Jan. 23 Lecture: “Digital Replication and Repatriation: The Bakor Monoliths of Cross River State, Nigeria”

6:00 pm on Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Lam Museum of Anthropology (Palmer Hall)

Also offered virtually: Register in advance to attend via Zoom.

Debates about ownership and repatriation of cultural property are often presented as a zero-sum-game. But with the advent of digital technologies for recording and replicating surfaces – 3D scanning and printing, CNC-milling – this state of affairs is changing.

In this lecture, Ferdinand Saumarez Smith of the Factum Foundation will explore these issues through the Bakor monoliths, a unique sculptural heritage in southeast Nigeria that Factum Foundation has worked to preserve since 2016, and the Bura heads from Niger in the collection of the Lam Museum of Anthropology. 

This event is sponsored by the Wake Forest University Interdisciplinary Arts Center, Wake the Arts, the Art and Antiquities Blockchain Consortium.

Four Chiefs of Oyengi stand with the last remaining carved Bakor monolith. The Bakor monoliths are venerated carved stone sculptures representative of ancestors, associated with traditional spiritual and social practices within the forest belt of Cross River State, south-east Nigeria. They are locally known as “akwanshi” or “atal” and found as a collection of stone monoliths within family,clan, or village lands. Photo credit: Ferdinand Saumarez Smith, 2018
Four Chiefs of Oyengi stand with the last remaining carved Bakor monolith. Photo credit: Ferdinand Saumarez Smith, 2018

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