A view from the periphery: Northern yoruba villages during the old oyo empire, nigeria

The 15th to late 17th centuries A.C. in Yorubaland, Nigeria, witnessed the rise and expansion of the Oyo Empire, a development that also left its mark on its peripheries. This paper examines village activities and changes in settlement patterns on the periphery of the Oyo Empire, primarily the Igbomina area of north-central Yorubaland, and to what extent these changes can be attributed to regional sociopolitical change, especially the rise and expansion of Old Oyo authority. North-central Yorubaland was politically and militarily important to the Old Oyo state, maintaining military alliances with the villages on its peripheries in the face of persistent military threats from neighbors to the north. Old Oyo's relations with north-central Yorubaland seem to have initiated change, evident in large chiefly elite sites, large enclosed wall systems, an increase in ritual activities, and stylistic similarity in pottery decoration shared with Old Oyo. Ethnohistorical sources, archaeological survey, and excavation form the core of this reconstruction of political relations between Old Oyo and Igbominaland.