The palace landscape and the royal ugha: A historical overview

As Goodwin’s excavations largely occurred at the old palace of Benin, it is important to first turn to the rich documentary record pertaining to this area of Benin City, in order to contextualize Goodwin’s unpublished findings (discussed below), and identify the novel contributions of this material to understanding its history. The palace – the political and cosmological center of the kingdom – was a large, sprawling landscape composed of numerous shrines and compounds inhabited and used by the Oba (sacred king) (including his main quarters and the “palaver” house where he met visitors), the three main orders of palace chiefs (Iwebo, Iweguae, and Ibiwe), and the Oba’s wives and children. The Iwebo senior palace society was involved in administrative duties: they were the keepers of the royal regalia and dress; the Iweguae were the Oba’s servants and responsible for his personal household; and the Ibiwe were the keepers of the Oba’s harem (Erie) where the children and wives (Iloi) lived.Footnote ⁵

Among the most significant structures within this landscape were the royal ugha. These were important inner chambers of the palace: earthen-walled compounds in which previous Obas were said to have lived and were buried, and which were developed as sacred spaces housing important royal shrines developed in memory of these figures.Footnote ⁶ Each deceased Oba had his own quadrangle, made after his death. The aru erha, “shrine to the father,” was an important component of the typical household in Benin, religious beacons important in establishing and continuing the relations between the material world (agbon) and spirit world (erinmwin) so vital for rights of inheritance, and the extension of the gerontocratic principles of the living into the ancestral realm.Footnote ⁷ Those within the royal palace compounds (the previous kings being royal fathers) were especially important and were at the top of this hierarchy of sacred shrines in Benin. They stood for and encapsulated all of the aru erha of the realm, granted the standing Oba the powers of divine kingship, and ensured the vitality and continuity of the nation.Footnote ⁸ On the death of an Oba, following his entombment in a burial chamber beneath the palace floor, the planting of such a shrine by his successor was an important dimension of the funeral rites necessary to ensuring the transition of the spirit of the dead monarch to the other world. This was a vital process, ensuring these kings’ continuity as powerful ancestors, but also to prevent their potent, dangerous spirits from lingering in the living world.Footnote ⁹

Therefore, these areas of the palace were mortuary landscapes and places of important public rituals, crucial points of contact with powerful royal ancestors vital to the entire kingdom’s functioning and well-being.Footnote ¹⁰ They were furnished with many of the lavish copper alloy, ivory, and other art objects that Benin is famous for, including cast heads made by each successive king in memory of his predecessor.Footnote ¹¹ The upkeep of these compounds, the chronicling of the histories of the kings that they manifested, and the burial ceremonies of these monarchs, were largely the domain of the Ihogbe, a group of court historians and royal priests headed by the Ihama, a chief bearing a hereditary title.Footnote ¹² Important rituals occurred within these spaces, including the ceremony of the king “making his father,” for which people were sacrificed and sent to the royal ancestor to salute him and inform him that his son was not yet ready to join him, as well as ceremonies of royal investiture.Footnote ¹³ The former (Ugie Erha Oba), which would occur before the altar of the Oba’s father, followed a series of palace rites (Ugie Igun) honoring each of the former kings individually, and served to avert evil spirits, appease the earth, and honor and propitiate the previous king.Footnote ¹⁴

Of course, given Benin’s deep history, the nature of these royal compounds, and their associated arts and rituals, evolved over time. The earliest written references to these places, and the burial rites of recently deceased kings, appear in early modern accounts (of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). These described a landscape of plains and galleries filled with brasses and ivories, with mention made of extravagant royal burials at these well-adorned spacious courts. They were vast porticos supported by large wooden pillars, with some examples of copper alloy serpents attached to the rooves.Footnote ¹⁵ The earliest known image of one of the royal compound shrines is a sketch attributed to the Italian explorer Giovanni Battista Belzoni. This “Sketch of the Burying Place of a King of Benin” from the 1820s shows what is described, in an associated legend, as one of the “Tombs of the Benin Kings” consisting of a thatched, pillared structure containing elephant tusks as well as heads and figures in brass. It describes these as important in the celebration of the “Annual Sacrifices or Customs to the Manes of “Their departed Kings”” from June to October, during which people and animals were sacrificed to “Water the Ground or Grave” with blood.Footnote ¹⁶ In the same decade, an anonymous account in the Royal Gold Coast Gazette referring to Benin City described “tombs” decorated with elephants’ tusks, each inserted into “the crown of the head of a colossal brazen bust,” as well as various figurative arts depicting people and animals.Footnote ¹⁷

Other accounts from the early nineteenth century also reference these royal ugha and their shrines. Lieutenant John King in 1820 observed royal stools, made on the accession of a new Oba to the throne, and then placed on the same king’s tomb following his passing.Footnote ¹⁸ The British sailor James Fawckner mentioned “several fetish places, the depository of the usual absurd objects of worship, skulls, skeletons, and large ivory teeth” and stated that “unfortunate slaves are also sacrificed at different seasons in front of these temples.”Footnote ¹⁹ The explorer Richard Burton, who visited Benin City in 1862, also described one of these spaces, writing that:

