The longest surviving tradition of African sculpture is in terracotta figurines.

The longest surviving tradition of African sculpture is in terracotta figurines. Cast metal is the only other building materials, the continent termites (fatal, the carved wood of most African sculpture). But the monumental metal sculptures of Nigeria, beginning in about the 12th Century, are of a much later period than the first terracottas.

West Africa, and especially modern Nigeria, the longest and richest sequence of terracotta figures. They come from two and a half millennia on the extraordinary Nok sculptures. With around 1 Century AD numbers modeled a wonderful gravity, Sokoto in the northwest region of Nigeria.

Terracotta heads and figures in IFE, from the 12th to 15 Century - in the same period as the first cast-metal sculptures from this region. On Jenne, further north in Mali, archaeologists (unfortunately followed by thieves) have recently uncovered terracotta outstanding in the same period.

An exceptional group of terracotta is the exception in this West African story line in which they have come from southern Africa, where they are the earliest known sculptures. They are seven heads, found in Lydenburg in the Transvaal. Model in a brutal Chunky style, they come from the 6th Century AD.