History of Excavation and Interpretation at Great Zimbabwe - Essay Example

?History of excavation and interpretation at great Zimbabwe Great Zimbabwe, located very near to the presently known Masvingo, is recognized as one of the top known African archeological sites in Sub-Saharan domain. Its origin dates back to 1300 B.C. It is a huge stone- walled establishment that used to cover some 78 ha and was a house to nearly 18000 people. This makes it the biggest abode of a cultural settlement that contained most of the neo-established Zimbabwe as well as parts of Botswana, Transvaal and Mozambique. The word “Zimbabwe” in the language of Shona depicts either houses built of stones or established houses. This archeological site is famous as the place where south- African dry- stone architectural mastery reached its peak. By 1250-80, lucid stone walling were set up at Great Zimbabwe to create enclosures and platforms to support mud- and pole buildings (Phillipson, 2005, pp.52-53). The existence of Zimbabwean culture to the Western World was reported in the sixteenth century by the Portuguese travelers, although existence of Great Zimbabwe itself was not disclosed until Carl Mauch found stone ruins in Great Zimbabwe in 1871. Carl Mauch, like many other Europeans was of the idea that the biblical city of Ophir and stone buildings such as that of Great Zimbabwe had been built during the time when king Solomon went on to exploit the country’s gold reserves(Hall,1905, pp.295-300). This “exotic hypothesis” had long been in the minds of excavators coming to Rhodesian districts of south-Africa in search of the so-called ‘King Solomon’s Mines’, even the excavators from Rhode’s BSA Company that colonized Zimbabwe in 1890 had embraced this idea. Some were of the belief that the ruins were constructed by the Phoenicians, Arabians or the Egyptians. This “exotic hypothesis” was challenged by a professional archeologist named David MacIver in 1905. MacIver dated Great Zimbabwe’s medieval periodical origins by forming a stratigraphical connection of the stone walls with those of imports from China and Eastern Asia in the fourteenth to sixteenth century AD. This interpretation was completely contradictory to that of the “exotic hypothesis” and formed the integral part of his “essentially African” interpretation. It was however outright rejected by the public. The debate regarding the origins of culture of Zimbabwe involves political emotions as well as scientific verification, and criticisms to the “exotic hypothesis” are also not strong enough (Huffman & Vogel, 1991, pp.61). This project is an attempt to account the history of the excavations in Zimbabwe through ages and how colonialist ideologies have come into play with emphasis on present political scenario and institutional changes taking place in Zimbabwe now to make it a better place to live in. History of Excavation in Zimbabwe Ever since there has been European settlement in southern parts of Africa since the very beginning of the sixteenth century; innumerable expeditions have taken place to search the wealth of the lost civilizations in the remotest of the interiors. However, all such expeditions have invariably ended without any success. This is quite a testimony to the power of well continued fables of lost cities and lost treasures. It was in 1871 that Carl Mauch, a spirited, energetic and successful explorer found the Great Zimbabwean ruins for the first time. The theory he proposed became the anthem of the many explorers exploring the ruins of Rhodesian Zimbabwe. Mauch, through various compelx calculations and an imaginative mind noted that the splinters of wood from the forests were very similar to the wood in his pencil both being cedar, thereby indicating only one possibility that this massive stone building was built by none other than the great Queen of Sheba. It was for Mauch only that the vague ideas of a mysterious lost city could be drawn on a map for the very first time. In 1890, the British South Africa Company was captured by Mashonaland and Great Zimbabwe became a victimized possession of British Imperialism. The prime force behind the British colonialism in south-Africa during that period was Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes became obsessed with the “legend” regarding Great Zimbabwe after reading Mauch’s findings. In 1891, he became the main sponsor of the first excavation under the leadership of Theodore Bent. Bent however had dismissed the possibility of the ruins being a result of Queen Sheba’s vandalisms but maintained the possibility that this was the work of North African Arabs of Phoenician origin. He finally arrived at the conclusion that destruction of the stone palace was the work of black Africans, who he termed as a ‘tribe of baboons’ (Ucko, 1995, pp.29-35).However, Bent, most of the times was interested in finding ‘special’ things and was considered lunatic due to his approach of collecting and curating almost all types of potsherds. R.N. Hall considered Bent’s methods to be extreme and discarded most of his findings and theories regarding the presence of Phoenicians during the time of destruction of Greater Zimbabwe. Hall therefore got an opportunity to present himself as an academic and a scholar. He published The Ancient Ruins of Rhodesia in 1902 with W.G. Neal that provided insights in archeological periodization. It had ‘Sabaean Period (2000-1100 B.C), ‘Phoenician Period’ (since the inception of Christian era), a transitory period and a ‘decadent period’. In 1902, Hall was made the curator of the area of Great Zimbabwe; he made close excavations in the site area and published the obtained results in a second book. He closely observed the methods of phallic