When science alone is not enough: Radiocarbon timescales, history, ethnography and elite settlements in southern Africa

Abstract

The southern African recent past is replete with examples of elite settlements, some of which were occupied sequentially, and by different rulers. Shona, Venda and Tswana traditions identify the many dry stone walled capitals with former kings who ruled during different reigns. This historical reality is often not factored when considering the issues of political centres and urbanism in the Iron Age. The resolution of radiocarbon dating produces an aggregate time that conflates the chronology of capitals or elite centres when they may not have been contemporary – ‘the suck in and smear’ phenomenon described by Baillie (1991). This article combines historical and archaeological information to develop an alternative explanation for the existence of hundreds of elite Zimbabwe settlements, some of which were synchronous according to the radiocarbon chronology. The main indication is that rather than suffering from a glut of elites, southern African urban and political centres are associated with individual leaders of competing polities which may not have been part of unified hierarchical and sequential structures. The archaeology of the region stands to benefit from understanding the dynamics of politics, power and leadership in this way.

New Pathways of Sociopolitical Complexity in Southern Africa

“…A recent Bayesian modelling of the radiocarbon dates from Great Zimbabwe, using the widely accepted southern hemisphere curve, demonstrated that the site overlapped with Mapungubwe for over a century while lasting until the sixteenth century (Chirikure et al 2013). This is supported further by the combined dating and material culture evidence, which suggests that Great Zimbabwe was already an important place during K2 times (see Robinson 1961c;Wood 2011;Chirikure et al 2012).…”

“…Not surprisingly, Mapungubwe was nominated for the World Heritage List on the basis that it was the first Zimbabwe culture state and capital (DEAT 2002), one that failed as a result of environmental constraints and resulting in the rise of Great Zimbabwe (see also Huffman 2000Huffman , 2009. Perhaps the only worrisome point here is that this framework is based on limited evidence that not only excluded the basal levels of Khami, but ignored the significance of similarities in material culture and presence of prestige goods at many sites dating to the first-and second-millennium AD interface (Chirikure et al 2012).…”

“…Not surprisingly, researchers familiar with the archaeology of the region that encompasses southern and southwestern Zimbabwe, eastern Botswana and the Limpopo Depression have long expressed their reservations about the validity and appropriateness of this widely held view (Robinson 1965(Robinson , 1985Garlake 1982;Hall 1984;Beach 1994Beach , 1998Chipunza 1994;Manyanga et al 2000;Lane 2005;Chirikure and Pikirayi 2008;Chirikure et al 2012). For example, Robinson (1985), who excavated Great Zimbabwe extensively and spent most of his professional life excavating in southwestern Zimbabwe, argued that Huffman's opinions about the beginning of sociopolitical complexity in southern Africa did not accurately reflect the archaeology on the ground.…”

“…Three former capitals, Great Zimbabwe, Khami and Mapungubwe, are all UNESCO World Heritage Sites. For a very long time, the culture has attracted the awe of foreign observers such that when Karl Mauch reported it to the outside world in 1871, amateur and academic archaeologists engaged with Great Zimbabwe and associated places in mesmeric detail (Bent 1896;Hall and Neal 1902;MacIver 1906;Caton-Thompson 1931;Hall 1987;Huffman 1996;Beach 1998;Pikirayi 2001;Kim and Kusimba 2008;Chirikure et al 2012). However, most of this took place without the participation of local scholars and communities, resulting in an archaeology that is incompatible with local understandings and expectations (Garlake 1982;Pwiti 1996;Kusimba 2006;Chirikure and Pikirayi 2008).…”

“…Garlake called upon local scholars to enter the fray to temper some of the assumptions emanating from the colonial ancestry of Zimbabwe culture studies. So far, few local scholars have taken up this challenge (Pikirayi 2001;Kusimba 2006;Kim and Kusimba 2008;Chirikure et al 2012) despite the fact that researchers such as Hall (2009), Schmidt (2009) and Lane (2011) have fervently advocated for a postcolonial archaeology that is simultaneously multivocal and locally empowering.…”