench XIV, w (...)

29The pavement #1 excavated by Frank Willett in 1957 is the only in situ archaeological feature still visible at Ita Yemoo, in addition to a few other fragmentary, unmarked potsherd pavements (Fig. 11). Taking advantage of the existing foundation trenches originally dug for the ICMU complex, Willett obtained funding to fence and roof the pavement, which was registered on February 20, 1959 as a historical monument under the Antiquities Act of Nigeria.43 The roofing of the pavement, however, did not mark the end of archaeological investigations. Willett was intrigued by the presence of the deep depression at the northwestern corner of the pavement, a feature he decided to investigate as part of the third archaeological season at Ita Yemoo, in 1962–1963.44 Trench xiv—the last trench he excavated at Ita Yemoo—measured 4 feet (ca. 1.2 m) wide and 5 feet 6 inches (ca. 1.65 m) long. Its longer axis was oriented perpendicularly to the western end of the pavement and included the deepest part of the depression. In an unpublished typescript document written between 1964 and 1967, he noted three objectives for this follow-up excavation:

• 45 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo, containing several things,” “Excavations at (...)

30Trench XIV was dug to 1) obtain a sample of the original pavement #1; and, since roofed over, 2) if possible, establish the reason for the dip in the corner of the pavement; and 3) obtain samples of pottery predating the pavement.45

• 46 Photographs are found in HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 11, box of b & w prints “IY: Tr xiv Adesiy (...)
• 47 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo,” Black binder including a list of small find (...)
• 48 It is unclear whether Willett’s field workers were still digging in arbitrary spit levels of 6 inch (...)
• 49 For a discussion based on ethnoarchaeological observations, see Aguigah (2018: 166–168). See also A (...)
• 50 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo,” Black binder including a list of small find (...)
• 51 Trench XIV was not backfilled by Willett, and up to the late 1980s visitors could see the stone pav (...)
• 52 The material in layers 4 and 5 were grouped together into unit IYTr-1397 (HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 312 (...)
• 53 Below layers 5 and 6, the thickness of the layers is no longer mentioned in Willett’s notes (HMUG, (...)
• 54 Material finds were given the following unit numbers: layers 6 & 7, IYTr-1413; layer 8, IYTr-1416; (...)
• 55 The upper level of the alleged pit was described as rich in charcoal, but bones and pottery were fo (...)

31Our main resources to reconstruct the archaeology of this trench are four pages in a field notebook, some photographs of the trench in its final stage, and a few descriptive paragraphs in Willett’s own words.46 Although pavement #1 was labeled “layer 3” during the 1957 excavation, it became “layer 1” in Trench xiv. To excavate below pavement #1, Willett had to dismantle some part of the 2-inch (ca. 5 cm) thick pavement located in the depression (Fig. 12 and 13). A selection of the potsherds removed was kept for analysis as IYTr-1377.47 Underneath, the archaeologists met with layer 2, described as reddish-brown earth in its upper part and (“darker”) brown earth in its lower part.48 The upper part of the reddish-brown earth layer described by Willett can still be observed exposed on the western edge of pavement #1, in spots where potsherds had already eroded away at the time of excavation. It corresponds to the carefully prepared red clay base into which the potsherds were impressed while still fresh.49 At the bottom of layer 2, at the eastern side of the excavation unit, 14 inches (ca. 35.5 cm) below the surface of pavement #1, the archaeologist discovered the edge of a “neatly laid” 1-inch thick stone pavement (Fig. 13).50 Forming layer 3 in his stratigraphy, it was labeled pavement #15 and was left in situ.51 Brown earth continued under the level of pavement #15 to form a 6-inch (ca. 15.2 cm) thick layer 4 and a 10-inch (ca. 25.4 cm) thick layer 5, although, in the latter, Willett noted in layer 5 the presence of “successions of horizontal bands with much charcoal.”52 They were followed by layer 6, which formed a 1-inch thick (ca. 2.5 cm) inclusion of red sand “in a corner,” while the rest of the next level was labeled layer 7 and described as brown sandy earth.53 Layer 8 was of white sand, and layers 9 and 10 of brown sandy earth.54 At the bottom of layer 9, natural soil appeared in the southwestern corner of the unit; and in the lower part of layer 10, Willet saw what he thought was a pit “sectioned by the [western] side of the trench.” The pit was labeled Feature XXII. Soon, however, he realized he had misinterpreted it, as he wrote “Feature XXII is not a pit at all: the layers are continuous right through.”55 Layer 10, he noted, also included “a patch of white which may be ashes,” a sample of which received catalog number IYTr-1428. In addition, layer 10 had “bands of white sand” and “scattered charcoal.” Underneath, starting below the top of (non-)feature XXII, layer 11, described as “moister darker brown earth,” was the last cultural level before “natural red schistose clay” appeared at approximately 8 feet (ca. 2.4 m) below pavement #1.

