Sociopolitical changes in the Ilare district of central Yorubaland in Nigeria led to the nucleation of small villages into larger towns and a new form of institutional organisation based on dynastic rules. This report studies the settlement history of the Ilare district from AD 1200 to 1900, its sociopolitical development and the transformation of its material culture based on oral history, ethnography and archaeology (investigations carried out in the late 1980s and 1990s). This evidence is then placed into a regional context lokking at how broader historical processes affected the Ilare area.