Tomos Evans, a PhD researcher from the United Kingdom, from Wales, but, based in the United States, spent about three years in Nigeria excavating some monument kept under the earth for more than 600 years .
Evans who partnered the Augustine University, Ilara-Epe,Lagos State, spoke with PLATFORM TIMES on how the arguably, Sugbon-Eredo monument, Africa’s largest single monument was excavated. Excerpts.
How can you describe where you are, Sugbo-Eredo ?
Sungbo-Eredo is a large earthwork. So, it’s where people have dug an enormous trench and then stacked up the earth into a large wall. And they did that, we think, around 600 years ago, maybe older, and they constructed a 100 mile long wall that now crosses both Lagos State and parts of Ogun State. And it’s meant to be, people have argued, that it’s Africa’s largest single monument.
Can you speak about yourself and why you are in Nigeria ?
I’m a PhD candidate at the College of William & Mary, which is a university in Virginia, in the United States. . I’m a PhD researcher. I’m from the UK, from Wales, but I’m based in the United States. And I’ve been doing archaeological excavations, digging trenches, to find artifacts, and I stayed here in Nigeria, to give me a better perspective of the earthwork. I’m also part of a larger project called the Sungbo-Eredo Archaeological Project, which works here and also in Epe. And so, that’s a project that combines local archaeologists and team members and universities with also a university from the United States.So it’s an international project. And that’s how I first got involved here. Now I’m running my own project, sort of under the umbrella of the larger projects.
Can you kindly give an insight into your activities in Nigeria ?
Research into the past material culture, the past history of Sungbo-Eredo, which is a large earthwork system in southwest Nigeria has been done .
How can you describe your experience ?
It’s a very impressive, very large archaeological site. And here on this university campus, (Augustine University) part of it crosses.
You assemble university students, what informed your action ?
The purpose of this seminar is to discuss some of the research that archaeologists have done in Nigeria, outside of Nigeria, on this very large earthwork, as well as my own research
The monument, when was it constructed and what was it for ?
There’s a lot of unanswered questions we have about it. We know it probably related to the early Ijebu Kingdom, but we don’t really know a lot of specific details about it. So, archaeology, the discipline that I’m part of, and my collaborators, who are Nigerian archaeologists. We’re using this discipline to really get a better insight through the material that we find into this earthwork.
So, what were your findings?
So far, we’ve found a lot of different things, from a lot of different sites. One of the things we’ve done is we’ve excavated very large mounds, where people dumped a lot of their refuse in the past at the Eredo village site. Eredo village is here near Epe, just down the road from Augustine University here.And you see these very large kind of refuse dumps which accumulated over hundreds of years. So what we find there at Eredo where there was a toll gate going through the earthwork, there was a gap in the earthwork. And so, travellers would come in and they’d cross into the parts of the Ijebu Kingdom from outside.
What were the materials you found during the excavation
Here at Eredo we found lots of artifacts, lots of trade goods that they collected. We find lots of nice manufactured ceramics from the area. We found glass bottles, imported china coins as well, like silver coins from the 19th century in some cases.So, we find evidence here a very wealthy settlement that grew from using the earthwork essentially as a sort of barrier to enter, to regulate people coming in and out.
What others things did you notice about the past people going by your experience?
What we’ve also looked at is we’ve looked at the profile of the earthwork itself. There was an area where a road was cutting through the Eredo, through the bank to this big wall. And we looked at that profile and we looked at how it was constructed. So, we got an idea of some of the architectural and engineering expertise of the past people that constructed the earthwork in the Ijebu Kingdom. And so, we saw quite a complex stratigraphy, different layers of earth, where lots of layers have been placed and then a very thick, clay heavy layer being placed on top as a cap.And what that does is, it prevents erosion. It stops the earthwork from being destroyed by rainfall, from the wind and from other destructive forces.So it’s a very well engineered monument. What I also did in that research was I took samples of charcoal, which we can use then for radiocarbon dating laboratories. So I’ll be able to get a better idea of the periods, the dates of when it was constructed.
