¹ In this paper the term city is used generically to denote any urban form, and carries none of the ancillary connotations of size, status, or origin implicit in contemporary everyday American or English usage. Urbanism is used to denote that particular set of functionally integrated institutions which were first devised some 5,000 years ago to mediate the transforma tion of relatively egalitarian, ascriptive, kin-structured groups into socially stratified, politically organized, territorially based societies, and which have since progressively extended the scope and autonomy of their institutional spheres so that today they mould the actions and aspirations of vastly the larger proportion of mankind. Urbanization refers to the ratio of city dwellers to total population.

² Wirth, Louis, ‘Urbanism as a way of life’, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 44 (1938), 8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Reprinted in Marvick, Elizabeth Wirth and Reiss, Albert J. Jr., eds., Community life and social policy (University of Chicago Press, 1956), pp. 110–32,Google Scholar and in Reiss, Albert J. Jr., , ed., Louis Wirth. On cities and social life (Phoenix Book No. 172, University of Chicago Press, 1964), pp. 60–83.Google Scholar

³ Bascom, William, ‘Urbanization among the Yoruba’, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 60, no. 5 (1955), 446–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Cf. also the same author's ‘Urbanism as a traditional African pattern’, The Sociological Review, new series, Vol. 7, no. 1 (1959), 29–43;Google Scholar‘Some aspects of Yoruba urbanism’, American Anthropologist Vol. 64, no. 4 (1962), 699–709;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Yoruba urbanism: a summary’, Man, Vol. 68, no. 253 (1958), 190–91.Google Scholar

⁴ ‘Urbanization among the Yoruba’, p. 453.Google Scholar

⁵ ‘Yoruba urbanism’, p. 191,Google Scholar and ‘Urbanization among the Yoruba’, p. 452–3.Google Scholar

⁶ ‘Urbanization among the Yoruba’, p. 453.Google Scholar

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⁸ Lloyd, Peter C., ‘The Yoruba town today’, The Sociological Review, new series, Vol. 7, no. 1 (1959), 45–63,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Yoruba land law (London, New York and Ibadan: Oxford University Press, for the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research, Ibadan, 1962), pp. 50 et seq.Google Scholar

⁹ Mabogunje, A. L., Yoruba towns (Ibadan University Press, 1962), pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Morton-Williams, peter, ‘Some Yoruba kingdoms under modern conditions’, Journal of African Administration, Vol. 7, no. 4 (1955), 175.Google Scholar

¹¹ Wirth, , ‘Urbanism as a way of life’, p. 14.Google Scholar

¹² Lloyd, , ‘The Yoruba town today’, p. 45.Google Scholar

¹³ Mitchel, N. C., ‘Yoruba towns’, in Barbour, K. M. and Prothero, R. M., eds., Essays on African population (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), pp. 279–301.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Steel, R. W., ‘The towns of tropical Africa’ in Essays on African population, p. 253et seq.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Buchanan, K. M. and Pugh, J. C., Land and people in Nigeria (London: University of London Press, 1955), pp. 63et seq.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Harrison-Church, R. J., West Africa (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1957), p. 465.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Goddard, S., ‘Town-farm relationships in Yorubaland: a case study from Oyo’, Africa, Vol. 35, no. 1 (1965), 21–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁸ Morgan, W. B., ‘The influence of European contacts on the landscape of Southern Nigeria’, The Geographical Journal, Vol. 125, pt. 1 (1959), 48–64,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and review of Mabogunje's Yoruba towns in The Geographical Journal, Vol. 129, pt. 2 (1963), 217–18.Google Scholar For somewhat similar comments on urban forms in a neighbouring territory see Boateng, E. A., ‘Recent changes in settlement in South-East Gold Coast’, The Institute of British Geographers, Trans actions & Papers (1955), pp. 157–69.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Schwab, William B. in an unpublished manuscript entitled Urbanization and acculturation.Google Scholar I have not seen this paper but the quotation is cited in Bascom, , ‘Urbanization among the Yoruba’, p. 446,Google Scholar and ‘Urbanism as a traditional African pattern,’ pp. 38–9.Google Scholar

²⁰ Of course kin-based groups generate and distribute power even in the most complex of present-day industrialized societies but they operate on a predominantly informal plane and are of a peripheral, or at best supplementary, character. For comments on this theme see Wolf, Eric R., ‘Kinship, friendship, and patron-client relations in complex societies’, in Banton, Michael, ed., The social anthropology of complex societies (London: Tavistock Publications Ltd., 1966), pp. 1–22.Google Scholar

²¹ The first steps towards the formulation of such a theory have recently been proposed by Adams, Robert McC., The evolution of urban society: Early Mesopotamia and Prehispanic Mexico (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1966)Google Scholar and discussed by the present author in The pivot of the four quarters: a preliminary enquiry into the origins and character of the ancient Chinese city (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, in press), chap. 3.Google Scholar

