Great Zimbabwe A.D. 1450-1900

A recent anthropological critique of the archaeology and cultural heritage management of Great Zimbabwe refers to "the silence of unheard voices and untold stories" "the un-represented pasts of local communities," and "the silence of anger - the alienation - and desecration of Great Zimbabwe".

Fontein sees a lack of representation of local histories, not only in the literature, but also in museum displays and in the archaeological narratives, including heritage management reports.

The structures comprise massively built stone monumental architecture, and the site has been interpreted as the center of an ancient kingdom or state

The first known European to have visited Great Zimbabwe was Karl Mauch, who in 1871 publicized the stone structures to the Western world, resulting two decades later in antiquarian investigations.

The origins of the culture that dominated Great Zimbabwe probably lie some 300 km to the south, in the middle Limpopo Valley, following the demise of the state based at Mapungubwe (1220-1280).

Mapungubwe, whose wealth was enhanced by trade in gold, ivory, animal skins,
cloth, and glass beads with the Swahili on the Indian Ocean coast, declined following the abandonment of the region either due to climate change or transformations associated with the gold trade.

With this newly acquired wealth, they financed the building of stone structures. By about 1270, a powerful elite emerged at Great Zimbabwe, laying the foundations of an elaborate urban complex and the center of a state.

Dating from 1270 to 1550, Great Zimbabwe has, in conventional archaeological terminology, a prehistory, a protohistory, as well as an historical period.

Great Zimbabwe has been documented in such a way in Muslim and Portuguese sources, concentrating more on the Solomonic legend and the location of the biblical Ophir.

Abandonment in Archaeological Contexts Studies of abandonment remain extremely
popular in archaeology and the social sciences, the objective being to understand why certain complex societies eventually succumbed to failure and came to their fateful end.

The way archaeologists use the term "abandonment" is problematic as it obliterates a range of human behaviors, often reducing complex processes to simple, localized events

While communities did abandon sites on the Zimbabwe Plateau and adjacent
regions in southern Africa during precolonial times, human/land relationships implied that they did not give up their claims to places they had settled originally.

Some sites may have been abandoned but in fact continue to be used in the present - in a spiritual sense, such as the case of Great Zimbabwe

Ordinarily, it is difficult to perceive a site or a region as abandoned when the people once living there show continuous connections with such places.

The problem is those archaeologists who place too much focus on the "mystery of
leaving" and not enough attention on many ways that connections to homelands were maintained.

It is proposed here that the inhabitants of Great Zimbabwe did not completely abandon the site during the 15th and 16th centuries as inferred from the reading of the archaeological evidence but, rather, maintained connections with the site
and the associated landscape over centuries, as 17th-century movements to the south suggest.

Abandonment is often a gradual process but can be rapid as well as catastrophic.
Ritual may condition abandonment behavior, resulting in the deposition of unusual quantities of certain kinds of refuse.

It is the dynamics of these histories that tell of Great Zimbabwe's declining global role and its eventual demise as a center of considerable political and economic power.

During the 14th and 15th centuries, Great Zimbabwe may be situated in a time period archaeologists may refer to as protohistory, as some of the events pertaining to the site can be gleaned from examining external written accounts and through extracting historical information from datable ceramics and glass beads that arrived at the site.

While the value of these traditions is in clearly showing a reversal of earlier expansion or migration, and a subsequent reconnection with the landscape of Great Zimbabwe, the events also serve to underline how Great Zimbabwe lost its global significance in a period usually associated with the growth of globalization.

In this respect, the works of Arabic writers, such as ullah Muhammad ibn Battuta (1304-1369), must be reconsidered and put into a broader regional context. Ibn Battuta was the only medieval traveler known to have visited the lands of every Muslim ruler of his time, including Mogadishu, Mombasa, and Kilwa.

There was so much wealth around Great Zimbabwe, as well as in all the Swahili towns
existing at the time, including Kilwa, this wealth emanated from the gold, demand for which increased considerably not just in eastern Africa, but also in the Persian Gulf, India, the Far East, and Europe.

When he visited Kilwa in 1331, ibn Battuta was told about the gold coming from Sofala, "a fortnight's sail away," which in turn came from the hinterland of "Yufi," "a month's journey" away.

The trade in copper connected Great Zimbabwe with societies in south-central Africa, and one of the sites that featured in the copper trade during the 15th century, if not slightly earlier, was Ingombe Ilede, on the middle Zambezi.

From now on the Indian Ocean trade was channeled through the northern regions. However, the merchants could not escape the expansionary tendencies of rulers, some of them once based at Great Zimbabwe.

A further illumination of Great Zimbabwe during the 14th and 15th centuries comes from imported ceramics, glassware, and glass beads from the Persian Gulf, India, and the Far East, some of which have been recovered on the site.

Of importance is the "ceramic route" defined by Pirazzoli-t' Serstevens (1985)
in regard to wares traded within the western, northern, and eastern Indian Ocean zones, including the adjacent hinterlands, between the 9th and 15th centuries. This route supplied vast commercial networks linking China with Southeast Asia, the Near East, and eastern Africa.

The closest and most detailed description of Great Zimbabwe comes from João de Barros, published in his book Da Asia in 1552, being an account of the activities of the Portuguese in the Orient. This particular source corroborates the observations of some Arabic writers during the 14th century:

Huffman and Vogel (1991) have used this source in connection with available radiocarbon dates to shorten Great Zimbabwe's chronology and argue for its abandonment mainly during the 15th century.

Some members of the royal family were still living there despite the abandonment of the gold mines in its vicinity due to civil war. The late 15th century was characterized by civil wars, which saw the emergence of the Torwa dynasty in the southwestern regions of the Zimbabwe Plateau.

The traditions about Guruhuswa origins seem to convey centuries-old historical processes of migrations across the Zimbabwe Plateau landscapes, with communities searching for vital resources, such as salt, gold, ivory, game, pasture, and water in other regions.