So from the exercise you have done on this Eredo, is there any economic benefits for Nigerians?
Absolutely, I’d say. I think the more that we bring the earthwork into the international spotlight, and also the national spotlight as well, the more Nigerians, more Africans, more people around the world know about it, it can bring in revenues to local communities.I mean, we already see this happening to some degree. In the Eredo village, local communities act as wardens and tour guides.So, people visit, for instance, the Nigerian field society in Lagos, visited the earthwork a few times.They then pay local people, Mr. Ibrahim Sadik who is one of the local members of the community, will show visitors around the earthwork. They get to see, and it’s exceptional to see. It’s 60 feet deep in some places, it’s massive, it always impresses visitors. The more that we promote it, the more that we show, look, we’ve got incredible world heritage here, incredible Nigerian heritage here. We hope that it’ll bring in much more visitors, much more people interested in seeing it, and that, that will help, benefit, bring development, bring wealth into local communities in that regard.
Can you explain what you mean by meeding excavation, mound excavation, let’s start from that meedling. What do you mean by that?
Great, yes. So, these are sort of terminologies that we use in archaeology for certain features that we see.So when we say a midden, what we’re referring to is a large pit, where people have dumped a lot of the waste from their compounds.So, a lot of people are not going to be interested in that, it’s just rubbish, it’s just trash. But we as archaeologists are fascinated by those sorts of things, because when we dig a midden, when we dig a rubbish pit,we get to see all the different foods, people are eating, all the different objects that they were manufacturing, trading, importing. We get a better understanding of what the societies were doing, what their practices were, how they were interacting with the wider world. So, even today, we throw our rubbish away. In a few hundred years, maybe archaeologists will pick it up and start to understand more about human actions in this period. What we mean by mounds then is a sort of an inverse here of a midden, it’s where instead of digging a pit, some of these compounds, some of these lineages, they’ve stacked up the refuse coming from their houses, from their compounds into these large mounds, which are monumental. So in a way what we’re seeing is rather than people throwing things into the earth, they’re turning their waste into these very impressive sort of prestigious monuments, sort of showing wealth, showing prestige, showing the identities of the compound to the different activities they’re doing. So when people would pass through the Eredo into an Eredo village, they’d see these amazing things. In the contemporary period, there’s lots of shrines, shrines to Orisha. We see lots of these different shrines, the different deities. And these shrines are probably part of the Eredo landscape. So when people were following the trade route, when they were crossing into the earthwork,into the Ijebu kingdoms made of half lands, they would have to leave offerings of these shrines. So it was a way of regulating who came in and out, and a way of maybe stopping bad things from coming in, bad people from coming in, and sort of making sure that people were properly cleansed of witchcraft, disease, sort of dark forces that might be brought in to this very precious area of the Ijebu kingdom where the Awujale was, which needed to be protected.
You have a bead on your neck, are you an Otunba, or are you a Chief?
I do indeed. I got this last year, so, I did a presentation at the palace in Ilara with the Alara himself.Alara is the sole administrator in this area, he’s the Oba of the area. And so, he bestowed upon me then, like an honorary title. And I made sure I was dressed for the occasion as well. And so it’s been a great honour. People have been hugely supportive of the projects. I’m really happy to have these large exhibitions, these big seminars, which is our conversation with the academics here to show people who are doing hard to get people involved with research and with the opportunities in this research. And so, yeah, it’s been wonderful so far.
How did you get to know Eredo, and what’s informed the choice of Eredo from UK ?