²² By primary urban generation I mean the essentially independent emergence of urban forms through the restructuring of a society that was previously at a folk level of integration and which was subject to no or negligible stimulus from already existing urban societies. Although genetic interconnections between the various culture realms of the ancient world are by no means adequately elucidated, I would suggest as an operational expedient that Lower Mesopo tamia, the Nile valley, the Indus valley, the North China Plain, Meso-America, and the Central Andes be treated as regions of primary urban generation. Regions where the diffusion of traits from already urbanized societies can be shown to have either initiated and/or significantly accelerated the transformation from folk to urban society (and, of course, where the process was still clearly one of generation rather than imposition) I shall designate as regions of secondary urban generation. For a fuller exposition of this distinction see The pivot of the four quarters, chaps. I and III.Google Scholar

²³ There are indications that the designation Yoruba originally denoted only the Qyp people, other speakers of the same language referring to themselves by tribal names such as Egba, Ijebu, Ijesa and so forth. In this paper the term Yoruba will be used, as is customary at the present time, to denote all the Yoruba-speaking peoples.

²⁴ A succinct summary of the relatively meagre archaeological information available for the Yoruba territories is contained, together with a comprehensive bibliography, in Willett, Frank, Ife in the history of West African sculpture (London: Thames & Hudson, 1967).Google Scholar

²⁵ A great deal of material of this nature has been incorporated in Johnson, Samuel (edited by Johnson, O.), The history of the Yorubas from the earliest times to the beginning of the British Protectorate (Lagos: C.M.S. Bookshops, 1921:Google Scholar reprinted 1937 and 1956; and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1957, 1960, 1966). Cf also Beier, H. Ulli, ‘The historical and psychological significance of Yoruba myths’, Odù, Vol. 1 (1954), 17–25,Google Scholar and Lloyd, Peter C., ‘Yoruba myths: a sociologist's interpretation’, Odù, Vol. 2 (1955), 20–8.Google Scholar The official hereditary transmitters, preservers and codifiers of Yoruba dynastic traditions were certain families attached to the afin of the Alafin of Qyo, who included among their duties the responsibilities of bards and musicians.

²⁶ Bascom, W., ‘Les premiers fondements historiques de l'urbanisme yorouba’, Présence Africaine, new series, No. 23 (1958-1959), 22–40.Google Scholar

²⁷ The Late Commander (Hugh) Clapperton, Journal of a second expedition into the interior of Africa, from the Bight of Benin to Soccatoo (London: John Murray, and Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Carey, 1829).Google Scholar

²⁸ Richard, and Lander, John, Journal of an expedition to explore the course and termination of the Niger (London: John Murray, 1832; New York: Harper and Bros., 1854).Google Scholar

²⁹ Labat, J.-B., Voyage du Chevalier des Marchais en Guinée, isles voisines, et à Cayenne, fait en 1725, 1726 et 1727, Vol. 2 (Amsterdam: La Compagnie, 1731), pp. 101–4.Google Scholar

³⁰ Snelgrave, W., A new account of some parts of Guinea, and the slave trade (London: James, John & Paul Knapton, 1734), pp. 55–6.Google Scholar

³¹ Bosman, W., A new and accurate description of Guinea (second edition; London: Knapton, J., Midwinter, D., Lintot, B., Strahan, G., Round, J., & Bell, E., 1721; first published in 1705), p. 13.Google Scholar

³² Dapper, O., Umständliche und eigentliche Beschreibung von Africa (Amsterdam: Jacob von Meurs, 1670: first published in Flemish in 1668), p. 482.Google Scholar

³³ Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville, map of Africa dated 1743 and reproduced in Foa, E., Le Dahomey (Paris: A. Hennuyer, 1895), p. 10.Google Scholar On this map d'Anville corrected the error he had made on his map of 1729 of locating the Oyo to the north-west of Dahomey (cf. Labat, , Voyage, Vol. I, p. 1).Google Scholar

³⁴ Talbot, P. Amaury, The peoples of Southern Nigeria, Vol. 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1924), p. 218. The use of the term ciudade in this context is important as explicitly confirming that the author regarded the settlement in question as an urban form.Google Scholar

³⁵ Pereira, Duarte Pacheco, Esmeralda de situ orbis. Translated and edited by Kimble, G. H. T. (Hakluyt Society, second series, Vol. LXXIX, London, 1937: written in two parts in 1505 and 1507/8; first published in 1892), p. 124. Kimble's identification of Geebuu with Abeokuta must be rejected on the grounds, among others, that the latter city was not founded until the nineteenth century.Google Scholar

³⁶ de Sandoval, P. Alonso, De Instauranda Æthiopium Salute (Madrid, 1657), p. 59.Google Scholar

³⁷ Dapper, , Beschreibung von Africa, p. 491.Google Scholar

³⁸ A form which appears on a Portuguese map printed in Amsterdam in 1700 and cited by Talbot, , The peoples of Southern Nigeria, Vol. 1, p. 219.Google Scholar

³⁹ Barbot, J., A description of the coasts of North and South Guinea (no imprimatur, London, 1732), p. 354.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ On d'Anville's map of 1729: cf. Note 33 above.

