Cultural-Historical Periods. Like weaving, pottery making evolved around the third or second millennium B.C.E. in the middle Nile region and existed in West Africa by the beginning of the Common Era. It is notable that Ile-Ife, Owo, and Benin shared the same "ceramic sphere" during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. That is, as Akinwumi O. Ogundiran has explained, despite some stylistic differences between Ile- Ife and Benin, similarities in their ceramics from this period suggest a close cultural historical link between the two areas that distinguishes them from the ceramics of surrounding Yoruba and Edo territories. Ogundiran identifies "three major cultural-historical periods" of Ile-Ife and Benin society: the "pre-Classic," prior to the twelfth century; the "Classic," from the twelfth to the sixteenth century; and the "post-Classic," from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century.

The Pre-Classic Period. In the pre-Classic periods...