So for me, I did my undergraduate studies in the University of Cambridge and it was there that I was learning a lot about African archaeology in general. It’s taught very broadly. It’s like the entire continent is taught basically in a few classes. So, you only get a few snippets. But when I first learned about the Eredo, I was astounded! Because here we have one of the largest monuments, not only in Africa, but in the world. If comparing, for instance, in the UK, we’ve got an earth work called Offers Dyke. It’s a large earth work. I’m Welsh.’ I am from Wales. It’s separating them from Wales. And it’s tiny compared to this. So, this is really an unmatched sort of feature. Not only in Nigeria, but in the rest of world on a global scale. And so for me, it was really that incredible story. And the fact that not much research had been done at that point, a few projects had been done, but there was a lot more to do. So, that got me interested really in working out in Nigeria and learning more, in collaborating with different people here. You know, bringing funding, bringing in personnel and things like that.So it’s a kind of work here on the earth work.
How many years or months did it take you to excavate all these?
It’s been, it’s sort of being a few short periods, I’d say, over a few years.So, for me, as a foreigner coming in, for me, I tend to have a very short visa.I can have maybe one month or three months of the country. But, the first two times I came, I spent one month excavating. And then the second two times, including this year, I’ve spent three months excavating, looking at half of that. So all in all, it would come to about nine or ten months of field work all together. If we added all that, basically, let’s spread over a few years.
Last year or what year did you start?
So, I first came and did very basic work in 2017. Then in 2018 and 2019, I did more complex work. And then 2020, we had the COVID 19 virus then, so I didn’t come. And then 2021 and 2023, we did larger excavations then. So those were kind of our most intensive archaeological projects this year and 2021.
Were you not irritated as you were interacting with the rubbish in the name of you being an Archeologist ?
It depends on how hot it is, I think, sometimes. You know, I sweat a lot, I got very uncomfortable sometimes. But I came once during the harmattan and it was nice and cool. So, I like that condition myself. But with the rubbish, it really depends.O think if we’re finding lots of very interesting material that maybe, past hundreds of years, I would be very excited. But, you know, sometimes you can, for instance, when we were working at the palace in Ilara, we found lots of things from the 20th century. So, it wasn’t quite as interesting to us.It doesn’t tell us as much as the other materials.So, that’s when it gets a little bit more difficult, basically, and less important.
After the excavations what next now?
So I’m coming to the end of my PhD in the United States where I’m doing mine. You know, I move, so I am a graduate from the UK to the US. They do quite long PhDs.So, I’ve next got about a year and a half. I ‘ve got two fellowships.One with Demgarth Nopes, which is a research institute with Harvard University, and the other with the Smithsonian Institution, which is the biggest museum in the United States.So they’re going to be funding me to write up everything I’ve done,to use these images, the data that I’ve been reporting, and then to use their resources to live on artifacts and on libraries, to write my dissertation and then publish academic articles and potentially books as well. So, my next step then after those fellowships is I’m going to be looking for academic jobs and I’m hoping to continue with this project then to keep coming out and to expand excavations and different parts of the earth work, of the red work, to different sites, maybe further than here, because it’s 100 miles of the earth work. And we’re only looking at a very small part of it in this local area.So, really we need a lot more excavations along it before we get a better understanding of what’s happening.
Based on your ecological experience, what are your pieces of advice to Nigerians vis-a-vis waste disposal?
Moving forward, so, I think Nigeria has an excellent infrastructure for archaeology. And then others that are also sort of involved, interested. And this is, you know, in the metropolitan Lagos in other cities.That there’s this very incredible monument, a fascinating place to visit. To study it.And to do more historical research, archaeological research, anthropological research too.
And collecting a lot of the interesting history about the monument. So that would be sort of my take on maybe the next step soon.
The excavated monuments, where are they now?
They are kept over in the Eredo village, which is just about a mile, a couple of miles down the road from the university campus. And so, what we do is once we dig a trench, we then fill it back. So, the monuments is still intact. And then the larger monument, the entire earthwork, we can actually see some of it here.
Do you want to share a story with us? Do you want to advertise with us? Do you need publicity for a product, service, or event? Contact us on WhatsApp +2348183319097 Email: platformtimes@gmail.com
We are committed to impactful investigative journalism for human interest and social justice. Your donation will help us tell more stories. Kindly donate any amount HERE