• 56 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, Ita Yemoo, “Manuscript/preliminary Investigations at the Ita Ye (...)
• 57 To date, no pre-15th-century burial has been excavated at Ife.

32Overall, we believe Frank Willett was right in suggesting the feature he excavated in Trench XIV corresponded to “the filling of a pit” (Willett 2004, II–2 [14]). The presence of horizontal layers of sediment with charcoal inclusions, pockets of ashes and sand, and concentrations of charcoal and bones indeed argue for the presence of a pit filled with the refuse of a nearby kitchen. The fact that the presence of this feature coincides with the northwestern subsidence of the pavement suggests a causal relationship. We believe the weight of pavement #1 and its clay base contributed to the gradual compression of the pit filling, which included decayable organic materials and other compactable waste. Willett was of a different opinion. Based on the fact that pavement #15 did not seem to be affected by the subsidence, he suggested: “the dip in the pavement was deliberately made” (ibid.: I–2, [28]; II–2, [14]). Such a suggestion seems highly improbable to the present authors. We note that only a tiny section of the western edge of stone pavement #15 was exposed during excavations, probably not enough to infer how the pavement in its entirety was affected by the presence of the underlying feature. It follows that the oblong, ca. 15-cm-deep depression located in the southeastern part of the pavement also probably resulted from subsidence due to the presence of a similar, albeit probably smaller, and shallower pit underneath this section of the pavement. Using analogical reasoning probably based on the shape of the depression, Willett thought the underground feature responsible for the subsidence might have been a burial.56 This depression has not been excavated, and, to date, we lack any comparative archaeological evidence for burial practices in pre-15th century Ife to support this claim.57

• 58 This is in agreement with Willett’s estimation (2004: I–3, [14]).

33Willett obtained two radiocarbon dates from Trench XIV, the only ones relative to pavements #1 and #15: M-2117 (480±100 BP) and BM-261 (990±130 BP). BM-261 is derived from a charcoal sample retrieved from layer 11, at the bottom of Trench XIV (Willett 1971: 366), while M-2117 is probably derived from several small charcoal fragments found at the junction of layers 4 and 5 (Willett 1971: 366; Crane & Griffin 1972: 187). Willett read BM-261 as AD960±130, and M-2117 as AD1470±100. On this basis, he dismissed M-2117 as anomalous because he thought it was too recent, retaining only BM-261 (Willett 1971: 366; 1975: 298; 2004: I–3, [7]). However, the recalibration of M-2117 (Table 1) with the online application Calib 8.20 (Stuiver et al. 2021) suggests that although this date is indeed problematic, it should not be readily rejected. Willett seemingly collected the samples for this date in the layer that probably served as a footing for pavement #1, in a part of the trench to which pavement #15 did not extend and just above the upper level of the trash pit marked by the horizontal bands rich in charcoal noted in layer 5. It is, therefore, possible that layer 4 was contemporaneous with pavement #1, although stratigraphically positioned under pavement #15 (layer 3). If such was the case, a date assigning pavement #1 to the first half of the 14th century is not outside the scope of possibilities. The recalibration of BM-261 suggests that the lowest level of the pit underneath pavement #1 would date from a period spanning from the late 10th to late 12th century.58 This result fits perfectly with dates obtained in a similar trash pit excavated between 2015 and 2017 in the framework of the Ife-Sungbo Archaeological Project. We obtained Beta-476953 from a charcoal sample found at the deepest level of the pit. The resulting radiocarbon date is consistent with an occupation in the 11th century or the first half of the 12th century.

• 59 Garlake spoke of humic topsoil or black gritty humus (1974: 117). At Woye Asiri (Garlake 1977: 60, (...)
• 60 For Shrine I, see below: “First season, 1957–1958: Shrine I and the Oguusi house.” The Shrine II wi (...)
• 61 Following Watkins (2006), we conscientiously avoid the term “abandonment” to qualify the depopulati (...)
• 62 See also the interpretation of the shrines by Willett (2004: II–2, [5]). Akin Ogundiran (2020: 153– (...)
• 63 See below, footnote 66.