⁴¹ On d'Anville's map of 1743: cf. Note 33 above.

⁴² Map compiled by John Norris and reproduced, with some modifications, in Dalzell, A., The history of Dahomey, an inland kingdom of Africa (For the Author by Spilsbury, T., London, 1793).Google Scholar

⁴³ de Barros, João, Asia de João de Barros, Dos feitos que os Portugueses fizeram no descobrimento e conquista dos mares e terras do Oriente, Vol. 1 (sixth edition: Divisão de Publicacões e Biblioteca, Agênda General das Colónias, Ministério das Colónias, República Portuguesa, Lisboa, 1945), pp. 124–8 [first published in 1552, in which edition the reference is to decada I, livro iii, cap. 4].Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Talbot, , The peoples of Southern Nigeria, Vol. 1, p. 156.Google Scholar It will also be recalled that the Qba of Benin on his accession formerly received a brass staff, hat and cross from the Qni of Ife: de Barros, vide, loc. cit.Google Scholar A translation of the relevant passage is incorporated in Ryder, A. F. C., ‘A reconsideration of the Ife-Benin relationship’, Journal of African History Vol. 6, no. 1 (1965), 26–7, 33, and 36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁵ This particular myth was almost certainly borrowed ultimately from the cosmological lore of the Western Semites. For the concept of first Jerusalem, and subsequently Mecca, as an omphalos see Wensinck, A. J., ‘The ideas of the Western Semites concerning the navel of the earth’, Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam, Afdeeling Letterkunde, new series, Vol. 17, no. 1 (1916).Google Scholar The specifically Muslim version, according to which Mecca had a prior existence of forty years before serving as the focus of creation, is narrated by, int al., AzraqI in his Akhbār Makkah (Wüstenfeld's edition, Leipzig, 1858), p. 1.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Fagg, Bernard E. B., ‘An outline of the Stone Age of the Plateau Minefield', Proceedings of the Third International West African Conference,Ibadan, 1949 (Lagos,1956), pp. 203–22;Google Scholar‘The Nok culture’, West African Review (1956), 1083–7;Google Scholar‘The Nok culture in prehistory’, Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, Vol. 1 (1959), 288–93;Google Scholar‘Radiocarbon dating of the Nok culture, Northern Nigeria’, Nature (1965), 205 and 212;Google ScholarWillett, Frank, Ife, chap. VIII.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Clark, J. Desmond, ‘Africa south of the Sahara’, in Braidwood, Robert J. and Willey, Gordon R., eds., Courses toward urban life (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1962), p. 21.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Braidwood and Willey, basing their conclusion on Clark's evaluation of the Nok culture, would seem to incline to assign that culture to the phase of Developed Village-Farming Efficiency: at least they discuss its implications under their sections III, IV, and V [Courses toward urban life, pp. 346 and 353:Google Scholar Clark's remarks are set out on p. 21 and incorporated in a chronological chart on pp. 12–13]. The concept of Village-Farming Efficiency is expounded by Braidwood, in ‘Levels in prehistory’, in Tax, Sol, ed., Evolution of man after Darwin, Vol. 2 (University of Chicago Press, 1960).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ An egalitarian society is defined by Morton Fried as a society in which there are as many positions of prestige in any given age-sex grade as there are persons capable of filling them. In a rank society, on the other hand, limitations having nothing to do with sex, age or personal attributes are placed on access to prestige, so that there are fewer positions of valued status than individuals capable of achieving them. Neither in egalitarian nor in rank society is there developed either exploitative economic or genuine political power. In typical rank societies only two kinds of authority can be invoked, familial and sacred, and there is no access to the privileged use of force in support of either. Vide, Fried, Morton H., ‘On the evolution of social stratification and the state’, in Diamond, Stanley, ed., Culture in history; essays in honor of Paul Radin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 713–31.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ For the numerous variations in the form of these myths see, int. al., Ellis, A. B., The Yoruba-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa (London: Chapman & Hall, Ltd., 1894), pp. 89–92;Google ScholarFrobenius, Leo, Mythologie de l'Atlantide: le ‘Poseidon' de I‘Afrique noire, son culte chez les Yorouba du Benin (Paris: Payot, 1949), pp. 161–3;Google ScholarBolajildowu, E., Olódùmarè, God in Yoruba belief (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1962), pp. 19et seq;Google ScholarWyndham, John. ‘Yoruba folklore: the creation’, Man, Vol. 19 (1919), 58,Google Scholar and Myths of Ife (London: Erskine MacDonald, 1921);Google ScholarJohnson, , History of the Yorubas, chaps. I and II.Google Scholar For an interpretation of these myths see Lloyd, , ‘Yoruba myths: a sociologist's interpretation’.Google Scholar In more recent times Muslim Yoruba have generally accepted an Arabian provenance for their people, a version which was related to Hugh Clapperton by Sultan Bello of Sokoto [vide Denham, D. and Clapperton, H., Narrative of travels and discoveries (London: John Murray, 1826), p. 165]Google Scholar and repeated by Johnson, (History of the Yorubas, p. 3).Google Scholar Christian Yoruba, by contrast, often regard themselves as descendants of a lost tribe of Israel. Needless to say, these alien mythologies can be disregarded in the present discussion.

