Early Gold Mining on the Zimbabwean Plateau PDF Download

Author: Lorraine Swan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Excavations (Archaeology)
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Author: Graham Connah
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521596909
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
This edition of African Civilizations, first published in 2001, re-examines the physical evidence for developing social complexity in tropical Africa.

Author: Brian Raftopoulos
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 1779221215
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Becoming Zimbabwe is the first comprehensive history of Zimbabwe, spanning the years from 850 to 2008. In 1997, the then Secretary General of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, Morgan Tsvangirai, expressed the need for a 'more open and critical process of writing history in Zimbabwe. ...The history of a nation-in-the-making should not be reduced to a selective heroic tradition, but should be a tolerant and continuing process of questioning and re-examination.' Becoming Zimbabwe tracks the idea of national belonging and citizenship and explores the nature of state rule, the changing contours of the political economy, and the regional and international dimensions of the country's history. In their Introduction, Brian Raftopoulos and Alois Mlambo enlarge on these themes, and Gerald Mazarire's opening chapter sets the pre-colonial background. Sabelo Ndlovu tracks the history up to WW11, and Alois Mlambo reviews developments in the settler economy and the emergence of nationalism leading to UDI in 1965. The politics and economics of the UDI period, and the subsequent war of liberation, are covered by Joesph Mtisi, Munyaradzi Nyakudya and Teresa Barnes. After independence in 1980, Zimbabwe enjoyed a period of buoyancy and hope. James Muzondidya's chapter details the transition 'from buoyancy to crisis', and Brian Raftopoulos concludes the book with an analysis of the decade-long crisis and the global political agreement which followed.

Author: Michael S. Bisson
Publisher: AltaMira Press
ISBN: 1461705924
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Gold. Copper. Iron. Metal working in Africa has been the subject of both public lore and extensive archaeological investigation. Here, four of the leading contemporary researchers on this topic attempt to provide a complete synthesis of current debates and understandings: Where, how, and when was metal first introduced to the continent? How were iron and copper tools, implements, and objects used in everyday life, in trade, in political and cultural contexts? What role did metal objects play in the ideological systems of precolonial African peoples? Substantive chapters address the origins of metal working and the technology and the various uses and meanings of copper and iron. An ethnoarchaeological account in the words of a contemporary iron worker enriches the archaeological explanations. This book provides a comprehensive, timely summary of our current knowledge.

Author: K. Anne Pyburn
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415260589
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Nine papers examines a specific body of archaeological data - from societies including Minoan Crete, ancient Zimbabwe and the Maya - in order to discuss the role of women in the evolution of states.

Author: Artwell Nhemachena
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 9956764566
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
This book is a pacesetter in matters of mining and the environment in Africa from multidisciplinary and spatio-temporal perspectives. The book approaches mining from the perspectives of law, politics, archaeology, anthropology, African studies, geography, human ecology, sociology, history, economics and development. It interrogates mining and environment from the perspectives of customary law as well as from the perspectives of Euro-modern laws. In this sense, the book straddles precolonial, colonial and postcolonial mining and environmental perspectives. In all this, it maintains a Pan-Africanist perspective that also speaks to contemporary debates on African Renaissance and to the unity of Africa. From scrutinising the lived realities of African miners who are often insensitively and unjustly addressed as illegal miners, the book also interrogates transnational mining corporations; matters of corporate social responsibility as well as matters of tax evasions by transnational corporations whose commitment to accountability to African governments is questioned. With both theoretical chapters and chapter based on empirical studies on mining and the environment across the African continent, the book provides a much needed holistic, one stop shop for scholars, activists, researchers and policy makers who need a comprehensive treatise on African mining and the environment. The book comes at the right time when matters of African mining and environment are increasingly coming to the fore in the light of discourses about the new 21st century scramble for African resources, in which big transnational corporations and nations are jostling to suck Africa dry in their race to control planetary resources. It is a book that speaks to contemporary broader issues of (de-)coloniality and transformation of African minds and African environmental resources.

Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004547339
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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This book seeks to explore how the Zimbabwean society and its institutions have survived if not succumbed to continuous economic crises in the country. From the 1990s Zimbabwe experienced a sustained economic decline challenged by both internal and external strains. Coupled with internal mis-governance and corruption, the nation plunged into a political and economic crisis which culminated in the second highest world inflation rate for an economy that is not at war. In the face of the harsh and continuously deteriorating economic environments, Zimbabweans as individuals as well as part of institutions adopted various strategies to negotiate and survive the economic scourge. Contributors include Wellington Bamu, Nathaniel Chimhete, Anusa Daimon, Innocent Dande, Sylvester Dombo, Tinotenda Dube, Rudo Gaidzanwa, Tafara Evelyn Kombora, Ushehwedu Kufakurinani, Bernard Kusena, Eric Kushinga Makombe, Albert Makochekanwa, Blessed Masawi, Ivo Mhike, Joseph P. Mtisi, Joseph Mujere, Wesley Mwatwara, Pius S. Nyambara, Tinashe Nyamunda, Mark Nyandoro, Takesure Taringana and Nicola Yon (Mutimurefu).