39A second group included pavements which were never intentionally backfilled after they ceased being in use. They are often covered either with a less compact, darker brown deposit, sometimes described as humus-like,59 or with the debris of nearby architectural features that collapsed on top of them and that can be difficult to distinguish from a backfill (see for instance Garlake 1977: 62–63). As surrounding structures gradually collapsed, they contributed to forming a superficial layer that partially or entirely covered the medieval features, while more sediments, often darker, were moved and deposited by the rains and surface waters. The humic characteristics observed in some of the deposits could also have resulted from farming activities between the 17th and 20th centuries. Overall, pavements of the second group are clear markers of the final occupation of Ita Yemoo—and potentially of other sites—during the late medieval period. It is mainly on the surface of these pavements that rich clusters of cultural assemblages were found in situ, including the groups of terracottas excavated in Willett’s Shrines I and II.60 Willett was also probably correct to assume that the group of metal objects found by the construction workers at Ita Yemoo would also have been part of a cultural feature initially resting on such a pavement, although the grouping of so many objects in one spot could also have been a hoard. The presence of unusual assemblages left behind on some of these pavements suggests the inhabitants of the area were forced to leave the place swiftly and could not come back. Elsewhere, we suggested that the crisis at the origin of the movement of people away from the habitation structures that made up the cultural landscape of Ita Yemoo61 is likely to have been sudden and severe, and possibly related to the second plague pandemic if it affected the region in the second half of the 14th century (Chouin 2018b).62 In any case, the rich material culture left behind by the inhabitants of Ife in the second half of the 14th century stands as an archaeological anomaly, the material manifestation of a major rupture in the ascending trajectory of Ife.63

• 64 Besides the two subsidences, the pavement shows a raised pattern in the form of an arc, which was n (...)
• 65 See for instance Trench XIII at Ita Yemoo: see the reproduction of the stratigraphic drawing in Mue (...)
• 66 On the basis of published excavations and our own work at Ita Yemoo and Oduduwa College, we hypothe (...)

40Based on Willett’s record, it is probable that pavement #1 belongs to the group of “backfilled pavements.” Therefore, it would not have been visible during the last phase of occupation of Ita Yemoo—and, as expected, no material culture was found on it. Presumably, it had become a worn and uneven surface decades earlier. The deep subsidences which affected the regularity of the pavement’s surface might have motivated the decision to cover it.64 Backfilling pavements, however, seems to have been a recurrent practice at Ife. The case of pavement #1 overlaying pavement #15 is not a unique stratigraphic feature in the archaeology of Ife, and similar stratigraphic relations between two pavements have been reported elsewhere.65 As new generations occupied spaces inherited from earlier ones, they seem to have redefined, transformed, and rebuilt them. As such, the stratigraphic landscape of Ife illustrates a diachronic process of change in the way people structured, organized, built, and gave meaning to the urban space around them. And yet, despite this dynamic of change, we observe that overlaid pavements are rare in the stratigraphic record at Ife. None of the cases documented to date had more than two distinct paved levels. These observations suggest that pavements became popular only in the later periods of Ife’s settlement history and that they resisted the passage of time well enough to remain in use for an extended period. These suggestions are consistent with Ekpo Eyo’s distinction between “pre-pavement” and “pavement” periods at Ife, with the latter originating in the course of the 12th century (Eyo 1974: 409).66

• 67 For a review of various and sometimes contradictory chronological frameworks at Ife, see above, not (...)

41Eyo’s pavement-based chronology has sometimes been criticized because, in the words of Suzanne Blier, “numerous sections of this mosaic flooring can still be seen (and are still used) in the center today, and in some cases one can see its presence in several different construction periods” (Blier 2015: 43). Indeed, the durability of pavements and their unique resistance to erosion make them ubiquitous in the modern city of Ile-Ife. In many cases, the post-15th-century deposits have been washed away, leaving pre-15th-century paved surfaces visible and sometimes reemployed in contemporary contexts. Admittedly, the outcropping of early pavements in modern contexts can be a source of confusion to scholars unfamiliar with the depositional history of the city. Although Eyo’s pavement periodization might need to be critically reexamined, we believe it remains a useful baseline from which to discuss Ife’s material culture and urbanization process in a chronological perspective, because it derives from direct archaeological evidence.67 Blier’s comment, however, speaks of the need to add a third group to our stratigraphic typology of pavements. Such a third group includes all pavements that are visible in Ife’s contemporary landscape, a fact that indicates that any deposit that covered them at one point has been eroded away through natural and/or human factors. Such a loss of stratigraphic information would not allow archaeologists to replace these pavements in either of the first two groups.