worship, worship of sun and the moon and the demolishing forces of the ‘Kaffirs’ (Hall, 1995, pp. 179-199). But his enthusiasm was the sole reason of his downfall. He never showed respect to Bent’s methods and carried on digging trenches in a casual way. This approach came as a backlash from the British Association for the Advancement of Science as they decided to spend a second voyage to Great Zimbabwe. This time, the leader appointed was David Randall-MacIver who was a colleague as well as a pupil of Flinders Petrie. Randall MacIver performed his expedition at Great Zimbabwe in 1905 and in the following year he published his results. According to Peter Garlake, the approach of Randall MacIver was almost faultless, with carefully conducted excavations and undeniable appraisal of the basic background of the occupants of Great Zimbabwe. MacIver was considered the father figure of modern fieldwork at the excavation sites. In spite of this, although Randall-MacIver rejected older and amateurish interpretations of the excavation site, and preached that Great Zimbabwe was indeed a part of the ethnographic records of South Rhodesia, he based his writings on those particular racial assumptions on which his predecessors had worked (Randall-MacIver, 1906, pp. 325-336; Garlake, 2002, pp. 23-24). This in turn proved advantageous to him since he did not make an effort to elevate the ‘Makalanga’ to an esteemed cultural status, but he degraded the craftsmanship of the Great Zimbabwe to the native unpolished level. He wrote, “The building, fine as it is has been executed in exactly the same spirit as all other ’ancient monuments’ in Rhodesia. Laborious care has been expended on the most conspicuous and effective parts, but elsewhere the workmanship is slipshod. Probably several gangs were engaged on different parts of the wall at the same time, and, like clumsy engineers boring a tunnel from different ends, they failed to meet the agreed point of junction.” Randall- (MacIver 1906, pp.68) Randall-MacIver’s field research fuelled the controversy set up by Hall. The small, chirpy settler community of Rhodesia could not really accept that an outside ‘expert’ could come and sweep away one of the very important facets of their new history. In such circumstances, the British Association for the Advancement of Science decided to send a third archeological troop to carry on further investigations in Great Zimbabwe under the leadership of Gertude Caton- Thompson. Caton-Thompson was experience in excavation at Egypt before, similar to Randall-MacIver and was credited with substantial success in modern archeological works in south-Africa. Caton-Thomas was very professional and had systematic approaches towards her work. She managed to ignore the temptation of surveying the historically rich areas of Zimbabwe and concentrated whole heartedly on the Great Zimbabwe itself and its neighboring site areas. By carefully excavating, Caton-Thompson could classify pottery from its color, touch and finish, - a common archeological procedure till date. Caton-Thompson herself would be affirmative to this assessment and in her writing she asked people to be free of all the fancy beliefs regarding the origin of the Great Zimbabwe and the culture of the makers so as to be careful in need to avoid the confusion of errors in deductions. She also stressed on the usefulness of systematic empiricism dependant on the formulation of stratigraphy and authentic chronological evidence. Caton-Thompson’s arguments still remain a clear manifesto for history related to Africa after almost half a century. While reporting to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Johannesburg in 1929, she was of the view that unsuspecting people of a native culture were living there instead of the highly esteemed Oriental civilization, and these people had tremendous national organization and integrity among themselves. This was an example to the entire south-Africa and students should be encouraged to follow this behavior. However, there is still an underside of Caton-Thompson’s deeds which does not really fit her enlightened image. She always had a belief that Africa could not be a civilized continent. The racial assumptions that she used to make came by her way in reading the most essential of the empirical evidences, the archeological part. While discussing the stratigraphical findings of her research, she has interpreted colour and texture variations of the African soil as the mark of two different periods, thus reflecting distinction between two people or two cultures. After Caton- Thompson’s excavation in 1929, only a few other excavations have followed, most notably by Roger Summers and Keith Robinson in 1958. A large part of this excavation was not about the hunt of treasure, but for research required for verifying stratigraphic sequential lineage and establishment of radiocarbon chronology. The main motive behind this research was to test and prove the empirical foundation upon which the modern day interpretations are based. Talking about some more recent developments in the field of archeological research in Greater Zimbabwe, architectural studies done by Summers and Whitty in 1961 has referred to the presence of a relative sequence in which the Great Zimbabwe walls have been constructed. Some other expeditions like that of Sinclair in 1987 and Pwiti in 1996 have emphasized the economic relevance of certain states based at Great Zimbabwe and other larger landscapes around the hierarch of stone monuments in Great Zimbabwe region. The more current studies involve past politics around Great Zimbabwe as well as maintenance and management of the place like those of Ndoro in 2001, Fontain in 2006; Chirikure