Uneme Iron Technology

Language	Uneme
Depositor	Lateef Adeleke
Affiliation	University of Rochester
Location	Nigeria
Collection ID	0831
Grant ID	IGS1048
Funding Body	ELDP
Collection Status	Collection online
Landing Page Handle	http://hdl.handle.net/2196/a13db76d-a5d4-4591-9ceb-fec873a140a3

Summary of the collection

This collection documents the culture, heritage knowledge, and language of the Únẹ̀mẹ̀ people of Edo state, Nigeria. As a culture historically distinguished by their mastery of iron technology and resilient migration pattern, this project documents Únẹ̀mẹ̀ through the lens of their heritage knowledge of iron technology, identity preservation, and adaptation to the evolution of technology and economic practices. This multimodal project includes naturalistic and procedural texts, oral histories, traditional blacksmithing vocabulary, and linguistic data, across Únẹ̀mẹ̀ communities in Edo state, Nigeria. Some of the recordings are transcribed and translated into English. This collection is a work in progress and will be updated and expanded overtime.

Group represented

The group represented in this collection are the identically known blacksmiths of the Northern part of Edo state, Nigeria — The Unemes. They referred to themselves, their language, and their communities as Uneme, and this is how members of other groups also refer to them. The Uneme were renowned for their mastery of ironworking from as early as pre-1370 A.D. (Harunah 2003). Their indigenous iron technology brought them economic relevance among other groups in the region. They reigned as a major supplier in Nigeria’s trade networks until European colonialism introduced industrial iron, which led to the decline of patronage in their technology. According to Harunah (2003), the Uneme traced their origin to the NOK cultural zone. They migrated in two major waves from Benin in c.1370 A.D. They are dispersed among other language groups in the northern part of Edo State, Nigeria. More specifically, the Uneme can be found in Akoko-Edo, Etsako, Okene, Agbor, Asaba, and Awka. They founded several communities, adapted to various host cultures, and retained some of their culture despite the social pressure from other groups around them.

Language information

Uneme [ISO une] is an understudied Edoid language spoken by the identically named blacksmiths of the Afenmai hill in the northern part of Edo state, Nigeria. It is classified under the Benue-Congo family as the Afenmai-Bendel branch of the North Central Edoid (NCE) sub-group (Elugbe, 1989; Lewis, 2013). It is identified as an endangered and threatened language by Ethnologue and Glottolog, respectively, with an estimated 19,800 speakers. Many factors, including population displacement, despised status, and socio-political and linguistic hegemony, threaten their linguistic and cultural identity.

Uneme is in contact with other Edoid languages and non-Edoid languages such as English, Nigeria Pidgin English (NPE), Yoruba, Etsako [ets], Ebira [igb], which compete with Uneme in this area – English dominates as the language of instruction in schools; NPE, and Yoruba function as the lingua franca between the Uneme and their respective non-Uneme neighbors in everyday activities, relegating Uneme to function in informal domains: It is used alongside English, NPE, and Yoruba, in Uneme homes situated at Akoko-Edo such as in Uneme-Ekpedo, alongside English, NPE, and Etsako at their homes located at Etsako north such as Uneme-Udochi. Yuka & Bayodele (2017) observe that “Younger speakers have generally replaced Uneme with English as the language of choice in all communicative contexts except with their parents; lexical attrition and language shift from Uneme to English is evident among the youths of 15- 40 years”.

Special characteristics

As far as we know, this is the first digital documentation of Nigeria’s foremost blacksmiths (The Unemes), their skills, culture, traditions, and language.

As a language of a group with a specialized skill, it is expected that Uneme will retain some cultural lexicons, such as the specialized words related to their heritage knowledge of ironworking. It will therefore increase our understanding of the connection between language and heritage occupation.

The documentation will also increase our understanding of how artistic heritage or ancestral occupation is tied to social status in African societies. It is more interesting to see that blacksmithing is associated with mystical or spiritual power in the African context. However, despite this powerful identity and their immense contributions to society, they are still despised and marginalized.

In a broader sense, this documentation will increase our knowledge of how indigenous groups with heritage knowledge, like the Unemes, adapt to the pressure from the evolution of technology and social and economic practices. It will also be applicable to the language typologists, sociolinguists, and anthropologists who are interested in studying Edoid prehistory, especially in terms of linguistic internal evidence, ancient occupations, migration, identity, and socio-relations, as it will provide insights into how material culture, migration, identity, and language evolve together.

Collection contents

In its current version, this collection contains 49hr 10min of videos, including 23 hours 42 minutes of naturalistic data, 8hr and 32min covering ceremonies, festivals, and games, 48min of songs, 1hr of elicited data, 5h 8m of parallel recordings. For audio only recordings, it contains 9hr 24min BOLD, 40min naturalistic data, and 19hr 49min parallel and/or extracted recordings. For annotations, it currently contains 5hr 51min transcribed, 4hr 1min English translations, and 3min glossed.

Collection history

This collection represents an ongoing, multi-year ELDP sponsored documentation project on Uneme language and cultural heritage. The goal is to produce a systematically curated collection for academic and community use.

The first round of fieldwork was conducted between June and August 2025 in Ekpedo, (Edo state, Nigeria.) by Lateef Adeleke, David Ekundayo, Kayode Solomon and Adebimpe Adeleke. During this phase, audio-visual recordings across multiple genres, including narratives, interviews, procedural discourse, culturally motivated practices (e.g, ironworking, festivals, wedding ceremony), and linguistic data elicitation.

Post-fieldwork data processing continues between September-December 2025, when the team continued working on segmentation, transcription, translation, and data management. The first round of materials was deposited with ELAR for archiving in December 2025.

The second phase of fieldwork started in 2026 in Ekpedo. Data processing continues…

References

Elugbe, B. (1989). Comparative Edoid Phonology and Lexicon. Delta Series, No.6, Port Harcourt: University of Port Harcourt Press.

Harunah, H. B. (2003). A cultural history of the Uneme from the earliest times to 1962. The Book Company Limited.

Picton, J. (1991) ” On Artifacts and Identity at the Niger-Benue Confluence .” African Arts, Vol. 24, No. 3, Special Issue: Memorial to Arnold Rubin, Part II, pp. 34-49+93-94. Published by UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Centre.

Yuka, L., & Bayodele, D.(2017). Lexical Attrition and Language Shift: The Case of Uneme. Concentric: Studies in Linguistics 43(2), 119-139.

Acknowledgement and citation

The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) funds this project through an Individual Graduate Scholarship (IGS1048) awarded to the University of Rochester on behalf of Lateef Adeleke for the period of July 2025-August 2028. Users of this collection should acknowledge Lateef Adeleke as the principal investigator and ELDP as the funder. The contributors should be acknowledged by their names as indicated in the metadata for each session.
To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:
Lateef, Adeleke. 2025. Uneme Iron Technology. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/029c38b3-87b7-42c0-9646-985a5c69f970. Accessed on [insert date here].