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 | Forthcoming |
| Landing Page Handle | http://hdl.handle.net/2196/a13db76d-a5d4-4591-9ceb-fec873a140a3 |
Summary of the collection
The project has not started. It will be a multimodal corpus with varying genres of topics that represent the life, culture, skills, language and traditions of the Uneme people.
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 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 languages such as English, Nigeria Pidgin English (NPE), Yoruba, Etsako [ets], Ebira [igb] which are more viable for communicative needs 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
The collection has not started. When it starts, it will be the first digital documentation of Nigeria’s foremost blacksmiths (The Unemes), their skills, culture, traditions, and language. The corpus will feed into an Uneme-English bilingual dictionary and an entire PhD thesis on Uneme.
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 culture.
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, marginalized, and considered a minority.
In a broader sense, this documentation will also 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
The collection has not started. When it starts, it will include diverse genres surrounding blacksmithing practices, identity, marriage systems, and traditions of the Unemes. Natural speeches and conversations at the smithies, ceremonies, festivals, markets, and homes will document interpersonal relations among the Uneme across age, gender, and relation in various settings. Semi-naturalistic texts such as procedures, ethnographic and autobiographic interviews, and historical and genealogical narratives will document their heritage smithing techniques, family dynamics, identity, traditions, and relationship with their non-Uneme neighbors.
Collection history
Data collection has not started. The data collection will start in July 2025.
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].