In 1891, the earliest known photograph of one of these royal shrines was taken by the British trader Cyril Punch who, like Burton, suggested the importance of these spaces as sacrificial sites: “The new king constructed a large compound in memory of his father with a sacrificial altar at one end, and in one corner a pit, called ‘iyo,’ into which the bodies of the victims were thrown.”Footnote ²¹ When Punch visited, Oba Ovonramwen had almost completed such a compound for his predecessor Adolo who had died over a year prior, with carved doors of iroko wood covered with Muntz metal, and a newly dug pit (iya). The British Army officer Henry Galway, who first visited Benin City in 1892, noted the presence of “several large sacrificial courts, grassy enclosures surrounded by mud walls, with altars, under a great roof, at one end” in the king’s quarter.Footnote ²²

Following the 1897 British invasion, more detailed mentions of these royal ugha emerged from eyewitnesses who were members of the expedition. Various written descriptions exist of the landscape of the royal palace (e.g., a British Foreign Office Report from 1897, Reginald Bacon, Alan Boisragon, Ralph Moor, Robert Allman, and Felix Roth), notably mentions of “ju-ju houses” and “old ruined houses” where former kings and chiefs were thought to be buried.Footnote ²³ Boisragon’s account counts seven “large ju-ju compounds,” described as being close together in the king’s compound, “each two to three acres in extent, in which most of the sacrifices were performed, and in which the people used to sit while the priest performed the sacrifices.” These he described as “large grassy enclosures, surrounded by mud walls. At one end of each, under a roof, were the sacrificial altars, on which were placed the gods – carved ivory tusks, standing upright, on hideous bronze heads.” In the corners of these compounds were sacrificial pits, and they were close to the “Palaver House” (the structure where the Oba met his guests), as well as the compound that was the Oba’s main dwelling, which were side by side.Footnote ²⁴ Bacon described one of these “Juju places” as “about a hundred and fifty yards long, and about sixty broad, surrounded by a high wall, and covered with a short brown grass.”Footnote ²⁵ Moor also mentioned that there were seven of these “large sacrifice compounds,” that were “enclosed by walls 14 to 16 feet high, each 2 to 3 acres in extent” housing copper alloy and ivory objects, and sacrificial pits.Footnote ²⁶

The exact number of these royal ugha present in the palace landscape of the nineteenth century is unclear, and accounts contradict each other. As Allman wrote:

While Allman mentioned four of these near the king’s quarters within the palace, and a total of seventeen across the whole landscape, Moor and Boisragon mentioned that seven were counted close to the king’s house, while the Foreign Office Report noted five close together in the king’s compound. A British sketch map of Benin City from 1897 held by the Foreign Office depicts four structures in this area (labelled “KING’S COMPOUNDS”) but this appears to be a very simplified and incomplete representation of the palace landscape.Footnote ²⁸ Thus, we might conclude that four, five, or seven (depending on the account) of these royal ugha were in the area of the palace near to where the king’s dwelling and meeting house were located, with the chiefs interviewed by British authorities suggesting that there were seventeen in total within the entire palace landscape. However, the Belzoni sketch from the early 1820s noted “25 or 30” of these “Tombs of the Benin Kings” and, several years after the British invasion, the trader R. E. Dennett wrote that:

The reason for this discrepancy in numbering is not clear. Tentatively, it is possible that Belzoni (twenty-five or thirty) and Dennett’s (thirty-one) counts are estimates based on the number of kings remembered in oral tradition (king lists) rather than the true number of royal ugha actually stated to have been present in the landscape, with the lower number (seventeen) reported by the chiefs to the British authorities perhaps a more realistic figure.Footnote ³⁰

Of course, a common issue with these accounts of the palace is that they are very generalized, and typically vague when it comes to the particular order of the royal ugha within the palace landscape, which specific ones were identified with what monarchs, and the individual artistic and architectural details peculiar to each example. In this respect, Goodwin’s archive offers some new information, allowing us to locate where some of these were located and how they were arranged in the palace landscape (according to his informants in the 1950s), which may help further contextualize at least some of the archaeological finds made in the area of the old palace by him and successive archaeologists such as Ciroma and Connah.

Goodwin’s excavations in Benin City: Published evidence

It was within the collapsed ruins of this complex old palace landscape that most of Goodwin’s excavations of Benin City in 1954–55 and 1956–57 were undertaken, as well as most subsequent excavations undertaken in the city by later archaeologists. During both field seasons, Goodwin worked with a team of trained African excavators, and collaborated with other notable researchers, including the Benin historian and chief, Jacob Egharevba, at this time Curator of the Benin Museum, and Kenneth Murray and Bernard Fagg of the Department of Antiquities. Goodwin was further supported by the Oba of Benin, Akenzua II, who acted as a key informant, as well as the Benin Public Works Department that loaned him tools and sieves for excavation.Footnote ³¹ His archive also mentions that he collaborated with the Benin Historical Project (led by historian Kenneth Dike), cooperated with anthropologist R. E. Bradbury, and spoke to several local chiefs during his visits.Footnote ³²

In 1954–55, Goodwin began excavations at the site of the old palace, by then a grassy area with some trees and new developments (east of the site of the new palace), having been ruined by a fire that occurred during the British occupation in 1897.Footnote ³³ Goodwin’s initial excavation started “directly opposite” the European cemetery here, constructed by the British on the grounds of the old palace.Footnote ³⁴ He excavated an initial trench, then continued the first dig as a series of two foot and six inch by five foot and six inch “boxes” separated by a six inch balk. Goodwin interpreted the features excavated (during relatively shallow – up to approximately five foot – excavations) as a kitchen area, yard, rubbish pit, and living rooms.Footnote ³⁵ As well as ceramics, these palace rooms yielded fragments of brass as well as “cut tacks and staples” that were historically used to attach brass plate images to timbers and walls in the palace.Footnote ³⁶ Goodwin stated that four consecutive red-clay floors were visible in the stratigraphy of these rooms, separated by “trench-like breaks” in the stratigraphy, as well as layers of charcoal and debris that he interpreted as evidence of fires, and later rebuilding atop these layers.Footnote ³⁷ He then opened a second test further west, where an apparently modern clay floor overlay an older floor.Footnote ³⁸ Due to the shallow depth of these excavations, Connah has suggested that Goodwin’s finds were probably relatively recent in date, from the last two or three centuries.Footnote ³⁹

