The bronzes include numerous ritual vessels, pendants, crowns, breastplates, staff ornaments, swords, and fly-whisk handles.

[3] Frank Willett says that the Igbo-Ukwu bronzes portray a standard that is comparable to that established by Benvenuto Cellini five hundred years later in Europe.

[5] One of the objects found, a water pot set in a mesh of simulated rope is described by Hugh Honour and John Fleming as A virtuoso feat of cire perdue (lost wax) casting.

Its elegant design and refined detailing are matched by a level of technical accomplishment that is notably more advanced than European bronze casting of this period.

[6]The high technical proficiency and lack of known prototypes of the Igbo-Ukwu bronzes led to initial speculation in the academic community that they must have been created after European contact and phantom voyagers were postulated.

The Igbo-Ukwu artifacts did away with the hitherto existing colonial era opinions in archeological circles that such magnificent works of art and technical proficiency could only originate in areas with contact to Europe, or that they could not be crafted in an acephalous or egalitarian society such as that of the Igbo.

[2] Some of the glass and carnelian beads have been found to be produced in Old Cairo at the workshops of Fustat thus establishing that a long-distance trade system extending from Igbo Ukwu to Byzantine-era Egypt existed.

[13] Further excavations in 2019 and 2021 to the west of Igbo Richard yielded deposits of pottery, bronze, copper, iron objects and slags, chalk, bone, and palm kernel.

The new radiocarbon dates open "the possibility that some or all of the Igbo Isaiah bronzes and beads are somewhat younger than previously believed, but certainly pre-date European coastal contact by several centuries.

These findings follow earlier studies by the Shirley Institute of samples found at the same site, provided by Charles Thurstan Shaw.

[13] Archaeologists are able to use the morphology and chemical composition of the beads as insight into Igbo-Ukwu participation in long-distance trade networks and a general chronology of interaction.

Less analysis has been performed for the carnelian beads and Susan McIntosh argues that more research is needed into the possibility of any Saharan trade connections.

Some of the techniques used by the ancient smiths are not known to have been used outside Igbo-Ukwu such as the production of complex objects in stages with the different parts later fixed together by brazing or by casting linking sections to join them.

[2][22] However the complexity of some of the Igbo-Ukwu objects has led to considerable altercation between various metallurgic experts and debates regarding the actual production process which is an affidavit for the highly developed and intricate work of the ancient artists.

Potential sources include North African countries like Tunisia and Morocco, per lead isotope analyses of copper-tin alloys.