⁵¹ E.g., Lloyd, , ‘Yoruba myths’;Google ScholarBeier, H. Ulli, ‘Before Oduduwa’, Odu, Vol. 3 (1956), 25–32;Google ScholarWillett, , Ife, pp. 122–5.Google Scholar

⁵² Transformations on this pattern resulting from agricultural innovation have, in fact, been documented in recent times by, int. al., Linton, Ralph and Kardiner, Abram, ‘The change from dry to wet rice cultivation—Betsileo’, in The individual and his society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), pp. 282–90Google Scholar [Reprinted in Readings in social psychology (New York, 1952)];Google ScholarNakane, Chie, ‘Report on ethnological field work among primitive tribes in Tripura State’, Japanese Journal of Ethnology, Vol. 19 (1955), 58–60Google Scholar [In Japanese, with English summary]; and Sopher, David E., ‘The swidden/wet rice transition zone in the Chitta-gong hills’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 54, no. 1 (1964), 107–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵³ Virtually nothing is known of the provenance of those cultural infusions which have frequently been postulated as instrumental in effecting the transformation of Yoruba society, but various authors (other than those who derived them by means of direct cultural or political conquest from Ancient Egypt or Arabia) have suggested severally the Meroitic empire (which collapsed early in the fourth century), or, in later centuries, Zaghawa or Christian Nubia.

⁵⁴ I am aware that more precise formulations have from time to time been advanced by students of Yoruba culture (e.g. Biobaku, Saburi O., The Lugard Lectures (Federal Information Service, Lagos, 1955);Google ScholarJeffreys, M. D. W., ‘When was He Ife founded?’, The Nigerian Field, Vol. 23, no. 1 (1958), 21–3] but, however acceptable at the time when they were proposed, none is consonant with currently received views of Yoruba culture history.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ The circumstance that the pottery traditions of Ife and Qyo were radically different serves to confirm that this shift in the locus of power was not accompanied by a mass migration of population: vide, for example, Willett, Frank, ‘Excavations at Old Oyo and Ife’, West Africa, No. 2153 (06 19, 1958), 675;Google Scholar‘Ife and its archaeology’, The Journal of African History, Vol. 1, no. 2 (1960), 244;Google Scholar‘Bronze and terracotta sculptures from Ita Yemoo, Ife’, The South African Archaeological Bulletin, Vol. 14, no. 56 (1960), 135–7;Google Scholar‘Investigations at Old Oyo, 1956–57, an interim report’, Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, Vol. 2 (1961), 59–77;Google ScholarFagg, William and Willett, , ‘Ancient Ife, an ethnographical summary’, Odù, no. 8 (1960), 29.Google Scholar

Recently A. F. C. Ryder has proposed that one way of reconciling certain information recorded by European travellers with the Edo tradition of their Ife origins would be to postulate a migration of the cult centre of Ife from a location somewhere in the Nupe-Igala area athwart the confluence of the Niger and the Benue to its present site at some time prior to the sixteenth century [‘A reconsideration of the Ife-Benin relationship’, pp. 36–7]. This is an attractive solution to an exceedingly complex problem, but it has not so far been corroborated by independent evidence.

⁵⁶ Bradbury, R. E., ‘The historical uses of comparative ethnography with special reference to Benin and the Yoruba’, in Vansina, J., Mauny, R. and Thomas, L. V., The historian in tropical Africa. Studies presented and discussed at the Fourth International African Seminar at the University of Dakar, Senegal, 1961 (London, Ibadan, Accra: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute, 1964), pp. 145–64.Google Scholar Cf. also Robert G. Armstrong, ‘The use of linguistic and ethnographic data in the study of Idoma and Yoruba history’, ibid., 127–44.

⁵⁷ Willett, , Ife, pp. 125–6.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Lloyd, Peter C., ‘Sacred kingship and government among the Yoruba’, Africa, Vol. 30, no. 3 (1960), 223;CrossRefGoogle ScholarBiobaku, , The Lugard Lectures, Lecture 6.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Johnson's assertion (History of the Yorubas, p. 197Google Scholar) that Nupe and Bariba were tributary to Qyo, although frequently repeated in subsequent works, cannot be confirmed and appears a priori unlikely.