• 68 Only part of this pavement was located “under the library.” It actually extended north towards the (...)
• 69 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo,” Lefax refillable notebook in a green binder (...)
• 70 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, “Ita Yemoo,” “Manuscript/preliminary Investigations at the Ita  (...)
• 71 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo,” Lefax refillable notebook in a green binder (...)
• 72 Willett notes this detail in his field notebook on December 9, 1957, at the beginning of work. We d (...)
• 73 In his notes, Willett called this area “the site of the finds,” the “road-side ditch” or the “ditch (...)
• 74 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo,” Lefax refillable notebook in a green binder (...)
• 75 Volume estimation comes from Willett 1983: 67. For the last mention of the ditch (ITTr27), see HMUG (...)
• 76 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, “Ita Yemoo,” “Manuscript/preliminary Investigations at the Ita  (...)
• 77 Ibid.
• 78 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo,” Lefax refillable notebook in a green binder (...)
• 79 Ibid.

42On December 28, 1957, as the work on pavement #1 was coming to a close, Willett started assigning new tasks to his laborers. In his notebook, he recorded sending well-diggers to “clear [the] pavement under the library.”68 The term “library” refers to the original plan of the ICMU’s headquarters. This room was to be located next to the area demarcated to become the assembly hall, between the area where Willett excavated the pavement #1 and the city wall. There, the first series of shafts had exposed a potsherd pavement. The well-diggers uncovered part of the pavement, and on December 29, Willett noted that the pavement was cruder than pavement #1 and “fragmentary, lying on laterite which shows through the floor.”69 Willett had hoped to examine its stratigraphic connection to the city wall but soon realized it “stopped short of the wall.”70 Another group of well-diggers started investigating a new area east of pavement #I, where two cocoa warehouses were to be erected as part of the ICMU complex.71 Finally, another group explored the ditch along the Ilesha road area, which workers had reportedly filled with the soil removed from the construction site. In recovering and sieving the content of the ditch (Fig. 4), Willett hoped to find fragments of copper alloy artifacts, especially the missing face of one of the figures of the pair Blier described as a “royal couple shown with interlocked feet and arms” (Blier 2012: 72–3). We do not have many details on the work conducted in the ditch, other than that it seems to have been carefully excavated using 3-inch spit levels.72 The soil, in Willett’s words, was “carefully sieve[d].”73 In his field book, Willett noted finding many beads, adding “if we are finding beads, we shall not miss pieces of the bronze.”74 It is unclear when this work came to an end. Since no “bronze” was found, Willett’s interest dwindled, and his mentions of work in the ditch became irregular. However, the task of sieving an estimated 80 tons of soil was daunting, and the team was still at work on January 13, when Willett recorded on-going work in the ditch for the last time.75 Willett finally accepted that the missing “bronze” face had “probably shattered under the blow into tiny fragments, hardly bigger than the constituent crystals.”76 The most significant finds in the ditch were the presence of “a great concentration of beads, chiefly of blue glass,” and also “fragments of glass-making crucibles, and droplets of glass.”77 The concentration of glass beads was aligned with the area where the “bronzes” were reputed to have been found. Willett hypothesized that they “almost certainly came from the place where the bronzes had been deposited.”78 Finally, he also recorded excavating a polished stone axe and the shell of a land snail that contained six cowries.79

• 80 Ibid.: [45, 47].
• 81 Ibid.: [48–49]. The material from the Oguusi’s house was labelled IYtr28, 32–33.

43On December 31, 1957, when Willett was getting ready for a trip to Osogbo, he learned that a gagged terracotta head with bulging eyes (­­Drewal & Schildkrout 2009: 111, fig. 79) had been excavated by laborers digging foundation trenches on the other side of Ilesha road, opposite the Pottery Museum. He requested work on the house belonging to Joseph Oguusi to come to a stop to allow his team to “excavate it properly.” The following day, excavations started and lasted for four days until January 4, 1957.80 Together with the terracotta head, the team excavated fragments of a ritual pot, cowries, land snail shells, and “3 tenth of a penny,” the latter suggesting that the context of this find was somewhat disturbed.81 Parts of the ritual pot showed “in relief a gagged head lying beside a decapitated nude male body, with the hands tied behind the back,” which Willett interpreted as the representation of a human sacrifice (Willett 1959a: 136–137).

