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Mapungubwe. I. The Excavations and Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

G. Caton-Thompson
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Extract

The story of the discovery of Mapungubwe, which led to its systematic excavation, makes reading as vivid and exciting as any adventure-fiction of our youth.

The site is one of many precipitous sandstone kopjes which rear their almost perpendicular sides some 200 ft. above a valley-floor tributary to the Limpopo, which lies only a mile distant, at the point where the Shashi river, flowing from Rhodesia, joins forces with it. Messina—archaeologically famous for its pre-European copper mines—lies about 50 miles west, and it overlooks the meeting point of Transvaal, Bechuanaland and Southern Rhodesian territory. Fortunately for science, British administration being parsimonious in these matters, the hill lay within the Transvaal border.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 13 , Issue 51 , September 1939 , pp. 324 - 341
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1939

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References

1 MAPUNGUBWE: ANCIENT BANTU CIVILISATION ON THE LIMPOPO. Reports on Excavations from February 1933 to June 1935 Edited by Léo Fouché Cambridge University Press,1937. pp.13,Google Scholar 178, and 45 plates, with maps and diagrams, £2 10s od.

2 The reviewer classes ‘mysteries’ along with gold, as a pest in archaeology. The Zimbabwe ‘mystery’ was dispersed some years after its gold (i.e. in 1905). Neither may be said to have existed since.

3 The figure rumoured was a large one (£12,000). Certainly nothing comparable has before been done on this scale to safeguard archaeological field-work.

4 That the material was occupational is stated by Mr Schofield in a paper dated 1938. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, xxvi, part iv.

5 Bantu Studies,December 1937. ‘Beads of the Water’ by van Riet Lowe, C. CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 For instance Schofield, J.F. ‘Salisbury Commonage Sites’ S. African Journ. Sci, vol.29, 1932 Google Scholar ‘Pottery from the Salisbury District’ Trans. R. Soc. of S. Africa, vol.26, part iv,1938.Google ScholarAlso from well-stratified deposits at Gokomere

7 It lay in situ beneath the foundations of the Conical Tower; in the Acropolis midden on bedrock, 24 ft. below the surface; and in rare scraps (five only) below the cement floors of the Maund ruins (all at Zimbabwe) but was plentiful above them.

8 For instance Zimbabwe Culture, 1931, p.25: Google ScholarPubMed‘The vertical distribution is interesting: in the Maund it is almost entirely confined to the sub-pavement stratum. Out of 651 sherds … only 4 came above the cement floor’.

9 Dr Morant’s review appended has not been seen by me; nor my contribution by him. Professor Dart himself has always hotly maintained his belief in the non-negro origin and very ancient date of the Rhodesian ruins.

10 Zimbabwe Culture p. 8. Is it not possible that unsuspected Bush features lurk in the physical make-up of certain ' Bantu ' tribes ? Dr Galloway finds, as we all do, what he is on the look-out for, and has reported ' Bush-Boskopoids ' from ancient pit-circles at Penhalonga, Southern Rhodesia (S. African Journ. Sci. xxxm, March 1937). Now Dr Wells, from the same School of Anatomy at Johannesburg, reports them in the Mumbwa cave, Northern Rhodesia, in association with pottery, iron and late stone age implements. (Man, May 1939).

* See footnote, p. 324.