The Nok culture takes its name from the village in Nigeria where the first pieces were found during tin mining in 1928. Dated across a span from about 1500 BCE to 200 CE, it yields the oldest known examples in West Africa of both ironworking and large-scale sculpture.

The sculptures are terracotta and some are nearly life-size — working clay at that scale requires advanced technical knowledge, hollowing the body and controlling wall thickness to prevent cracking in the firing. The manner is highly recognisable: almond-shaped, pierced eyes; sharp lines of brow and lid; elaborate hair and jewellery; a head kept large in proportion to the body. That last trait characterises later African sculpture too and is usually explained by the head being regarded as the seat of personality and destiny.

The function of the works is largely unknown: grave goods, ancestor cult or temple objects have all been proposed. One reason for the uncertainty is that most pieces came out of looting rather than scientific excavation — an object torn from its context is impoverished as knowledge, however beautiful it remains. Rising demand for Nok pieces on the international market in the 1990s accelerated the looting; Nigeria and UNESCO are pursuing restitution and protection. Nok is among the most concrete refutations of art history's treatment of Africa as without history: two thousand years before the naturalistic bronzes of Ife (13th–15th centuries) and the Benin plaques (16th century), a monumental sculptural tradition existed in the same region.