Goodwin’s second field season (1956–57) focused on another area of the old palace siteFootnote ⁴⁰ where he opened test pits at a location further west.Footnote ⁴¹ This was “along a line which is the continuation of the northern front of the present palace.”Footnote ⁴² He opened test pits at a location “18 yards (16.20m)” away from the second test opened in 1955 and reportedly 100 yards west of his first excavation.Footnote ⁴³ The two preliminary pits were “six feet (1.90m.) apart” and on a true line continuing from the southern aspect of an old brick water-tower near a temporary museum, “some fifteen yards (14m.) or so from the nearest of the government clerks’ offices.”Footnote ⁴⁴ Only a few small fragmentary potsherds as well as some layers of red puddled clay were found, which Goodwin considered evidence of two old floor levels. Two more test pits exposed a waterpipe from 1912, with an area adjacent to this yielding fragmentary potsherds. The four “corner” test pits were then turned into one square excavation unit. Goodwin observed evidence of collapsed walls overlaying a probable floor surface (indicated by white kaolin clay scattering), which he interpreted as a courtyard. Deposits of charcoal that “indicated the fire [of 1897]” as well as rolled brass strip, “cut tacks” and “square-sectioned copper staples” were viewed as evidence of timbering and wooden doors that had been plated with brass. On this presumed courtyard, Goodwin made two particularly spectacular finds: a cast brass serpent head of the type formerly affixed to palace rooves found near the “waterpipe trench” (see Figure 1), and a fragment of brass plaque depicting a catfish tail six inches away from the snake head, at the same level.Footnote ⁴⁵ Lateral expansion of this trench led to further discoveries of courtyards and probable interior rooms, as well as spectacular metal artefacts some eighteen feet northeast of the location of the snake head: an ada (iron sword), a bronze-handled adebo (iron dagger) with a pommel fashioned into the form of a leopard’s head with stylized canine teeth, and beneath this an ava (smith’s hammer). He interpreted these objects as “an altar to Ogun, god of iron,” in one of the palace courtyards, between rooms.Footnote ⁴⁶ He further observed that this courtyard met a wall threshold that was the western end of the room excavated in his second test trench in 1954–55.

Figure 1.

The snake head uncovered by Goodwin at the old palace grounds. The context that Goodwin found it in likely dates to the nineteenth century ce, though the object itself is probably older than this. Image obtained from Kathy Curnow, “Oba’s Palace, Benin City, Nigeria,” Bright Continent (23 May 2021), https://access.thebrightcontinent.org/items/show/2 (accessed 6 January 2025). Creator: Hamo Sassoon; date: 1957.

Goodwin also published some of his work at other sites in the city including the purported location of the palace of the legendary Ogiso rulers – earlier (pre-Oba) kings of Benin – which largely turned up negative data.Footnote ⁴⁷ Goodwin’s published works also include his observations of aspects of the architectural and religious practices of Benin City at the time of his visits. His archaeological research never provided any firm dates, including for the purported fires and structural collapses that he described. It is worth noting that Goodwin doesn’t provide any maps or site plans in his publications, and is vague about the locations of excavations, mainly siting them using references to modern landscape features such as clerks’ houses and the nearby water tower. Details are also missing pertaining to the scale of several of his excavations and to site stratigraphy: no profile drawings are included with only some basic depth measurements relayed in instances where significant finds were made. Connah, however, published a sketch map that included an estimated area where Goodwin conducted most of his work.Footnote ⁴⁸ Although Goodwin likely didn’t investigate deposits predating the eighteenth century ce, his work remains useful in the novel insights provided into the last two or three centuries of palace history. Connah would excavate older, deeper stratigraphy very near this location, at what came to be known as the Clerks’ Quarters site, yielding, among other things, spectacular evidence of a mud building with earthen walls and floors, refuse pits, inverted pottery bowls at the base of walls (interpreted as magical foundation deposits), a large number of copper alloy objects, and a 12.5-metre-deep cistern predating the structure, containing a range of artifacts, the remains of multiple people, and charcoal samples yielding radiocarbon dates of 1180 ± 105 ce and 1310 ± 90 ce (uncalibrated).Footnote ⁴⁹

Connah also excavated north of where Goodwin’s excavations were located, at the site of the Benin Museum, where the Public Works Department (PWD) yard had been located prior to 1958. The excavations showed a general lack of evidence of in situ building remains, implying to Connah that the area might have been covered by some of the palace courtyards and part of the open space in front of the palace. Nevertheless, the site was rich in features, including infilled pits and cisterns interpreted by Connah as borrow pits, and within one of these was an adult human skeleton placed in the pit during infilling, which he interpreted as resulting from an execution or human sacrifice. Connah also noted the presence of potsherd pavement materials in pits here, and divided the assemblage into a “late group” and “early group,” the latter of which he dated to 1305 ± 105 ce (uncalibrated) from a charcoal sample associated with potsherd pavement remains.Footnote ⁵⁰ As shall be discussed below, Goodwin’s archive helps inform us further of the local significance of the spaces that Connah was excavating within the old palace landscape.

