IFE EARLY EXCAVATIONS

When the Nigerian Department of Antiquities was established in 1943, the first scientific excavations were carried out at various places in the city by way of test shafts and area excavations. The grove of Osangangan Obamakin, on the Modakeke side of Ife was probed by John Goodwin, William and Bernard Fagg and Kenneth Murray. They discovered only a small terracotta figurine of a gorilla or chimpanzee. It is believed that sacrifices were discontinued at this grove in 1943 when rites usually performed there were transferred to the palace. It is not clear whether this had to do with the fact that Kenneth Murray had previously removed some sculptures from the grove to the palace for safe keeping. The sculptures removed include a terracotta head, said to represent Obamakin himself, and an incomplete figure of a man suffering from elephantiasis scroti. Bernard Fagg observation on the excavation, like Frobenius, was that the terracotta works were brought to the shrine in fragmentary condition and placed there perhaps for propitiatory purposes.
At Inwinrin Grove, fragments of life-size terracotta figures, part of a tableau previously known and consisting of a seated figure with feet resting on a stool and flanked by attendants, were recovered by Goodwin, the Faggs and Murray. They also recovered from here a terracotta torso of a man. As at Osangangan Obamakin grove, Bernard Fagg again observed that the finds had not lain buried for a very long period, and that the grove itself gave no impression of being of any great age.

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