• 82 Ibid.: [45].
• 83 Willett later referred to this site as Adesiyan’s house.
• 84 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo,” Lefax refillable notebook in a green binder (...)

44In parallel with the excavation at Oguusi’s house, Willett also took an interest in another area he first referred to as “the site next but one to Ita Yemoo.”82 This was the site of another house under construction, belonging to Adesiyan, located along the Ilesha road just behind the one-story building that is known today as the Pottery Museum, within the Ita Yemoo compound owned by NCMM.83 There too, foundation trenches had exposed potsherds pavements, and it seems Fagg had asked Frank Willett to monitor the place.84 The owner, however, became worried about the sudden interest of the British archaeologist in his land, and seems to have tried to hide archaeological features. In 1957, Nigeria was still under British rule, and archaeology was nothing less than a discipline directly connected with colonial structures of power. We only know Adesiyan through Willett’s writings; nonetheless, we can easily imagine that seeing how archaeological investigations at Ita Yemoo had brought an end to the ICMU construction project, Adesiyan might have been worried that the government would also reclaim his modest plot of land and house, and that he might not be properly compensated for it. In this context, Willett was an agent of the British colonial authorities. He thought and acted as such, sometimes with little sensitivity or concern for the impact of his archaeological work on local communities. Where we now see a local actor attempting to protect his interests in the face of an elitist colonial project, Willett saw only an unruly and stubborn man unable to recognize the universal value of the heritage that stood on his property. On January 1, 1958, he visited Adesiyan’s house and what he saw infuriated him:

• 86 In his field book, Willett wrote “I found fragments of a terra cotta oni, which turns out to have b (...)
• 87 This is pavement #6, which served as flooring to the entire shrine. We do not know any site map of (...)
• 88 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo,” Lefax refillable notebook in a green binder (...)
• 89 Ibid.

45Behind the house, he also spotted fragments of a terracotta he interpreted as a representation of a kingly figure.86 They stood at the edge of a burrow pit used by the workers to dig out the clay used to make blocks for the Adesiyan house, overlaying a potsherd pavement.87 The site’s northern edge had already been severely impacted, and Willett decided there was a need for an urgent and thorough investigation. To circumvent the reluctant landowner, the archaeologist immediately took the fragments of terracotta to Ooni Adesoji Aderemi, the traditional leader of Ife who, as an Oba of the first-class, derived considerable power from the colonial policy of indirect rule and served as the highest native authority representing the British administration at Ife. As expected, Willett received the encouragement of the traditional leader, who “agreed that I should dig on the site, whatever the owner may say.”88 With the backing of the Ooni, Willett could now start investigating the new site and control further work by Adesiyan’s workers. At the end of the day, reflecting on his work so far, he exclaimed in his notebook: “This is an enormous job and gets bigger every day. There is no end to the digging in Ife.”89

• 90 Ibid. When asked, Adesiyan was unable to specify whether these artifacts had been found above or be (...)
• 91 Ibid.
• 92 Ibid.
• 93 Ibid.: [46–47].
• 94 Ibid.: [48, 50]. This note appears in the January 4 entry.
• 95 The crucible was 16.5 cm high (Willett 2004: chapter II–29, T828). A recent study compares the dime (...)
• 96 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo,” Lefax refillable notebook in a green binder (...)

46The following day, Willett met with Adesiyan and persuaded him to produce other fragments of the terracotta figure he had found in the clay pit behind his house, and an “almost complete crucible for glass of quite small size.”90 With these new artifacts in hand, he took Adesiyan at once to an audience with Ooni Adesoji Aderemi, where he was told to give “a full hand” to the British archaeologist.91 Willett did not have time to waste, and as soon as he returned to the site, his laborers started moving the bricks already prepared to clear the area “to see the relations of the terracotta and the pavement [#6].”92 Excavations started immediately, and in a few minutes, new fragments of terracotta were found, “apparently lying in [the] top six inches,” forcing Willett to ask his workers to drop their hoes and to continue work “with trowels only.”93 It soon became clear to him that pavement #6 “represented the ground surface at the time the shrine was abandoned.”94 At the same time, upon washing the crucible95 produced by Adesiyan, workers found 1,850 beads, including faceted ones in red stone, and others in multicolored glass.96

• 97 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo,” Lefax refillable notebook in a green binder (...)
• 98 This find with the coiled anklet is illustrated in Willett (2004: I–10, M36). Willett noted that th (...)
• 99 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo,” Lefax refillable notebook in a green binder (...)

