An important town in southern Nigeria, which dates to the 1st millennium AD. Ife has yielded a magnificent series of life-size brass/bronze and terra-cotta human head and figures, which may have been inspired by the earlier Nok tradition and are dated from 1100-1450 AD. The metal employed in the cire perdue (lost wax) process by which the bronze figures were made appears to have been derived from a northerly origin or from trans-Saharan trade. The architecture was of sun-dried brick.