Current Condition of the Iya in Benin City, the Gates and Future Preservation Strategies

Abstract

This paper investigates the preservation and morphology of the Inner City Iya of Benin in southern Nigeria, Edo State. The Iya have been the focus of research in the 1960s and 1970s by archaeologists Graham Connah and Patrick Darling. Since then, urban development has grown rapidly spreading out across the wider Iya network and damaging the earthworks. Already more than half of the Iya within Benin City vanished. Digital archaeology methods pose new opportunities for cost-effective and rapid documentation and monitoring of the remaining Iya. Based on these results and maps, the paper proposes strategies for future preservation. Future preservation of the Iya is only possible by working together with the communities of Benin. Further, the first new survey of the Benin City Iya since the 1960s provides for the first time a detailed plan and archaeological discussion of one of the gates of the Benin earthworks.