⁶⁰ Both Clapperton, Hugh [Journal of a second expedition into the interior of Africa, from the Bight of Benin to Soccatoo (London: John Murray, 1829)]CrossRefGoogle Scholar and the Lander brothers [Richard, and Lander, John, Journal of an expedition to explore the course and termination of the Niger (1832)]Google Scholar remarked on the number of settlements ‘destroyed by the Fellatahs’, during their journeys in 1825 and 1830 respectively. In 1849 the Rev. Bowen ‘counted the sites of eighteen desolated towns within a distance of sixty miles between Badagry and Abeokuta’, and added, ‘The whole of Yoruba country is full of depopulated towns …’. Adventures and missionary labours in several countries in the interior of Africa from 1849–1856 (Charleston: Southern Baptist Publication Society, 1857; second edition, London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1968), p. 114.Google ScholarStone, R. H. [In Africa's forest and jungle (London, 1900), p. 48]Google Scholar observed the ruins of eighteen ‘large towns’ within a distance of seventy miles. The dates of destruction of the majority of these settlements can only be inferred from circumstantial evidence, but in a few instances more precise information is available: e.g. Owu was overthrown in about 1825, Ijana in 1832, Iwawun in 1861, Isaga in 1862, Ijaye in 1862.

⁶¹ This notion of an ideal-type is very close to that which Arthur Spiethoff denoted by the term ‘real type’: vide ‘Pure theory and economic gestalt theory: ideal types and real types’, in Lane, F. C. and Riemersma, Jelle C., Enterprise and secular change (London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1953), pp. 444–63.Google Scholar

⁶² It is fortunate that Dr. Morton-Williams has devoted several extremely perceptive studies to the elucidation of aspects of Oyo social and political structure [cf. especially ‘The Yoruba Ogboni cult in Oyo’, Africa, Vol. 30 (1960), 362–74,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘An outline of the cosmology and cult organization of the Oyo Yoruba’, Africa, Vol. 34 (1964), 243–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶³ The precise theological status of this dual existence is not entirely clear, but it is usually said that the oba ruled in the Ile Aiye, the House of the World (meaning the Yoruba oecumene, or perhaps more accurately, the habitabilis) while his orun or spirit double dwelt with Olorun, the Supreme God, in the heavens.

⁶⁴ Peter Morton-Williams explicates these titles as follows: ‘World’ connotes all social activity; Ile, besides Earth, means also territory, and territory is equated with the people owning it; the last title refers to the status of the Alafln as a sacred king and religious head of the Yoruba, Oyo [‘The Yoruba kingdom of Oyo’, in Forde, Daryll and Kaberry, P. M., West African kingdoms in the nineteenth century (London: Oxford University Press for the Inter national African Institute, 1967), p. 53Google Scholar]. Lloyd has also provided a great deal of useful informa tion about the role of the oba generally in ‘Sacred kingship and government among the Yoruba’ [cf. Note 58 above] and specifically in the kingdoms of Ekiti, Oyo and Ijebu in ‘The traditional political system of the Yoruba’, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 10, (1954) 366–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Reprinted in Cohen, Ronald and Middleton, John, eds., Comparative political systems; studies in the politics of pre-industrial societies (New York: The Natural History Press for the American Museum of Natural History, 1967), pp. 269–92.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Ojo, G. J. Afolabi, Yoruba palaces. A study of afins of Yorubaland (London: University of London Press Ltd., 1966), p. 75.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Some traditions ascribe no less than 401 shrines to He Ife, but this is certainly a conven tional figure. In 1948 Kenneth Murray identified about 120, and only a handful have been brought to light since that time [cited by Fagg, and Willett, , ‘Ancient Ife’, p 23].Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Ojo, , Yoruba palaces, p. 76.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ The exception to this rule is Sagamu where, as the result of a process of synoecism involving thirteen discrete settlements in the second half of the nineteenth century, four crowned pbas rule simultaneously over separate quarters of the city.

⁶⁹ The information in this paragraph is mainly from Ojo, , Yoruba palaces, chap. 2.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ du Bois, Cora, Social forces in Southeast Asia (second printing, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959), p. 31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷¹ There is a sketch showing the course of the walls of Ife in relation to present-day topography in Willett, Frank, ‘Ife and its archaeology’, p. 247.Google Scholar Cf. also the same author's Ife in the history of West African sculpture, chap. VII,Google Scholar‘Excavations at Old Oyo and Ife’, and ‘Investiga tions at Old Oyo, 1956–57’; and Fagg and Willett, ‘Ancient Ife’.Google Scholar

⁷² Clapperton, , Journal of a second expedition, p. 58.Google Scholar

⁷³ Op. cit., pp. 58–9.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Bowen, , Adventures and missionary labours, pp. 295–6.Google Scholar The Landers were scarcely more complimentary: ‘Generally speaking, the description of one town in Yarriba would answer for the whole … the form of the houses and squares is everywhere the same; irregular and badly built clay walls, ragged-looking thatched roofs, and floors of mud polished with cow-dung, form the habitations of the chief part of the natives of Yarriba, compared to most of which a common English barn is a palace. The only difference between the residence of a chief and those of his subjects, lies in the number and not in the superiority of his court-yards … [Journal of an expedition, Vol. 1, p. 156].Google Scholar

⁷⁵ There is a brief survey of these ceremonial complexes in regions of both primary and secondary urban generation in Wheatley, The pivot of the four quarters, chap. III.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Bellah, Robert N., ‘Religious evolution’, American Sociological Review, Vol. 29, no. 3 (1964), 358–73,CrossRefGoogle Scholar especially 361–4. Cf. 363: ‘Primitive religious action is characterized by identification, “participation”, acting out. Just as the primitive symbol system is myth parexcellence, so primitive religious action is ritual par excellence.’

