Examination of the Ife Bronze Heads

During 1947-48, 17 metal heads from Ife, Nigeria, were cleaned in the British Museum Research Laboratory. Samples were removed which were later analyzed by Dr. A.A. Moss and Mr. H. Barker. The results are given in together with those of the analysis of the head in the British Museum Collection. None of the alloys is a tin bronze, 5 can be described as copper, while the remainder, with one exception, are brasses whose copper zinc rations are 85/15, close to that of modern gilding metal or the ore orichalcum. Fragments of four heads indicated that the cast metal solidified very slowly as would occur during current West African practice.