47Excavations of this space continued during the following days, and the workers uncovered more terracotta fragments. The excavation of a shrine in situ was a premiere in the history of archaeology in Ife. On January 3, 1957, Willett thought there were three terracotta sculptures represented (Fig. 16).97 He noted they seemed to have been “smashed and scattered, not merely broken by collapse of the building.” The following day, however, new observations made him change his mind: “They are not as scattered as I had thought. Found a pot shattered but holding together, with a brass anklet round its neck and more beads inside” (Fig. 15).98 Clearly, the part of the site that had not been affected by the construction of the Adesiyan’s house now appeared largely undisturbed. He also noted the difficulty of excavating these objects without damaging them, as they were “soft and wet” early in the morning and difficult to distinguish from the hardened ground after sunrise. Four days later he wrote: “The difficulty of getting out the terracotta is enormous. It is extremely friable and has already cracked up and flaked apart in the ground.”99

• 100 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, “Ita Yemoo,” “Manuscript/preliminary Investigations at the Ita  (...)
• 101 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo,” Lefax refillable notebook in a green binder (...)
• 102 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo,” Lefax refillable notebook in a green binder (...)

48Working under the sun from early morning to nightfall eventually took a toll on Willett, who complained in his notes of an “upset tummy” that kept him at home on January 5, an inconvenience he turned into an opportunity to wash the recently discovered artifacts. The following day, he was back on the site, sharing his time between the shafts dug over the planned cocoa stores—which had also revealed terracotta fragments—and the site behind Adesiyan’s house, which he referred to as the “Terracotta producing area,” the “Royal Ancestral Shrine,” and later “Shrine I.”100 On January 7, he lifted the first series of terracotta fragments. Chief Akeredolu, who was entrusted with cleaning and restoring the finds, was invited “to see the pieces in situ before I attempt to lift them.”101 Willett reported finding stones associated with the shrine the following day, “one of which is almost cleared by this morning,” and excavating a broken pottery disc at about 6 inches below the surface.102 Many stones, especially grinding stones, were associated with Shrine I, as they seem to have marked the boundary of the sacred space (Fig. 16). They might have been used to prepare meals that were offered to ancestors or other spiritual entities associated with the shrine. Willett provided a detailed description of the lithic ensemble associated with Shrine I, in a handwritten draft article composed soon after the 1957–1958 season:

• 104 Fragments of these terracotta figures were recovered from the bricks of the Adesiyan’s house after (...)
• 105 Published reproductions include Willett 1967: 43, 157–159. The numerous other terracotta from “Shri (...)

49Fragments of about seven terracotta figures and four heads (including two “practically intact” (Willett 2004: II–2, [4]) were eventually recovered at the site.104 They feature among the most remarkable artifacts recovered from their archaeological context at Ife. They have since been reproduced in many publications, including Willett’s 2004 catalogue.105 Among the two intact heads, one is often described as an attendant because it does not have any headgear (Willett 1967: 156, 158, pl. VIII; 2004: T96). The other one, wearing among the most elaborate beaded headgear documented at Ife, was referred to as “a queen” (Willett 1967: 156, 159, pl. IX; 2004: T97) They were found very close to one another, the first one with its nose only a few millimeters above the pavement, and the second, face up, about 10 cm above the pavement (Willett 2004: pl. 58). The precise chronology of the excavation of the Shrine I becomes unclear after January 8, as Willett stopped writing about it in his field notes and rather focused on other activities, as discussed below. The next entry that mentions Shrine I is dated January 21, 13 days later:

• 107 Oliver’s participation in the excavations was never mentioned by Willett, not even in his field not (...)

50This gap in Willett’s notes betrays the intensity of his self-imposed schedule during the last two weeks of his first campaign at Ita Yemoo, including a new set of trenches at the spot where the “bronze” had been found (Trenches IV and V, see below), and 117 new test shafts sunk in an effort to find the limits of the Ita Yemoo site. Ten days before his scheduled departure, by mid-January 1958, help had come in the person of British historian Roland Oliver. The latter had come to Ibadan to teach in the history department and had traveled to Ife to acquaint himself with the new archaeological discoveries. Willett accepted Oliver’s offer to volunteer his time on the site and tasked him with the excavation of the two intact terracotta heads now visible at Shrine I (Oliver 1997: 187–189).107 As Oliver was busy excavating the two heads with a penknife, Willett could focus on supervising the completion of the test pits. Oliver recounted this unique experience in his autobiography:

• 108 After the purchase of the Ita Yemoo land and standing houses by the government of Nigeria in 1961, (...)
• 109 It is interesting to note that the two remaining broken terracotta heads also include an “attendant (...)

