Archaeologists in the historic city of Ile-Ifẹ, Nigeria, have excavated a major 1,200-year-old industrial center dedicated to the legendary Ifẹ bronze-casting tradition. This is the first time a dedicated guild-scale workshop has been found, revealing the systematic process behind the creation of the world-famous naturalistic bronze heads. The site contains multiple specialized furnace pits and evidence of a highly organized division of labor among the metalworkers.
The most extraordinary find is a set of intact clay core-templates, used in the lost-wax casting process. These templates allowed the master casters to replicate complex facial features with precision while maintaining the thinness of the metal walls. Chemical analysis of residue in the furnaces shows the use of specific copper-alloy mixtures sourced from across the Saharan trade networks, confirming that Ifẹ was a central node in a vast trans-African economic system during the medieval period.