⁷⁷ Morton-Williams, , ‘An outline of the cosmology and cult organization of the Oyo Yoruba’, esp. p. 245.Google Scholar Cf. also Idowu, , Olóùmaré, passim.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Vide Hubert, Henri and Mauss, Marcel, ‘Essai sur la nature et la fonction du sacrifice’, L'Année Sociologique, Vol. 2 (1897-1898), 29–138.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ E.g. Fairservis, Walter, ‘The Harappan civilization—new evidence and more theory’, American Museum Novitates, No. 2055 (1961), pp. 29 and 32;Google ScholarAdams, , The evolution of urban society, pp. 122et seq.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Bellah, , ‘Religious evolution’, p. 365.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Durkheim, Emile, The elementary forms of the religious life (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1947).Google Scholar

⁸² For an attempt to extend this terminology to all regions of nuclear urbanism see Steward, Julian, ed., Irrigation Civilizations: a comparative study: A symposium on method and result in cross-cultural regularities. Social Science Monographs I, Social Science Section, Department of Cultural Affairs of the Pan American Union (Washington, D.C., 1955). In the Central Andean Co-tradition the equally expressive term ‘Expansionist’ has been applied to this phase of urban development.Google Scholar

⁸³ Cf. Morton-Williams, , ‘The Yoruba Ogboni cult in Oyo’, p. 364:Google Scholar ‘The Ogboni is thought of by the Yoruba generally as supporting the power of the Alafin’, in confirmation of which the author quotes the remark of the Apena, one of the leading officials of the cult, to the effect that: ‘Every Oba must have Ogboni so that people may fear him.’

⁸⁴ Goddard, , ‘Town-farm relationship in Yorubaland’, p. 28.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ At least it is true of the agnatic lineages of the northern Yoruba, including those of Oyo where Goddard worked, but a different model would be required to elucidate urban-rural relationships among the cognatic descent groups of Ijebu and Ondo. Cf. p. 414 below.

⁸⁶ This term was coined by Mitchell, J. Clyde [‘Social change and the new towns of Bantu Africa’, in Balandier, G., ed., Social implications of technological change (Paris: International Social Science Council, 1962), p. 128;Google Scholar cf. also ‘Theoretical orientations in African urban studies’, in Banton, Michael, ed., The social anthropology of complex societies (London: Tavistock Publications, 1966), p. 44],Google Scholar and is analogous to what P. Mayer called an alternation model of change [‘Migrancy and the study of Africans in town,’ American Anthropologist, Vol. 64 (1962), 579]. Mitchell's ‘situational change’ refers to the modifications in behaviour which follow on participation in different social systems.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ For comments on this theme see Eisenstadt, S. N., ‘Social change, differentiation and evolution’, American Sociological Review, Vol. 29 (1964), 375–86, but especially 379–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸⁸ The transformation has been variously categorized as, int. al., from Concordia to Justitia (Lucretius and the Epicureans),Google Scholar from Status to Contract (SirMaine, Henry), from Societas to CivitasGoogle Scholar(Morgan, Lewis Henry), and from Gemeinschaft to GesellschaftGoogle Scholar (Tonnies, Ferdinand) but, whatever the conceptualization of the transition, the replacement of kin-based by politized, spatially organized groups was a central theme.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Adams, , The evolution of urban society, chap. 3.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Kirchhoff, Paul, ‘The principles of clanship in human society’, Davidson Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 1 (1955), 1–10:Google Scholar reprinted in Fried, Morton, Readings in Anthropology, Vol. 2 (1959), 259–70.Google Scholar

⁹¹ Eric Wolf's summary, from Sons of the Shaking Earth (Chicago: Phoenix Book No. 90, University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 136.Google Scholar

⁹² Adams, , The evolution of urban society, p. 86.Google Scholar An English summary of Igor M. Diakonoff's studies on corporate landholding groups is available in ‘Sale of land in pre-Sargonic Sumer’, Papers presented by the Soviet Delegation at the XXIII International Congress of Orientalists, Assyriology Section (Moscow: Publishing House of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Science, 1954).Google Scholar