53In 2004, he went back to his original idea of a shrine impacted by the falling walls of the surrounding compound rather than the collapse of a built shrine. For the rest, the idea of the abandonment remains key to his argument, with the burning-roof hypothesis explaining why the terracottas were not recovered by the inhabitants (Willett 2004: II–2, [5–6]). There is no documented evidence of a “roof fire” in the limited archaeological record associated with the Shrine I. The fact that there is no known stratigraphic description of layers excavated by Willett does not make his fallen-walls hypothesis any stronger. Willett’s only published argument in favor of collapsed walls was the presence of “abraded potsherds [...] found between the terra-cotta fragments” (Willett 1959a: 137). Of course, many processes in the history of the site’s formation could explain the fact that some terracottas were found in different states of conservation, and that some small, eroded potsherds found their way into the post-abandonment depositional record. Based on the records left by Willett, Shrine I was likely an outdoor shrine, positioned on top of a pavement, bounded by a number of grinding stones which might have been used for the ritual preparation of food offerings. It seems possible that some of the terracottas found were standing directly on the pavement, particularly the head of the “attendant” documented by Willett. The nose of the terracotta resting directly on the pavement and the excellent conservation of the head suggest it did not fall from any height. The “queen’s head” excavated by Oliver, however, might have been standing on an altar made of perishable materials, possibly similar to that shown on one of the pieces of pottery discovered by Garlake at Obalara’s land (1974: 127–128; see also Blier 2015: 254–255). Its position above the “attendant” suggests that quite some silting had already accumulated on the site when the altar’s advanced decay caused the head to fall. It probably landed on a soft and muddy surface, thereby avoiding breakage.108 The remaining heads and terracottas apparently had a harder landing and their fragments became encrusted on the pavement or dispersed by surface waters or other environmental and anthropic factors that affected the site.109

• 110 Material from Trenches IV and V was catalogued respectively as IYTr37 and IYTr64 (HMUG, FW, GB248, (...)
• 111 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo,” Lefax refillable notebook in a green binder (...)
• 112 Material from Trenches IVa and Vb was grouped under IYTr65 and IYTr80 (HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, (...)
• 113 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo,” Lefax refillable notebook in a green binder (...)

55On January 9, 1958, Frank Willett opened two new trenches he called Trench IV and V.110 Each trench was 20x10 feet (ca. 6x3 m) and adjacent to the spot pointed to the workers as the exact location where they had found the “bronzes” artifacts.111 Not much is known about these trenches, as no detail about them is found in his field notebook before January 21, 1958, when he noted laying out two extensions side by side between the western end of Trenches IV and V and the ditch that ran perpendicular to them.112 Each extension measured 10x4 feet (ca. 3x0.9 m) and were named Trenches iva and va. A sketch in his field notebook is reproduced below (Fig. 17).113 It proved useful when we recreated the Ita Yemoo site map. Apart from finding the elusive “bronze” face, his objective was to understand the depositional context of the finds better. Fragments of pavements were identified during excavations, but not in the precise spot where the “bronzes” were supposed to have been rediscovered. Willett wrote:

• 115 Ibid.

56In the extension trenches, a terracotta leg of an antelope was unearthed, and the workers met a stone pavement at an unknown depth, which extended “to form a stone-lined pit.”115 Unfortunately, there is no known surviving material providing more information on this series of trenches.

• 116 When Willett dug shafts south of the city wall, he mentions them being “on Ife side.” See for insta (...)
• 117 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16, folder “Ita Yemoo,” Lefax refillable notebook in a green binder (...)
• 118 Each shaft that generated material that was kept received a specific catalogue number. It started w (...)

