Mul - unesdoc - Unesco

0. J. Eboreime - The Sukur and Benin cultural landscapes as case studies on the curent issues of authenticity and integrity
of the modern-day Sukur Development
Association stem from this socio-structural fabric
of traditional Sukur society.
The domesticated landscape of the Sukur
plateau is characterised by extensive terraces.
The Sukur terraces are themselves the product
of the social organisation whose working parties
maintained and progressively extended them
through slash-and-burn and fallow regimes of
farming. Interlaced with sacred trees, entrantes
and ritual sites, the terraces are also invested
with spiritual significance which the impressive
but purely functional terraces in the Philippine
Cordilleras do not possess. The villages in the
Sukur cultural landscape situated on low-lying
ground below the Hidi Palace are characterised
by their own unique vernacular architecture:
dry stone walls used as social markers and
defensive enclosures, sunken animal pens,
granaries, and threshing floors. The local granite
is the main source of constructional materials.
The living huts are simple circular structures
made out of clay with roofs of thatch and
delicately woven mats. The Sukur cultural
landscape as a whole is an integrated one; an
organically evolved landscape that faithfully
mirrors the social structure, religious beliefs and
the economic base of the society that created it
centuries ago and continues to live in it.
Authenticityllntegrity
The key features of this landscape have not
been significantly modified over the centuries.
The ways in which they have been maintained
have remained traditional in the form of materials
and techniques which are sustained by rituals.
Sukur has been exposed to no adverse external
influences and its continuance is assured by
the existing socio-cultural institutions and
practices combined with statutory protection and
conservation measures outlined in the
Management Plan submitted by the State Party.
For instance, during non-festive times, the roofs
of ritual houses are left to dry and fall off
exposing the granite boulders and fentes to
the vagaries of the elements of sun and rain until
the approach of a new festival time when
refurbishment is carried out. A section of the Hidi
Palace is abandoned and cannot be rebuilt
because it was the dwelling place of a Hidi who
died a violent death, having either committed
suicide or been murdered in the increased spate
of raids carried out by the leader of a neighbou-
-9l-
ring district, Hamnan Yaji, between 1912 and
1920. A total of 66 Sukur people including
17 children were said to have been killed. This
was too much of a holocaust for the Sukur to
forget. This and such other sites are deliberately
left in partial ruins as reminders of authentic
episodes of sadness in the history of the Sukur.
All these are re-enacted in myths, songs and
rituals which bring the tangible to life in renewed
cycles of periodic festivals where communal
ethos and ideology are brought to the fore in the
deployment of the work force to carry out public
works.
The authenticity of the Sukur cultural landscape
owes much to a multiplicity of interactions
between the tangible and the intangible values,
reinforcing one another to sustain a continuing
cultural landscape which is underpinned by
tradition, socio-political and religious systems. It
is against this holistic background which took
cognisance of the dynamic interrelationship
between tangible and intangible the plateau
and the lowlands, the Hidi and the people
authenticated by shrines, sustainable land-use
pattern, technological and spiritual values, such
as sacred trees, graveyards and iron furnaces
that advisedly made Nigeria resubmit a revised
dossier (file C.845) under the new title Sukur
cultural landscape instead of the Hidi Palace
alone.
THE BENIN CITY WALLSNILLAGE
EARTHWORKS
Benin City is the capital of the ancient Benin
kingdom of ivory and bronze which became part
of amalgamated Nigeria in 1914 after the
restoration of the monarchy had been sacked in
1897 by the British Forces. It is today the capital
of the new Edo State; one of such thirty-six
territorial administrative post-colonial units
created to satisfy the yearnings and sentiments
of ethnie nationalities in contemporary Nigeria.
Edo State however is contiguous to the area
occupied by the Edo-speaking peoples over
whom the King (Oba) of Benin exercised influence
and authority when the Benin kingdom was at its
peak between the 1 5th and 16th centuries.
Today the Benin monarch (Oba) maintains an
elaborate palace (a reduced relit of the 1897
version) within the inner walls of the city (Oredo).
He remains at the centre of tradition, customary
law and practices sanctioned by the living dead
of the collective ancestors of the Bini people