Key spatial, stratigraphic, and contextual details pertaining to Goodwin’s excavations remain unpublished – material that can help further contextualize not only his published work, but also that of later archaeologists such as Ciroma and Connah. There are no published site plans, no drawings of stratigraphy and artifact associations, and few photographs of these. His publications also completely exclude any mention of one of the sites that he excavated during his time in Benin City: that of an exposed section of the town’s innermost linear earthwork.Footnote ⁵¹ Goodwin’s archives, though relatively limited in scope, address some of these absences, and contribute to a clearer picture of Benin City’s past.

Goodwin’s unpublished material on Benin City: An overview

Unpublished material from Goodwin’s work in Nigeria is largely contained in folders of correspondence (BC 290, D5: Correspondence A–Z; Nigeria), papers (BC 290, J2.23 Unpublished book ms on Goodwin’s Nigerian expedition [largely focusing on work at Ile-Ife]), and photographs (BC 290: Photographs: Goodwin in Benin and excavations in Nigeria 1955; a118–a124: Excavations, Ceremonies). Overall, relatively little material pertaining to Goodwin’s research at Benin City is present in his archive, although what is present is significant. Among his papers are a report to the Wenner-Gren Foundation from 1957 on his research in Benin, a series of draft handwritten and typed manuscripts that would eventually be compiled into his most comprehensive publication on his work in Benin City, notes on the social, political, and cultural dimensions of Nigeria at the time of his visit at the end of the British colonial period, some sketches and notes on shrines, correspondence that sometimes contains information on dimensions of his work, some limited oral traditions pertaining to past Obas (kings) of Benin, a couple of maps of parts of Benin City and his excavations, an unpublished account of his earliest work in Benin City, and a number of photographs (mostly unpublished) revealing aspects of the archaeological work, as well as depicting aspects of the culture city at the time of his visit.

One item appears to be notably absent. Connah was loaned Goodwin’s “excavation notebook” by Professor R. R. Inskeep of the University of Cape Town sometime prior to the publication of his collaborative volume The Archaeology of Benin in 1975. As far as could be gathered during the author’s visit, this wasn’t present in the archive, although Connah may conceivably be referring here to Goodwin’s handwritten publication drafts which are indeed present in the archive. Connah’s summary of Goodwin’s work contained little additional information about his excavations, other than some very limited spatial evidence that doesn’t appear to be in his published work. This suggests that either there was little new information in the notebook, or that Connah did not deem it relevant enough to include in the book.

Unpublished writings on the old palace excavations

Goodwin’s archive on his Benin City excavations primarily consists of records pertaining to his research at the old palace area. A Wenner-Gren grant report contains some details not present in his published work.Footnote ⁵² Notably, he identifies the structure that he excavated during his second field season (where a complete pot was found) as “the legendary ‘Hall of Esigi’” suggesting that informants had identified the area of the site with the Oba Esigie, typically claimed (estimated) to have ruled Benin during the fifteenth or sixteenth century ce.Footnote ⁵³ This spatial attribution is corroborated by other evidence in Goodwin’s archive discussed below. Furthermore, Goodwin’s published work, which focuses on the more spectacular brass and iron artifacts, makes little mention of the more prosaic finds at this excavation, but this report confirms that “a number of local (Bida) and trade beads were found” here. As well as further evidencing the palace’s local and foreign sociopolitical and economic connections, this revelation suggests that Goodwin’s published work regularly left out details of purportedly more mundane materials such as these, but unfortunately there is little additional material in the archive describing these missing finds (with some exceptions – see below).

Some further information is present in letters to his wife and family, several of which contain details of his excavations, interpretations, and other potential sites in the area.Footnote ⁵⁴ In a letter written on 5 January 1955, Goodwin provides some of his early interpretations of his initial excavations which contrast with what he would later publish. He wrote: “We are getting pleasant pottery out of the dig and a lot of old crucibles, presumably from brass smelting, though no brasswork has yet appeared.” In a letter written on 9 January 1955, he added further detail to this:

Interestingly, Goodwin, in his published work, appears to have abandoned the idea that these brass fragments were “obviously drips from the [lost wax] casting,” instead favoring the interpretation that they had “melted to pellets” and “to molten puddles” due to the 1897 fire, and by extension, purported fires that he argued were represented in the earlier stratigraphy, and not due to the casting process.Footnote ⁵⁵ No mention is made in any of his publications of crucibles or clay molds. Depending upon the accuracy of his theory of fires (see below), the possibility arises then that Goodwin had found some limited potential evidence of by-products of brass casting within the palace landscape. Connah’s later excavations nearby at the Clerks’ Quarters – at similar levels, and thus periods (Connah’s “late phase”), to Goodwin’s excavations – indeed found abundant evidence of metalworking in the area, such as crucible pieces, fuel ash, and fragments of metal, including droplets, trickles, or small pools of copper alloy interpreted as originating from splashes of molten metal during casting.Footnote ⁵⁶ The combination of this new unpublished evidence and Connah’s published work perhaps casts some doubt on the extent to which Goodwin’s finds had been modified by destructive fires, and supports instead the idea that he had found significant evidence of copper alloy metallurgy. His early interpretations, as represented in his unpublished letters, may thus be accurate, making it unfortunate that he did not include these, or discuss them in detail, in his publications. See below for a further discussion of the validity of Goodwin’s theory of multiple fires.

