Iron metallurgy in Africa

Iron metallurgy in Africa concerns the origin and development of ferrous metallurgy on the African continent. Whereas the development of iron metallurgy in North Africa and the Horn closely mirrors that of the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean region, the three-age system is ill-suited to Sub-Saharan Africa, where copper metallurgy generally does not precede iron working. Whether iron metallurgy in Sub-Saharan Africa originated as an independent innovation or a product of technological diffusion remains a point of contention between scholars. Following the beginning of iron metallurgy in Western and Central Africa by 800 BC - 400 BC, and possibly earlier, agriculturalists of the Chifumbaze Complex would ultimately introduce the technology to Eastern and Southern Africa by the end of the first millennium AD.

In the first decades of the twenty-first century, radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dating of artifacts associated with iron metallurgy in Nigeria and the Central African Republic have yielded dates as early as the third millennium BC. Although a number of scholars have scrutinized these dates on methodological and theoretical grounds, others contend that they undermine the diffusionist model for the origins of iron metallurgy in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Iron metallurgy may have been independently developed in the Nok culture between the 9th century BCE and 550 BCE. The nearby Djenné-Djenno culture of the Niger Valley in Mali shows evidence of iron production from c. 250 BCE. The Bantu expansion spread the technology to Eastern and Southern Africa between 500 BCE and 400 CE, as shown in the Urewe culture.