⁹³ For an introduction to this topic see Monzón, Arturo, El Calpulli en la organización social de los Tenochca (México, D. F.: Institute de Historia, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, 1949),Google Scholar and Kirchhoff, , ‘The principles of clanship in human society’.Google Scholar There are discussions of lineages among the Maya in Roys, Ralph L., The Indian background of colonial Yucatdn, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication No. 548 (Washington, D.C., 1943);Google ScholarCarrasco, Pedro, Kinship and territorial groups in Pre-Spanish Guatemala (Paper read at the Fifty-seventh Annual Meeting of the Association of American Anthropologists, Washington, D.C., 1958);Google ScholarLounsbury, Floyd G., A componential analysis of the 16th century Yucatec Maya kinship terminologyGoogle Scholar (undated MS.). Not without value in this connection is Villa Rojas's, Alfonso ‘Barrios y calpules en las Comunidades Tzeltales y Tzotziles del México actuel’, Actas del XXXV Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Vol. 1 (1964), 321–34.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ Adams, , The evolution of urban society, p. 119.Google Scholar

⁹⁵ Wheatley, , The pivot of the four quarters, chap. I.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ Op. cit., chap. IV.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ For statements of these differences see Lloyd, Peter C., ‘The Yoruba town today’, pp. 45–7,Google Scholar‘The Yoruba lineage’, Africa, Vol. 25, no. 3 (1955), 235–51,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Yoruba land law, pp. 33–5 and 53–8.Google Scholar The differences between these two types of kin organization are not every where quite so distinct in practice as the brief statement above may seem to imply and the reader is referred for further information on one manifestation of the northern system to Schwab, William B., ‘Kinship and lineage among the Yoruba’, Africa, Vol. 25, no. 4 (1955), 352–74,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and for a discussion of the situation in one of the southern territories to Lloyd, in Bradbury, R. E., The Benin kingdom and the Edo-speaking peoples of South-Western Nigeria. With a section on the Itsekiri. The Ethnographic Survey of Africa, Western Africa, Part XIII (London: International African Institute, 1957), pp. 172–205.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ These contrasted settlement hierarchies are depicted in diagrammatic form in Lloyd, , Yoruba land law, p. 56.Google Scholar

⁹⁹ Cf. Lloyd, , ‘The political system of the Yoruba’ in Comparative political systems, pp. 284–8,Google Scholar and Yoruba land law, pp. 41–3, 54, 105–9, and 146–50;Google ScholarBradbury, , ‘The historical uses of comparative ethnography’, p. 153.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ This structural opposition within the Oyo government is explored and evaluated in three papers by Morton-Williams, all cited previously: ‘The Yoruba Ogboni cult in Oyo’, esp. pp. 363–7,Google Scholar‘An outline of the cosmology and cult organization of the Oyo Yoruba’, esp. pp. 251–9,Google Scholar and ‘The Yoruba kingdom of Oyo’ esp. pp. 50–66.Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ Morton-Williams, , ‘The Yoruba kingdom of Oyo’, p. 62.Google Scholar In Ado, and perhaps in some other eastern Yoruba cities, no member of the royal lineage might hold any chieftaincy title which conferred political power, though he might accept lesser titles which incurred admini strative duties. ‘Poor and without political rights, the status of the royal lineage is debased’: writes Lloyd, ‘Sacred kingship and government among the Yoruba’, p. 235. Cf. also the same author's ‘The traditional political system of the Yoruba’, p. 283, where it is stated that members of the royal lineages also failed to play any significant part in government in Iwo, Ekiti, or Ijebu.

¹⁰² Cf. Weber, Max, Staatssoziologie (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1956).Google Scholar For a com pendious exposition in English of the nature of patrimonial domain consult Bendix, Reinhard, Max Weber. An intellectual portrait (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor Book A281, 1962), pp. 334–60.Google Scholar For the ebi system of government see Akinjogbin, I. A., ‘The Oyo empire in the eighteenth century—a reassessment’, Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, Vol. 3, no. 3 (1966), 451:Google Scholar e.g. ‘All these [Yoruba] kingdoms believed in and practised the Ebi system of government. Under this system, a kingdom was regarded as a larger version of the family. …’

¹⁰³ For discussions of the uncertain etymology of this name (which is often vocalized in Oyo itself as Oyo Misi or even Omesi) see Morton-Williams, , ‘The Yoruba Ogboni cult in Oyo’, p. 364,Google Scholar note 1, and ‘The Yoruba kingdom of Oyo’, p. 67, note 7.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁴ Vide Wheatley, , The pivot of the four quarters, chap. 3.Google Scholar

¹⁰³ In most other cults the situation was quite different, with the high priests residing in wards presided over by members of the Oyo Mesi to whom they might be obliged to divulge their activities.