Besides these, there are no other mentions of any excavated finds, or interpretations of these, not already published, with one exception pertaining to the second (1956–57) field season. In a letter from 18 January 1957, he mentions that, following the discovery of the purported Ogun shrine (see above), they excavated further objects: “However, our luck stopped there [after finding the iron objects] and we have only been getting beads & tacks since then, with a few rivets, rosettes, finger-rings etc.” Thus, the letter details some of the more “mundane” finds made on the day of the shrine discovery, not all of which are mentioned in his published works (which mention him later finding “iron nails, innumerable copper staples and cut tacks of brass” elsewhere in the excavation).Footnote ⁵⁷ As well as this novel material pertaining to his excavation finds, Goodwin’s letters to his family also mention the potential location, and nature, of a historic cache of elephant tusks. On 29 December 1954, he wrote:

The colonial police barracks were located just south of where Goodwin excavated (see the reference to “Police lines” next to a dotted line in Figure 2 – this dotted line is also represented in the southern section of the Figure 4 map). This specific cache of ivories, and the Oba’s attempt to use them to negotiate with the British following the 1897 invasion was documented at the time, but the account lacks detail regarding the nature of the burial or its possible location.Footnote ⁵⁸ Goodwin’s writing may be useful in this regard, however, besides the presence of a depression, it is not clear what gave him such a firm impression that the pit was located at this spot, and he appears to have never excavated the area. In another letter, written on 20 February 1955, Goodwin mentions another location where Ovonramwen had supposedly hidden artifacts:

Figure 2.

Goodwin’s sketch map of the palace, with courtyards associated with prominent past Obas recorded (as according to informants from the 1950s). The main road running from top to bottom is the Ogba Road (now Airport Road), as shown in Connah (Archaeology of Benin, 8). The map also describes other features in the old and contemporary landscape. Note that the palace mentioned in the top-right corner is the new palace. This sketch is not oriented to the north (see below).

It is not certain if this is a reference to a different purported cache of objects, or the cache of ivories mentioned in his earlier letter: if the latter, then it suggests that Goodwin had come to believe it to be in a different location from the police barracks area. The location he is referring to is likely somewhere between the water tower (WT in Figure 2) and the new palace boundary (“Palace” in Figure 2; see also Figure 4) on the west side of the Ogba Road, although this isn’t entirely clear.

Sketch maps of the old palace landscape and his excavations there

More significant are the maps in the archive – notably a sketch map of the old palace landscape (Figure 2), and a map of Goodwin’s excavations (Figure 3) – which form perhaps the most interesting part of the collection as pertaining to his work at the old palace site. These yield additional spatial information that help improve our knowledge of the locations where Goodwin (as well as Ciroma and Connah) excavated, and the nature and organization of the excavations. The sketch map reveals the layout of aspects of the old palace area of Benin City – part of the Ogbe: the king’s sector of the town – as recalled by Goodwin’s informants in the 1950s (likely the Oba, his officials, or Chief Egharevba), and the approximate locations of his excavations here. Oral tradition features little in published accounts of Goodwin’s work at the old palace site, so this represents a dimension lacking from what was previously available.Footnote ⁵⁹

Figure 3.

Edward Thaddeus’s drawing of the excavations (of both field seasons) according to Goodwin’s drawings. See Figures 4 and 7 for information on approximately where these excavations occurred in the contemporary landscape, and Figures 7, 8, and 9 for photographs of some of these excavations.

This sketch (Figure 2) is remarkable as the only known map document to date that lays out the approximate spatial organization of the old palace site according to where each Oba was traditionally considered to have lived in the past, and where they continued to be venerated after their deaths. These were the royal ugha (see above), of which there were up to thirty-one by 1897.Footnote ⁶⁰ Goodwin’s reference to the “Hall of Esigi” in the aforementioned report is a reference to the ugha dedicated to the past Oba Esigie, and this rectangular area is shown near the center of this sketch map. A note on the map reads “Sites probably between house A10 and latrine” which, along with other evidence, helps approximately situate his excavations (see Figure 4 below). Indeed, many of the features of the landscape mentioned in Goodwin’s publications – some of which he uses as spatial referents – are observable on his map. These include the water tower, new palace site, European cemetery, and clerks’ offices, among other things.

Figure 4.

Spatial information from Goodwin’s sketch of the old palace landscape, superimposed onto a modern satellite image of the area today, including the approximate locations and dimensions of several royal ugha. The ugha of Oguola and Ozolua are also shown as per Bradbury/Curnow and unpublished written notes of Goodwin’s (see below). The old palace features (the royal ugha and other structures from the map) are shown in white. The approximate areas of Goodwin’s excavations, as well as those undertaken later by Willett (1959), Ciroma (1960), and Connah (1962–1963) are also marked (yellow text and circles). Furthermore, the site of the bronze finds reported on the sketch map is marked in orange. Note that this is a superimposition of a sketch map – one not made using exact measurements – and so the details are not going to conform exactly to the actual landscape. Spellings (e.g., of the names of kings) have been changed to conform to current, accepted versions rather than Goodwin’s ones. One minor change made is that Olua and Eresoyen’s ugha locations have been swapped by the author, based on interpretation of a curved line on Goodwin’s sketch map that appears to indicate that they should be interchanged due to an error. Satellite image source: Google Earth Pro, version 7.3.6, 2024.

