Ilorin, now capital of Kwara State, Nigeria, was captured by Fulani jihadists in the early nineteenth century and became the southernmost outpost of the Sokoto/Gwandu Caliphate. Its population expanded enormously with Fulani, Hausa, and especially Yoruba immigrants from the western areas of the disintegrating Old Oyo Empire, whose capital city had fallen at the hands of an Ilorin army. Ilorin grew famous as an entrep6t in the profitable trade between the northerly areas ot the Caliphate and the various Yoruba states to the south; nevertheless it was "almost as much a producing as a trading city" (Gavin 1977:28). Among its most important products were red stone beads, which the Hausa traders called lantana.1 Those beads were made from jasper, banded agates, or chalcedony-all forms of crypto-crystalline silica, quarried close to the Niger River at Litingo, Kirtashi, and other locations west of Sokoto, not far below Say, seven days from Illo, in what is now Niger. The stone was quarried by Hausa, then brought down the river and delivered to Ilorin by Hausa traders in exchange for cloth and gowns. There it was fashioned into highly polished reddish brown beads in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some were long and cylindrical or barrel-shaped. Some were triangular pendants; others appeared in profile as elongated hexagons. There were even unbored cones for use as ear plugs (see Clarke 1938:156). The lengthy manufacturing process required skill, strength, and considerable patience. First the stone was chipped roughly into shape with the aid of a small chisel and a double-headed hammer of burnished steel. It was then pierced with a small punch or unthreaded drill-in the 1930s apparently made of scrap tool steel (Clarke 1938:156-57)-which was simultaneously twirled on the stone and tapped with a hammer. A 1.5-millimeter point would be used at the beginning, and replaced by finer ones as the work progressed. A worker might have as many as sixty punches set out in front of him. The pierced bead was worked vigorously across a grinding stone before final polishing on a smooth board. Scraps of stone-even dust, sometimes-were not wasted but used as a colorant in the decoration of goodquality pots (Macfie 1913:114). Beadmaking, like other activities in Ilorin, was a carryover from Old Oyo. Oral tradition attests to this despite little archaeological confirmation. (Only a couple of red stone beads were found on the Old Oyo site.2 Being valuable, most were probably carried away by their owners when the site was abandoned; the beadmakers' grinding stones were also portable.) Old Oyo was a natural location for the industry; the best grinding stones were found in its vicinity, and as a center of wealth and political power it must have provided a ready local market. Its position at the nexus of trade routes undoubtedly gave it easy access both to raw materials (the unworked stone could be carried down the Niger) and to markets elsewhere. Benin was probably one of the major markets for these beads. Though there is no direct evidence of this, a number of points strongly suggest it. Landolphe (1823, vol. 2:85-88) reports an encounter in Benin in the late eighteenth century with a group described as "Oyos" between whose country and Benin there was said to be a considerable trade in luxury goods. These may have been Hausa traders coming to Benin through Old Oyo or on behalf of it (Ryder 1969:225). In any case the luxury goods probably included lantana. From the reports of van Nyendael and Dapper, we can surmise that beads of this type were worn by Benin officials in the seventeenth century. Nyendael, for example, describes beads of "pale red coctile earth or stone" that were "very well glazed" and like "speckled red marble."3 Although Dapper reports that the Oba of Benin increased his supply of jasper by foreign wars to the north and east (Marquart 1913:xxxix), there may have been friendly relations between himself and the Alafin of Oyo,4 at least at times, and the trade in beads could have taken the form of a royal exchange between them, like the later one between the Oba and the Emir of Ilorin. Certain types of red stone beads in the Oba's gift support this supposition (Marquart 1913:xxxvi-vii, Bradbury 1957:46). Also, as Gavin has suggested (1977:29), the brass pillars decorating the palace at Old Oyo may have represented Benin's own contribution to the exchange.5 On the collapse of Old Oyo the beadmakers were brought to llorin to teach their art to the craftsmen there, and the lantana industry was thus transferred. The prospect of a lucrative trade with Benin could well have provided the impetus. One may speculate that the falling off of Benin's European trade in the early nineteenth century (Ryder 1969:228-38) led to even greater demand for Oyo beads, since European ones were no longer available, and further encouraged Ilorin to take over the industry. In the nineteenth century, Ilorin, like Old Oyo before it, was in a good position for bead production and trade. Grinding stones could still be easily obtained, and the unworked red stone brought down the Niger, off-loaded, and carried to Ilorin. The town was prosperous, so there would be a good local market for the beads, and it was even better situated than Old Oyo to supply markets in eastern Yorubaland and Benin. It was reported in 1912 that the original craftsmen in Ilorin were "families of slaves in Old Oyo, who were purchased and captured to teach the Ilorin makers, on the abandonment of Old Oyo" (NAK 1912:par. 28). A later source attributes the introduction of the craft to refugees rather than slaves (Clarke 1938:156), although this may merely reflect the sanitizing of the original tradition. It is also likely that some beadmakers were settled in Ilorin prior to the Fulani takeover and the abandonment of Old