TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Preface

Bibliographic sources

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This guide lists and annotates sources on ethnic groups, found in Nigeria, that practice some form of body marking or scarification. The requirement for this project is for information on use of body alterations for the purpose of beauty, status or for a ritual. This list is intended for students, teachers, researchers who are interested in this topic. This reference work began as a graduate course at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign taught by Alfred Kagan, called “Bibliography of Africa.” The topic chosen for this class came from an interest of the author to learn more about African culture through art, beauty and cultural significance of skin decoration.

The time frame of the sources included was not specified before the project began. The author felt that, although many aspects of body art can be found in practice today, the role of body decoration has changed in some cases, due to globalization. The older traditions and the newer changes should both be looked at.

Limitations for this bibliography include that the sources are all in the English language, because the author does not know any other language. Therefore could not do justice to the sources in other languages by annotating them. The groups of Nigeria that are highlighted in this bibliography were not chosen prior to starting the project, but rather added as information about them that were found.

The arrangement of the sources is alphabetical, first by ethnic group, then by the author or title of the source. Some of the titles may be listed more than once if more than one ethnic group was focused upon in the source. The sources that may talk briefly about the different ethnic groups will be found in the “general” section. The bibliographic citations follow the MLA standard style manual.

Forms of body adornment, such as piercing and hairstyles, were not the focus of this project. Also, although circumcision and clitoridectomy is a form of skin incision and alteration, it was not a focus of this bibliography. Circumcision and clitoridectomy is not intended to emphasis physical attributes or are looked at to encompass beauty and therefore does not follow the guidelines of this project.

The issue of what can be called an ethnic group of Nigeria can be questioned. Many groups of Africa were nomadic and the political country lines have changed many times. If at least a couple of sources referred a group to the region of Nigeria, then it was added to the bibliographic list. Examples of some discrepancies are the Nuba, who are also known to be in Sudan, the Igbo’s of Niger, or the Yoruba who are found even in the Caribbean.

Finally, the issue of proper names of the groups can also be questioned. Instead of giving a separate listing for all the different names found of each group in Nigeria, the names were combined under an overall heading. The heading chosen tended to be the one found as the main entry for the Library of Congress Subject Headings. You will find the Ibo and Igbo, among many versions of this name, are grouped together in the source list.