and Pwiti in 2008. Very recent works of Collet et al in 2001 and Chipunza in 1994 has echoed the conservation of the ancient stone walls and earthen sculptures with continued emphasis on overall development of architecture. However, post- 1980, research and excavations in this site has become increasingly difficult due to political interventions and settler mentality among the people. The fundamental white Rhodesian Front has prevented archeologists to site this area and has called upon non- archeologists to alter the antiquarian versions of the Great Zimbabwe origins. (Chirikure, Pikirayi ,2008, pp.976-993; Pikirayi,1999, pp. 135-144). Colonial ideology of South Africa The countries of Southern Africa had been experiencing foreign invasion from the colonial period since the period of the settlement of European colonies from the beginning of the 16th century. The search for the interior wealth of the country especially in Zimbabwe was the main reasons that backed the foreign invasions in the country. The colonial period of the countries of Southern Africa started with the invasion of the Dutch under the leadership of Jan van Riebeeck in the year 1652 at the port of Table Bay. The settlement made by the Dutch marked the political and the constitutional origin of the modern countries of the present world. The initial establishment of the Dutch people was a simple trade post in the country in order to facilitate easy trading through the country. They had the requirement of the staple food for the sailormen of the ship in order to fulfill the demand of the minimum necessities of them for the remaining days of their journey to their homeland. However when the native country men denied to fulfill the demand for the products made by the sailors they decided to ultimately settle down in the country through a genuine colony. This gave rise to colonialism in the country. The ideology of the colonialist was that they completely deny the humanity of the natives of the country along with the validity of the country’s history. The colonialist thought prevailed that the natives of the country were ultimately the people of no history. (Keegan, 1996, p 15) The ideologies of colonialism thought of the ruling side as being the natural masters of the native men of the country and the feeling of superiority was undisputed. (Grinker Lubkemann & Steiner, 2010, p. 451) The Cape of Table bay and that of the Cape of Good Hope was taken over by the British from the Dutch in the year 1795. (Simmonds 1845, p.172) The colonial period of the countries marked the beginning of racism with the name given to the natives of the country as the people of color or the colored people so as to make their difference with the white colonial rulers more prominent. The main reason that had been identified by the historians as the reason behind the tremendous rate of expansion of colonialism in the country was the thought of the existence of a huge amount of valuable resources and treasures in the countries of Southern Africa especially Zimbabwe. The other reason that backed the colonial expansion in the country was the trade and the availability of cheap labor. The main economic reason that dominates the ideology of colonialism in the country is the demand of raw materials in the ruling countries for the production of the finished products in their own homeland. Other than this the market of the colonial countries acted as a good place for the selling of the finished products of the dominating countries because of the large demand of the domestic market of the country owing to the country’s huge population. Moreover gaining a political control over the colonial country increases the chances of exploiting the natural resources of the country and meeting up the cost of the exploitation from the native people in the forms of taxes was an added advantage for the colonial rulers. This colonialism had been identified by scholars as the main reason behind the underdevelopment of the countries of the southern region of the continent of Africa. According to them the principle cause of the country to lag behind in the path of development was the many years of being dominated by different colonial powers and hence loosing the self identity of the country. Moreover racism in these countries which had its roots in the period of colonialism had not permitted them to grow united. The countries had emerged as a single state within themselves but with different groups of people with different mentality and culture. (Taiwo, 2010, p 21; African Economies, n.d) Thus to conclude, it can be said that the countries of Southern Africa had experienced attacks from foreign powers from the beginning of 16th century. The colonial rulers had in mind the exploitation of the economy of the country so as to favor the economy of the home country in terms of increased trade as well as supply of cheap labor from the country. The other reason that dominated the colonial policies was the exploitation of the valuable natural resources of the country. With the changing time the ideology of colonialism changed and the excavation of the country, and more in Zimbabwe that was thought of as the ‘King Solomon’s Mine’ by the invaders, in search of the valuable remaining treasures of the ruined civilization of the country dominated it. Thus the present state of the countries still defined as underdeveloped had been mainly due to the colonial rule and the economic exploitation that the country experienced for all these years. Bibliography 1. Phillipson, D.W. (2005), African Archeology , New York: Cambridge University Press 2. Huffman, T.N & J.C.Vogel (1991), The Chronology of Great Zimbabwe. 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