¹⁰⁶ Morton-Williams, , ‘An outline of the cosmology and cult organization of the Oyo Yoruba’, pp. 252–3.Google Scholar The Qyo political structure is summarized diagrammatically by Morton-Williams in ‘The Yoruba Ogboni cult in Oyo’, p. 363Google Scholar and ‘The Yoruba kingdom of Oyo’, p. 52.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁷ Cf. for example, on the Egbado and Egba cities, Morton-Williams, , ‘The Yoruba Ogboni cult in Oyo’, p. 367;Google ScholarBiobaku, Saimri O., The Egba and their neighbours, 1842–1872 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1957),Google Scholar and ‘An historical sketch of the Egba traditional authorities’, Africa, Vol. 22, no. 1 (1952), 35–49;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and on Kabba, Ado and Ijebu see Lloyd, ‘The political system of the Yoruba’.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁸ Adams, , The evolution of urban society, chap. III.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁹ Adams, , op. cit., chap. III;Google ScholarWolf, , Sons of the Shaking Earth, chap. VII;Google ScholarMonzon, Arturo, El Calpulli en la organización social de los Tenochca (México, D.F.: Instituto de Historia, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1949);Google ScholarKatz, Friedrich, Die Sozialōkonomischen Verhältnisse bei den Azteken im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert. Etnographisch-Archaeologische Forschungen, Vol. 3, pt. 2 (Berlin, 1956).Google Scholar

¹¹⁰ Coe, Michael, ‘A model of ancient community structure in the Maya lowlands’, South western Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 21, no. 2 (1965), 97–114;CrossRefGoogle ScholarCancian, Frank, ‘Some aspects of the social and religious organization of a Maya society’, Adas del XXXV Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Vol. 1 (1964), 335–43;Google ScholarVogt, Evon Z., ‘Some aspects of Zinacantan settlement patterns and ceremonial organization’, Estudios de Cultura Maya, Vol. 1 (1961), 131–45;Google ScholarWilley, Gordon R., ‘The structure of ancient Mayan society: evidence from the southern lowlands’, American Anthropologist, Vol. 58 (1956), 777–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹¹ Wheatley, , The pivot of the four quarters, chap. I;Google ScholarChang, Kwang-chih, ‘Some dualistic phenomena in Shang society’, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 24, no. 1 (1964), 45–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹² The earliest, and in some respects still the most complete, discussion of the role of corporate descent groups in the cities of ancient Greece and Rome is that of Muma Denis Fustel de Coulanges who, as long ago as 1864, proposed that the cities of the ancient world had taken their origins in the designation of territories as sanctuaries common to diverse tribes, and that citizenship had derived from a shared adherence to the gods of these sanctuaries [La cité antique, Librairie Hachette, Paris: English translation under the title The ancient city (New York: Doubleday Anchor Book No. A76, N.D.)].Google Scholar

¹¹³ Cf. Lloyd, Peter, ‘Craft organization in Yoruba towns’, Africa, Vol. 23, no. 1 (1953), 30–44;CrossRefGoogle Scholar also Bray, Jennifer M., ‘The craft structure of a traditional Yoruba town-the example of weaving in Iseyin, Nigeria’, Aspects of Central Place Theory and the city in developing countries(The Institute of British Geographers Study Group in Urban Geography: Durham Conference,September, 1967), no pagination [mimeo.].Google Scholar

¹¹⁴ Cf. int. al., Burton, Richard F., Abeokuta and the Camaroons Mountains. An exploration, Vol. 1 (Tinsley Bros., London, 1863), p. 80;Google ScholarLander, , Journal, Vol. 1, pp. 179–81;Google ScholarBowen, , Adventures, pp. 296–7.Google Scholar

¹¹⁵ Lander, , Journal, Vol. 1, pp. 109–10.Google Scholar Cf. also Clapperton's remark [Journal of a second expedition, p. 21Google Scholar]: ‘The king of Eyeo's [Qyp] wives are to be found in every place trading for him….’ Recently I. A. Akinjogbin has re-interpreted the political history of the Qyo empire during the eighteenth century in terms of the need to foster such long-distance trade: ‘The Oyo empire in the eighteenth century—a reassessment’, Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, Vol. 3 (1966), 449–60.Google Scholar

¹¹⁶ Bascom, , ‘Urbanization among the Yoruba’, p. 449.Google Scholar

¹¹⁷ Ojo, , Yoruba palaces, chap. 7.Google Scholar

¹¹⁸ Johnson, , The history of the Yorubas, p. 50.Google Scholar

¹¹⁹ The interpretation of such evidence as is available is not made easier by the fact that students of economic anthropology and of so-called ‘primitive economies’ are not completely in agreement among themselves as to the precise nature of the processes involved in contemporary African exchange patterns. Essentially the debate is between those who believe that the difference between the representative contemporary Western-style market and primitive subsistence exchange is one of degree and those who believe it is one of kind. The classic statement of the latter view is that expounded by Polanyi, Karl, Arensberg, Conrad M. and Pearson, Harry W., eds., in Trade and market in the early empires (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1957);Google Scholar the most formidable critique of this view is that mounted by Cook, Scott, ‘The obsolete “anti-market” mentality: a critique of the substantive approach to economic anthropology’, American Anthropologist, Vol. 68 (1966), 323–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This last incorporates a bibliography of the works of leading proponents of both sides of the argument.