Author: Shadreck Chirikure
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331911641X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
This book seeks to communicate to both a global and local audience, the key attributes of pre-industrial African metallurgy such as technological variation across space and time, methods of mining and extractive metallurgy and the fabrication of metal objects. These processes were transformative in a physical and metaphoric sense, which made them total social facts. Because the production and use of metals was an accretion of various categories of practice, a chaine operatoire conceptual and theoretical framework that simultaneously considers the embedded technological and anthropological factors was used. The book focuses on Africa’s different regions as roughly defined by cultural geography. On the one hand there is North Africa, Egypt, the Egyptian Sudan, and the Horn of Africa which share cultural inheritances with the Middle East and on the other is Africa south of the Sahara and the Sudan which despite interacting with the former is remarkably different in terms of technological practice. For example, not only is the timing of metallurgy different but so is the infrastructure for working metals and the associated symbolic and sociological factors. The cultural valuation of metals and the social positions of metal workers were different too although there is evidence of some values transfer and multi-directional technological cross borrowing. The multitude of permutations associated with metals production and use amply demonstrates that metals participated in the production and reproduction of society. Despite huge temporal and spatial differences there are so many common factors between African metallurgy and that of other regions of the world. For example, the role of magic and ritual in metal working is almost universal be it in Bolivia, Nepal, Malawi, Timna, Togo or Zimbabwe. Similarly, techniques of mining were constrained by the underlying geology but this should not in any way suggest that Africa’s metallurgy was derivative or that the continent had no initiative. Rather it demonstrates that when confronted with similar challenges, humanity in different regions of the world responded to identical challenges in predictable ways mediated as mediated by the prevailing cultural context. The success of the use of historical and ethnographic data in understanding variation and improvisation in African metallurgical practices flags the potential utility of these sources in Asia, Latin America and Europe. Some nuance is however needed because it is simply naïve to assume that everything depicted in the history or ethnography has a parallel in the past and vice versa. Rather, the confluence of archaeology, history and ethnography becomes a pedestal for dialogue between different sources, subjects and ideas that is important for broadening our knowledge of global categories of metallurgical practice.

Author: Joanne M.A. Murphy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000172732
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Rituals, Collapse, and Radical Transformation in Archaic States explores the role of ritual in a variety of archaic states and generates discussion on how the decline in a state’s ability to continue in its current form affected the practices of ritual and how ritual as a culture-forming dynamic affected decline, collapse, and regeneration of the state. Chapters examine ritual in collapsing and regenerating archaic states from diverse locations, time periods, and societies including Crete, Mycenean and Byzantine Greece, Mesopotamia, India, Africa, Mexico, and Peru. Underscoring similarities in a variety of archaic states in the role of ritual during periods of threat, collapse, and transformation, the volume shows how ritual can be used as a stabilizing or divisive force or a connecting medium between the present to the past in an empowering way. It also highlights the diversity of ritual roles and location in similar situations and illustrates how states in close proximity and sharing many cultural similarities can respond differently through ritual to stress and contrast the different response in rural and urban settings. Through detailed, cultural specific studies, the book provides a nuanced understanding of the diverse roles of ritual in the decline, collapse, and regeneration of societies and will be important for all archaeologists involved in the important notions of state "collapse" and "regeneration".

Author: Innocent Pikirayi
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 0585386498
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Offering a unique and original perspective on the rise and fall of indigenous states of southern Zambezia, The Zimbabwe Culture analyzes the long contentious history of the remains of the remarkable cyclopean masonry, ranging from mighty capitals of traditional kings to humble farmsteads. Forming a cornerstone of the geographical lore of Africa in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, debate on the origins, development, and collapse of the Zimbabwe culture has never ceased, and with increasing archaeological research over the twentieth century, has become more complex. Thoroughly examining the growth and decline of pre-colonial states on the entire Zimbabwean Plateau and southern Zambezia, Dr. Pikirayi has contributed tremendously towards the archaeological understanding of this extraordinary culture. The Zimbabwe Culture is essential reading for all students and avocationalists of African archaeology, history, and culture.