58It is impossible to know precisely where well diggers dug these circular shafts, and Willett’s notes include only some vague indications, which must have been clear to him in 1958 but have now become obscure or, at best, imprecise. This new test-pit campaign started on January 10, 1958. The first series of shafts seem to have been dug north of the city wall that passes through Ita Yemoo, in the area Willett called “the Ilesha side” of the site.116 For instance, we know that the first shaft was dug “9 yards from the edge of the ditch,” that workers struck bedrock at a depth of 2 feet, and that no pottery was kept.117 Shaft #10 was located about “45 feet from the center of the Ilesha bypass,” which was itself about “100 yards from the top of the [city wall’s] bank.” In the case of shaft #31, Willett noted: “3 yards before [shaft #31] is Beacon WX1748.” Shaft #33 did not yield any artifact and was located “on slight bank on R[oad] side of Mokuro road approaching Ife, just before junction to Ilesha road.” Shafts were organized in roughly parallel lines, and Willett’s work was facilitated by the fact that the area was not yet urbanized. Each shaft is described individually with the depth at which it ended and a quick mention of the finds, usually pottery.118

• 119 Ibid.: [61].
• 120 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16 “handwritten paper on preliminary investigation in Ita Yemoo”: [ (...)

59Willett developed a particular interest in the area where the cocoa warehouses were to be constructed (especially Store 1) and where pavements were visible in the foundation trenches (Fig. 18). Not fewer than 37 shafts were dug where the cocoa store was to be built. The rediscovery of large pavements and fragments of terracottas convinced Willett of the importance of this specific area. The information he provided proved vital in convincing the government to start negotiating the purchase of the land from the ICMU and other private owners.119 On January 21, a large delegation of the ICMU came to the site, accompanied by the Ooni. They had first agreed to move their complex away from the present site, but the new location again revealed the presence of potsherd pavements. Finally, the stakeholders agreed to relocate the ICMU complex to a different place, on the other side of the Ilesha road.120 On the recommendations of Willett, negotiations started for the purchase of the whole area by the government. In his handwritten, unpublished report, he wrote:

• 121 Press cutting from the Daily Telegraph, July 10, 1958 in HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16 Folder (...)

60In all, the government of Nigeria ended up acquiring 25 per cent of the total area Willett had initially suggested be transformed into an archaeological reserve. It stands today as the Ita Yemoo Annex of the Ife Museum. On the remaining parts of the land, the Department of Antiquity decided to conduct a systematic campaign of test pits, a task that brought Willett back to Nigeria in July 1958.121

• 122 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16 Folder Ita Yemoo containing several things. Set of press cutting (...)
• 123 Press cutting from the Manchester Evening News, July 10, 1958 in HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16 (...)
• 124 Exhibition from December 10, 1958 to January 10, 1959 (Archives Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro e (...)
• 125 HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16 Folder Ita Yemoo containing several things, “typed university co (...)

61After this first excavation season, he had returned to Manchester to the job he had temporarily left behind as Keeper of the Department of Ethnology and General Archaeology. Still, his experience with Nigerian antiquities haunted him. Upon his return, he curated an exhibition at the Manchester University Museum with the artifacts rediscovered at Ita Yemoo from November 1957, including the terracottas from Shrine I. A newspaper clipping of the Evening Chronicle dated May 2, 1958, reported that “one of his last finds before he left the ‘dig’ in January was the face of a royal figure. The rest of it lay in fragments. But when the case was opened Mr. Willett was surprised to see that the difficult work of reconstruction had already been done, at the Ife museum.”122 Several press clippings kept in Willett’s archives speak of the interest the exhibition generated, suddenly propelling him into the limelight as a local celebrity and, as one of the articles put it, as “a world authority on ancient West African cultures.”123 After Manchester University Museum in May 1958, the exhibition traveled to the British Museum, the Musée de l’Homme in Paris,124 and the Museum of Primitive Art in New York, before returning to Ife, and Willett’s fame spread beyond the borders of the United Kingdom.125

• 127 Press cutting from News of the World!, May 4, 1958 in HMUG, FW, GB248, ACCN 3120, box 16 Folder Ita (...)

64To a journalist who asked him what he intended to do, he replied: “to work out just about the biggest, most complicated game [...] of patience imaginable.” Indeed, the journalist of News of the World! Explained: “under the fierce tropical sun he proposes to piece together 60,000 fragments of pottery unearthed by African laborers clearing and levelling a warehouse site.”127 In fact, Willett would not do much to establish a strong understanding of Ile-Ife ceramic typology, but he would lead the largest series of archaeological works ever conducted in the area, including continuing research at Ita Yemoo in 1962–1963, on the city wall and on “the grid,” the same area at the site of the ICMU proposed cocoa store he had started exploring in January 1958. All these works followed the same fate as the rescue excavations discussed in this paper: unpublished, they are to be rediscovered in Willett’s archives, edited, and made available to scholars.