The approximate location of the quarters of the three main palace orders (Iwebo, Iweguae, and Ibiwe) are also shown (explicitly or implicitly) on Goodwin’s map – that of the Iwebo (marked “Iwebu”), that of the Iweguae (in the large area marked “Oba’s dwelling”), and that of the Ibiwe in the upper part of the map described as the women’s quarters (“the Iloi”) by Goodwin. The Oba’s personal household would have been in the area marked “Oba’s dwelling” where Oba Ovonramwen would have lived prior to the 1897 invasion, after which he was exiled. Near this was the “palaver house” where the king received visitors, and where a copper alloy snake was observed connected to the roof in 1897.Footnote ⁶¹

Situating the royal ugha in the old palace landscape using Goodwin’s sketch map

As previously stated, documentary sources from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries reference the royal ugha of the old palace but largely lack information on their specific whereabouts and the particular Oba that each one was dedicated to – dimensions that are shown on Goodwin’s sketch map. Some of the figures mentioned on the map include the Obas Ebeka (Eweka; c. twelfth or thirteenth century), Ewedo (c. thirteenth century), Ewuare (c. fourteenth or fifteenth century), Oluwa (Olua; c. fourteenth or fifteenth century), Esigie (c. fifteenth or sixteenth century), Ohen (Ohuan; c. sixteenth or seventeenth century), Eresoyan (Eresonyen/Eresoyen; c. eighteenth century), and Osemwende (c. nineteenth century),Footnote ⁶² and Goodwin’s approximate positioning of their ugha is novel information lacking from previous descriptions (see above) or maps, such as that of Roese et al., itself a compilation of earlier maps and descriptions.Footnote ⁶³ An important corroborating source for the names and locations of these sites marked on Goodwin’s sketch map is R. E. Bradbury and Z. R. Dmochowski’s interview with Oba Akenzua II in 1958. The Oba informed them of two rectangular courtyards called ugha uzamokon (near the “old colonial PWD site” and shown on Goodwin’s map as “Ojamokon”) and ugha ozolua. Footnote ⁶⁴ Curnow drew upon some of Bradbury’s unpublished notes pertaining to this conversation to describe these places:

Further corroborating Goodwin’s notes, she wrote: “Ọba Ẹsigiẹ’s 16^th-century chambers were outside the parameters of the current palace, necessitating the construction of a cloth pavilion in the street near the water tower for one of his celebrations.” Another corroboration comes from Wyndham, who confirms that the European cemetery was within “Esigye’s compound” as shown on Goodwin’s map.Footnote ⁶⁶ Another document in Goodwin’s archive with notes pertaining to traditions of the Obas mentions that “The sixth Oba, Oguola, introduced brass work. His ‘compound’ was in the present hospital grounds.”Footnote ⁶⁷ On Goodwin’s map, Oguola’s (c. thirteenth century) ugha would thus be somewhere in the vicinity of the area marked “Hosp.” Based on these corroborations, it may be that Goodwin’s source for this map was Oba Akenzua II himself, or perhaps other palace officials, and Chief Egharevba. Goodwin provides relatively specific locations for each of these places, not previously published. Of course, it is not clear whether these are deep-time recollections of where these Obas dwelt, passed down over generations, more recent reinterpretation and attribution of areas of the landscape to them, or some combination of both things. It is certainly known that alterations caused by ruination (deliberate or otherwise) over centuries transformed the palace landscape of Benin.Footnote ⁶⁸ Neither is it clear how close the purported physical dimensions (scale and shape) of these ugha, as shown on the map, are to what their actual dimensions were. Based on limited documentary evidence on this from 1897 (see above) these may be overestimations in terms of scale, especially regarding their width.

Based on the traditional king lists, the cluster of royal ugha shown would appear to be dedicated to a scatter of Obas considered to be from quite different sections of the sequence and thus diverse periods, often with significant gaps between their reigns. This would imply that the royal ugha did not follow a straightforward spatial pattern conforming to chronological order. The sequence, and dating, of the reigns of the kings of Benin of course remains speculative, disputed, and controversial, being heavily influenced by the work of twentieth-century writers such as P. A. Talbot and J. Egharevba.Footnote ⁶⁹ Thus, there is unlikely to be complete parity between the observations on this map, historical evidence, and archaeological evidence, pertaining to the organization of the palace landscape. Nevertheless, the uniqueness of this sketch map as a source on the shifting palace landscape, or at least how it was perceived by the 1950s, is valuable for future research on the history of the Benin kings and the old palace site more broadly. Modern features such as roads and structures are also listed on the sketch, some of which are mentioned as spatial referents in Goodwin’s publications, and which are thus useful for locating his excavations (see below). These include the (new) palace (and a “door” of this), the cemetery, hospital, clerks’ houses (quarters), museum, a latrine, water towers (“WT”), the Public Works Department (“P.W.D.”), the bank, the Post Office (P.O.), the District Office (D.O.) and the Ogba (now Airport) road (rightmost) and Sapele (now Benin-Warri) road (leftmost) between which the ugha are marked and where Goodwin’s excavations took place. As mentioned above, it also notes the approximate location of his sites. This information, combined with other evidence, allows us to locate his excavations in the contemporary and historical landscapes of the area (see below).

