Excavations at the Zimbabwe (enclosure) of Manekweni, in southern coastal Mozambique, have shown that it belongs to the Zimbabwe Culture which was centred on the Rhodesian plateau. Occupation levels have been dated to between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries. The faunal evidence indicates that a section of the population benefited from intensive beef production through transhumant pastoralism on the seasonally-fluctuating fringes of tsetse fly infestation. The settlement pattern of Rhodesian Zimbabwe suggests that their siting was determined by the demands of a similar system of transhumance. This model provides a basis from which to begin to reconstruct some aspects of the economies of early Zimbabwe. It is already clear that Zimbabwe were not simply the products of long-distance trade; rather, their economies integrated farming and cattle-herding as well as gold production and foreign trade.
The results of archaeological work on ruins of the Zimbabwe–Khami complex in Rhodesia are reassessed in the light of recent work. In order to provide a preliminary framework for further archaeological investigation, the surface architectural features of a large group of these ruins are analysed, and seven different styles of ruin discerned. These are interpreted as belonging to at least two separate but related cultural groups, the first extending over the whole country in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the second restricted to southern Matabeleland and flourishing during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In a correlation of the archaeological and historical evidence, it is suggested that the decline of Zimbabwe and many smaller ruins belonging to the first cultural group may be linked with the rise of the Mwene Mutapa empire, in which little building in stone took place. The second cultural group and its ruins coincide with the Rozvi state ruled by the Changamire dynasty.
Opening ParagraphZimbabwe has adopted the name of the Shona state, centred on the city of Great Zimbabwe, which flourished between five and eight hundred years ago, and whose ruined stone walls are one of the most remarkable monuments in Africa. Great Zimbabwe was a considerable human achievement, evidence of the acquisition and management of a huge and docile labour force, of prolonged political stability and economic prosperity.When the British South Africa Company occupied the country in 1890 the monument became the subject of considerable settler polemic and controversy. While its origins were still uncertain Cecil Rhodes recognized the considerable propaganda value that evidence of ancient foreign settlement, preferably white and successful and with Biblical origins, would have. It would give a precedent and respectability to the conquest and a promise of similar prosperity to the settlers and investors in the new colony. Rhodes acquired many antiquities from Great Zimbabwe, and initiated excavations at the site and searches of the archives of Rome and Lisbon for documents referring to it. He himself sought parallels to its art in the museums of Cairo. He also commissioned eminent mining engineers to determine the origins and yield of the ‘ancient gold workings’ in the country. Finally, he had Richard Hall, an enthusiastic propagandist of the settler cause in newspapers, lectures and exhibitions, and a fanatical advocate of immensely old Biblical origins for Great Zimbabwe, appointed curator of the Ruins expressly to instruct important visitors in his theories.
Since the start of archaeological investigation in Rhodesia, isolated sherds of imported Chinese ceramics have been found in the important Iron Age ruins of Zimbabwe, Khami and Dhlo Dhlo. More recently, abundant finds of both Chinese and European glazed wares have occurred in excavations of early Portuguese trading stations within Rhodesia. All such imports are here redescribed from an examination of the finds and from a detailed study of the early excavator's reports. As a result, some important early misdescriptions and misunderstandings become apparent. The dating evidence provided by the imports is therefore also re-examined.Very rare sherds of Chinese celadons are virtually the only imported ceramics found in the later deposits at Zimbabwe, and at five other sites. These may be correlated with finds from J. S. Kirkman's excavations in trading settlements of the East African coast, and are dated certainly earlier than the sixteenth century. The finds from four other sites, the most important being the Khami and Dhlo Dhlo ruins, consist mainly of Chinese blue-and-white porcelains and their European imitations. They correlate well with finds not only from the seventeenth and early eighteenth century Portuguese trading stations in Rhodesia, but also with finds from contemporary deposits at Fort Jesus, Mombasa. The precise dating of the Khami and Dhlo Dhlo ruins within this period, as suggested by the imports, shows Khami to belong to the early seventeenth century with Dhlo Dhlo a century later. The divergence between the Khami, Dhlo Dhlo and Portuguese imported ceramics and those of Zimbabwe is sufficiently striking to suggest strongly that Zimbabwe was of negligible trading power by the time the Portuguese penetrated the interior in the sixteenth century. Evidence bearing on this, particularly from the 1958 Zimbabwe excavations, is discussed in detail.Glass beads and glass are the only other imports to survive in Central African archaeological contexts and are of considerably less chronological value than the ceramics. They are, however, also considered, as are the pattern and extent of the trade with the interior evidenced by these imports.
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