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Migrations, Ethnogenesis, and Settlement Dynamics in Precolonial Yorubaland, Nigeria

Aribidesi Usman, African & African American Studies, Arizona State University
usman@asu.edu

In a 1978 review article, Adams and his colleagues called migration “One of the most persistent, though least acknowledged explanatory frameworks in culture history.” Migrations in precolonial Africa have occurred for various reasons including, search for new habitats and opportunities, a response to droughts, floods, scarcity of food, war, civil strife, population increase, and religious or political autonomy. Such movement often stimulates further migration through displacement of the indigenous people in the area, or decimates indigenous populations through warfare and other factors, and alters social, cultural, and political characteristics of the area. One problem with migrations in precolonial Africa is how to sort out unambiguously those who had migrated from those to whose communities they moved. It is argued in this paper that migrations are effective forces of cultural change but they have to be carefully investigated and documented. The 15th century was a period of sociopolitical changes throughout Yorubaland. Economic and political pressures forced people to migrate from the central Yoruba area towards northern and eastern Yoruba. The establishment of settlements in northern Yoruba, a consequence of this migration process, corresponds to the Intermediate Period of Ile-Ife (ca. 1400-1600 AD). The development of Oyo Empire in the 16th century and the Yoruba civil wars of the 19th century brought further transformations in the sociopolitical history of Yorubaland. Archaeological evidence for migration is examined in this study. Oral tradition, linguistic, architectural, and ceramic data largely from northern Yoruba are employed to examine migration patterns. The effects of migration on the sociopolitical organization of local population are also discussed.