A map of Goodwin’s excavations

This brings us to the next significant map document in the archive that provides more detailed information about Goodwin’s excavations (Figure 3).Footnote ⁷⁰ This is similarly useful, as Goodwin’s published work has no maps showing the locations and dimensions of his excavation trenches – only (sometimes vague) written descriptions that occasionally mention modern spatial referents. This map was created by Edward Thaddeus, based on Goodwin’s drawings, and lays out trenches excavated by the team in 1954–55 and 1956–57.Footnote ⁷¹ It gives us a better sense of the scale and organization of the excavations, their spatial relationships, and the locations of some of the major finds (in terms of stratigraphy and artefacts) within them. The eastern trenches are those excavated during the first field season while the western trenches are those excavated in the second – which meet each other roughly at the wall threshold separating the courtyard with the “ADA” and the room just southeast of it (he gradually extended the excavations of his second field season eastward to meet the first). Noted finds include the snake head (“SNAKE”), sword (“ADA”), and two wall boundaries that he traced, one separating the purported palace room from the courtyard with the ada and the other in his 1955 test pit. This latter “WALL APPARENT” refers to the wall section described in Goodwin’s published work, observed in stratigraphic profiles during his first field season (see Figure 9 for photographs of this). Usefully, measurements in feet are given for the dimensions of the trenches, which provide a scale, and a north arrow is included in contrast to Goodwin’s sketch map. The “OLD WATER PIPE MAIN TRENCH” ran southeast from the water tower (“WT”) shown in Figure 2, which was located next to the spot of the precolonial Agbodo pond.Footnote ⁷²

Locating Goodwin’s two maps in the historical and contemporary landscapes of Benin City

As mentioned above, comparison of several published and unpublished sources makes it possible to spatially situate the new details contained in Goodwin’s unpublished maps – notably the reported locations of the royal ugha, other sections of the old palace, and Goodwin’s excavations, in both the pre-British occupation and current landscapes of Benin City. Today, the area shown on Goodwin’s maps is home to the Edo State House of Assembly, offices of the Nigerian Postal Service, the Oba Akenzua Cultural Centre, Edo Specialist Hospital, and newly constructed Museum of West African Art (MOWAA), observable in contemporary satellite imagery. The two maps (shown in Figures 4 and 6), created by the author, show a) information from Goodwin’s sketch map and Thaddeus’s excavation map superimposed upon a satellite image of the modern landscape of the area, as well as representations of the approximate areas excavated by later archaeologists here (Figure 4), and b) spatial information from Goodwin’s sketch map superimposed upon a map of the old palace landscape (according to Roese et al., “Benin City Before 1897”) (Figure 5). The approximate location of his excavations shown in Figure 4 was determined through analysis of a number of published and unpublished sources.Footnote ⁷³

Figure 5.

A map of part of the old palace (based on Roese et al., “Benin City Before 1897”) with features from Goodwin’s sketch map superimposed upon it. One area of discrepancy is the positioning of the Erie (“Women’s Quarters”) – Goodwin’s sketch map is vague on this, but places it closer to the main area of the Oba’s dwelling. Other information suggests it to have been farther south than this (see Roese et al., “Benin City Before 1897”). Note that some modern features are shown here, such as the area of the new palace and the line of the Ogba (Airport) Road that bisects the palace landscape.

Assuming that Goodwin’s sketches are accurate to what he was told, Figures 4 and 5 suggest that his excavations occurred largely in the area recalled as the ugha of Esigie, as well as part of the location recalled as a compound or area of the Iwebo.Footnote ⁷⁴ Ciroma was excavating in an area identified on Goodwin’s sketch map as being the area of the ugha of Olua and the Iwebo structure. Connah’s “Clerks’ Quarters” excavations occurred largely between those of Goodwin and Ciroma, so in the area marked as the Iwebo structure and the ugha of Esigie (Clerks’ Quarters (CQ) excavations I, II, and III) though he also opened an excavation (CQ IV) southwest of here in what would have been the main living area of the Oba and his Iweguae courtiers according to Roese et al.’s map. His Benin Museum Site excavations occurred in the area identified as the Uzamokon. Of course, it is not clear how far back in time the spatial arrangement of the palace recorded by Goodwin extended, and so its interpretive value may be specific only to the late phase (i.e., the first few feet) of these multiple excavations, and not to the older deposits excavated by Connah (such as those of his middle and early phases – see below). The significant amount of evidence of copper alloy metallurgy that Connah observed at CQ I, II, and III connects well with this revelation, given that the Iwebo traditionally had affiliations with the Igun-Eronmwon brass casters. Similarly, this novel identification of Goodwin’s excavations as being in or near this Iwebo area may also help further contextualize his finds of possible brass casting discard (see above), and lends more support to the alternative hypothesis that he was looking at metallurgical refuse rather than evidence of repeated destructive fires.

