Nyanga pottery and the Manyika ethnohistory: towards a decolonised archaeology of the Nyanga agricultural complex

Abstract

Ancient pottery from the Nyanga agricultural complex (CE 1300–1900) in north-eastern Zimbabwe enjoys more than a century of archaeological research. Though several studies dedicated to the pottery have expanded the frontiers of knowledge about the peopling of Bantu-speaking agropastoral societies in this part of southern Africa, we know little about the social context in which the pottery was made, distributed, used, and discarded in everyday life. This mostly comes from the fact that the majority of the ceramic studies undertaken were rooted in Eurocentric typological approaches to material culture hence these processes were elided by most researchers. As part of the decolonial turn in African archaeology geared at rethinking our current understanding of the everyday life of precolonial agropastoral societies, we explored the lifecycle of traditional pottery among the Manyika, one of the local communities historically connected to the Nyanga archaeological landscape. The study proffered new dimensions to the previous typological analyses. It revealed a range of everyday roles and cultural contexts that probably shaped the lifecycle of local pottery in ancient Nyanga.

Recycling and the material science tetrahedron: Everyday strategies of making in high temperature technologies of Iron Age southern Africa

“…Suitable clays were processed and often mixed with temper such as organics, quartz, or ground sherds to achieve the right mix of particles making it easier to mould the vessels and impart into them—after firing—the required mechanical strength during use (Fredriksen & Bandama, 2016; Nyamushosho & Chirikure, 2020; Wilmsen et al, 2009). The pots (Figure 3) were used for a variety of purposes including cooking, serving, storage, and drinking (Fowler et al, 2008; Ndoro, 1996; Nyamushosho et al, 2021). Use was transferrable across tasks such that storage pots could be used for cooking, whereas cooking pots could be utilised for ritual.…”

“…This personification overlapped with metaphors that equated pottery with the female body and its reproductive capabilities (Gosselain, 1999). The embodiment was crystallised emically through the designation of human features—lip/mouth ( muromo ), neck ( huro ), shoulder ( bendekete ), body ( muviri ) and bottom ( magaro )—to pots (Nyamushosho et al, 2021). The heat generated during intercourse was metaphorically equated with the heat that transformed raw into cooked food (Collett, 1993; Lindahl & Matenga, 1995).…”

Modelling Land Use in The Gold Belt Territories of Iron Age Southern Zambezia

“…More importantly, there is a limited appreciation among archaeologists of the potential of archaeology in contributing meaningfully to these conversations despite the archaeological record being replete with valuable information that gives a long-time depth of past human land use practices. Rather, most of the scholarly effort has been invested in building culture-historical sequences of various Iron Age societies that populated the region (see [31][32][33][34] for critique). Whilst there is no doubt that scholarly coverage of these issues has enriched our understanding of the expansion of the Bantu, the contribution of the physical environment towards the development of complexity over time remains poorly understood, especially in gold belt territories dotted across southern Zambezia (Figure 1) that were previously relegated as provincial districts of the Zimbabwe culture (CE 1000-1900) civilizations such as Mapungubwe (CE 1055-1400), Great Zimbabwe (CE 1300-1660), Khami (CE 1250-1685), Mutapa (CE 1450(CE -1900, and Danamombe (CE 1685-1900) [35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43].…”