Dry-stone architecture and gold trade of Great Zimbabwe
Arquitectura de piedra seca y comercio de oro de Gran Zimbabue
- Date
- c. 1250 · confidence medium
- Place
- Great Zimbabwe, Masvingo, Zimbabwe
- Credited to
- Shona kingdom of Zimbabwe
- Field
- Tools
What it is
Walls of dressed granite laid without mortar, up to 11 m high (the Great Enclosure), in the capital of a kingdom that exported gold and ivory to Kilwa and the Indian Ocean. The largest architectural complex of precolonial sub-Saharan Africa.
Main occupation between c. 1100 and 1450; attribution to non-African peoples was a colonial falsification.
What it led to
- Swahili trade with Arabia, India and China (Ming porcelain found on site)
- the successor states of Mutapa and Torwa
- decolonial debates over African history
Built on
- Mapungubwe gold-foil workc. 1250
- Bantu iron metallurgy
- alluvial gold mining