Goodwin’s sketch map reveals the location of a place where “many bronzes” were found, apparently in an area identified to him as the “Iwebo Court.” Such “hoards” of copper alloy objects were relatively common finds in this landscape, with other such discoveries/rediscoveries made following the British invasion of 1897 by both colonial occupiers and local inhabitants.Footnote ⁷⁵ Notable examples reported include British military looting of “hidden bronzes” at what became the Public Works Department grounds and Benin Museum Site (the Uzamokon on Goodwin’s map) and elsewhere during their occupation of the area, a set of “bronzes” found during the removal of an area of wall in the new palace as reported by Eva Meyerowitz in 1943, and another “hoard” accidentally discovered at the Clerks’ Quarters Site in 1962 (opposite the new palace) which led Connah to open the CQ IV excavation nearby.Footnote ⁷⁶ Goodwin’s map suggests that the bronze finds that he reported, and perhaps also those reported by Meyerowitz and Connah, were associated with the Iwebo area of the palace, and these spatial relationships make sense given that one of the Iwebo’s duties was to protect and preserve valuable arts connected to the royal family.Footnote ⁷⁷

Photographs of excavations and material culture

Complementing these maps are some of Goodwin’s unpublished images, which allow us to better visualize and understand aspects of the location, nature, and discoveries of his excavations, as well as important historical features of the city.Footnote ⁷⁸ The photographs include images of Benin architecture (including palace walls and the inner earthwork), festival activities with the Oba present, art objects, contemporary shrines, sacred trees, areas of the landscape of the old palace site, and excavations here (see sample images in Figures 6–9). One image (see Figure 7) clearly shows the location of his first trench in 1954 opposite the European Cemetery. This is notable as it appears to be the most precise information we have regarding where Goodwin began his excavations, and helped situate his excavations on the map in Figure 4. The pictures also show some of the stratigraphy and finds that he excavated from this initial excavation (labeled “1955 TEST PIT” on the map in Figure 3), which offers additional material for comparison with that uncovered by later archaeologists, by ongoing archaeological excavations in this landscape in the 2020s, and with Goodwin’s own published (written) descriptions and interpretations.

Figure 6.

Photographs of Benin City architecture, including the inner earthwork, probably at Sakpoba Road where he excavated (left, centre) and the palace (right). The palace doorway shown here may be the one marked on his sketch map (above).

Figure 7.

Goodwin’s initial excavation trench during his first field season, opposite the European cemetery.

Figure 8.

Images of ceramic discoveries, made during the first field season. Note the letters which represent Goodwin’s alphabetical grid system. The feature being defined in these images appears to be what Goodwin initially interpreted as a “step,” which he suggested “may later prove to have been the edge of a wall-trench or of a house platform, or the lip of an old borrow-pit of irregular shape filled with rubble.” In the past, “domestic and ceremonial” pottery, suggested Goodwin, had been crushed by fallen architecture “sending them skipping and shattering down steps to the sumps of rooms or into compound yards and wells,” which was how he interpreted this specific context (Goodwin, “Architecture,” 72, 75, Fig. 3).

Interpreting stratigraphy in Goodwin’s photographs

A comparison of some of these photographs with Goodwin’s published work allows us to better understand the site stratigraphy that he was describing in writing. As previously mentioned, Goodwin’s publications describe a sequence of four red clay floors (typically approximately three or four inches thick), each overlain with dark layers of carbon and fine debris (approximately an inch or less in thickness) that he interpreted as evidence of destructive fires, as well as a couple of thicker layers (of a foot or more) representing fallen walls, where structures had collapsed following the purported fires. Goodwin observed the first of these supposed layers of collapsed wall immediately above the second of the four “fire” layers, which he estimated to be about one foot in thickness. Above this, he observed a new wall (approximately eleven inches in thickness) which, after a supposed third fire, was thickened on both faces into a Y-shaped section. This was then overlain by the fourth and final “fire” layer, which Goodwin interpreted as that of 1897, and above this was over a foot of collapsed wall debris and humus.Footnote ⁷⁹ Goodwin’s unpublished photographs show more clearly this Y-shaped section (representing a thinner older wall, and its later thickened version), the third and fourth “fire” layers associated with these wall features, and the thick layer of collapsed wall and soil overlaying this (see Figure 9). Unfortunately, the nature of the stratigraphy below these features (including the first two floor and “fire” layers and the earlier wall) is not clear in these photographs. Nevertheless, the upper two to three feet of stratigraphy (including the Y-shaped section and above collapsed wall and humic layers) are rendered slightly more clear, making comparisons more feasible.

Figure 9.

Further images of Goodwin’s first excavation. As Goodwin published no stratigraphic drawings, and few photographs, these are useful in gaining a better sense of the layers described in his published work. This image depicts Goodwin’s southernmost excavation trench (this can be determined based on comparison of the shape of the trench in the left image with the excavation sketch map in Figure 3 – the unit labelled “1955 TEST PIT”). The middle and right images show more clearly the Y-shaped profile of a wall feature that Goodwin described but did not illustrate in his published work, as well as the associated stratigraphy – it is shown here to be in the southeastern section of this southern trench.

Broadly, we see some similar features here to what Connah would later observe in the late phase of Cuttings [Units] I–III of the Clerks’ Quarters site (approximately the first five feet of material, thus corresponding to Goodwin’s stratigraphy) – opened very near Goodwin’s initial excavation. Notably, and like Goodwin, Connah observed abundant structural evidence: the mud wall features, mud-walling debris, and floors. However, Connah wrote that Goodwin’s “four structural phases” could not be applied to the stratigraphic evidence that he observed in this late phase of his three excavation units, and that these “contained no particular evidence of any destruction by fire.”Footnote ⁸⁰ This latter observation suggests that, if Goodwin’s interpretation of the stratigraphy is accurate (which it may not be), the fires may have been relatively localized, and perhaps not related to the 1897 destruction. Alternatively, much of the evidence that Goodwin assumed to be reflective of past fires may have instead been debris from copper alloy casting (see discussion above of Goodwin’s letters), which further challenges his published suggestion that there were multiple fires here in the past.