A valley in central Nigeria (Benue Plateau) associated with first iron-smelting people of West Africa and an Early Iron Age culture characterized by distinctive broken terra-cotta human and animal figures, some of them life-sized. Shallow pits with low surrounding walls served as furnaces for the smelting of iron. The terra-cotta figures are associated with an agricultural fertility cult; the detailed and accomplished modeling pays particular attention both to attributes such as beads as well as to physical peculiarities or deformities. Other artifacts of the Nok culture include iron tools, stone axes and other stone tools, and stone ornaments. Nok sites at Taruga and Samun Dukiya date to c 5th-3rd centuries BC. The culture may have continued to the 2nd century AD in some places. Their work was possibly ancestral to medieval sculpture of Yoruba and Ibo.