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Great Zimbabwe is a city in the south-eastern hills of Zimbabwe near Lake Mutirikwi and the town of Masvingo. It is thought to have been the capital of a great kingdom about which little is known, during the country's Late Iron Age. Construction on the city began in the 9th century and continued until it was abandoned in the 15th century. The edifices are believed to have been erected by the ancestral Shona. The stone city spans an area of 7.22 square kilometres and could have housed up to 18,000 people at its peak, giving it a population density of approximately 2,500 per square kilometre. It is recognised as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
The Council for British Archaeology (CBA) is an educational charity established in 1944 in the UK. It works to involve people in archaeology and to promote the appreciation and care of the historic environment for the benefit of present and future generations. It achieves this by promoting research, conservation and education, and by widening access to archaeology through effective communication and participation.
Kathu is a town in South Africa, and the iron ore capital of the Northern Cape province. Its name means "town under the trees", after the Camel Thorn forest it is situated in. The phrase "the town under the trees" was coined by an engineer working in the town in the early-1990s as part of a tourist marketing drive, together with the accompanying graphic. It was intended to be a marketing slogan. The meaning of the word "Kathu" has anecdotically been attributed to a porridge brewed by the local population from the powder found in the pods of the Camel Thorn trees.
The Astronomical Society of Southern Africa (ASSA), formed in 1922, is a widespread body consisting of both amateur and professional astronomers. There are eight autonomous centres throughout Southern Africa.
The Kingdom of Mapungubwe was a medieval state in South Africa located at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers, south of Great Zimbabwe. The name is derived from either TjiKalanga and Tshivenda. The name might mean "Hill of Jackals" or "stone monuments". The kingdom was the first stage in a development that would culminate in the creation of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe in the 13th century, and with gold trading links to Rhapta and Kilwa Kisiwani on the African east coast. The Kingdom of Mapungubwe lasted about 80 years, and at its height the capital's population was about 5000 people.
The Mapungubwe Collection curated by at the University of Pretoria Museums comprises archaeological material excavated by the University of Pretoria at the Mapungubwe archaeological site since its discovery in 1933. The archaeological collection comprises ceramics, metals, trade glass beads, indigenous beads, clay figurines, and bone and ivory artefacts as well as an extensive research collection of potsherds, faunal remains and other fragmentary material. The University of Pretoria established a permanent museum in June 2000, thereby making the archaeological collection more widely available for public access and interest beyond the confines of academia.
The Cango Caves are located in Precambrian limestones at the foothills of the Swartberg range near the town of Oudtshoorn, in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. The principal cave is one of the country's finest, best known, and most popular tourist caves and attracts many visitors from overseas. Although the extensive system of tunnels and chambers go on for over 4 km, only about a quarter of this is open to visitors, who may proceed into the cave only in groups supervised by a guide.
Hilary John Deacon was a South African archaeologist and academic. He was professor of archaeology at the University of Stellenbosch in Stellenbosch, South Africa. His research focused on the emergence of modern humans and African archaeology. He was principal researcher at the Klasies River Caves, one of the oldest known sites of anatomically modern humans, who lived there circa 125,000 years ago.
Prior to the arrival of Europeans settlers in the 14th century the economy of what was to become South Africa was dominated by subsistence agriculture and hunting.
Mapungubwe National Park is a national park in Limpopo Province, South Africa. It is located by the Kolope River, south of the confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe rivers and about 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) to the NE of the Venetia Diamond Mine. The National Park borders Mapesu Private Game Reserve to the south. It abuts on the border with Botswana and Zimbabwe, and forms part of the Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area. It was established in 1995 and covers an area of over 28,000 hectares. The park protects the historical site of Mapungubwe Hill, which was the capital of the Kingdom of Mapungubwe, as well as the wildlife and riverine forests along the Limpopo River. The Mapungubwe Hill was the site of a community dating back to the Iron Age. Evidences have shown that it was a prosperous community. Archaeologists also uncovered the famous golden rhino figurine from the site. It is one of the few places in Africa that has both meerkats and Nile crocodiles.
Thomas N. Huffman was Professor Emeritus of archaeology in association with the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He specialised in pre-colonial farming societies in southern Africa. Huffman is most well known for his identification of the Central Cattle Pattern at Mapungubwe, a pre-colonial state in southern Africa. This, in turn he argued as the main influence in the formation of the Zimbabwe Pattern at Great Zimbabwe. Arguably his seminal contribution to the field was A Handbook to the Iron Age: The Archaeology of Pre-Colonial Farming Societies in Southern Africa (2007), which has contributed to the understanding of ceramic style analysis and culture history focusing on these groups.
Janette Deacon is a South African archaeologist specialising in heritage management and rock art conservation. She has studied the changes in stone tools from sites in the southern Cape in relation to climate change over the past 20,000 years. From 1985, she located rock engravings at places where the /Xam informants of Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd lived in the nineteenth century. She served as a member of the SAHRA Council and was first chairperson of Heritage Western Cape.
Wonderwerk Cave is an archaeological site, formed originally as an ancient solution cavity in dolomite rocks of the Kuruman Hills, situated between Danielskuil and Kuruman in the Northern Cape Province, South Africa. It is a National Heritage Site, managed as a satellite of the McGregor Museum in Kimberley. Geologically, hillside erosion exposed the northern end of the cavity, which extends horizontally for about 140 m (460 ft) into the base of a hill. Accumulated deposits inside the cave, up to 7 m (23 ft) in-depth, reflect natural sedimentation processes such as water and wind deposition as well as the activities of animals, birds, and human ancestors over some 2 million years. The site has been studied and excavated by archaeologists since the 1940s and research here generates important insights into human history in the subcontinent of Southern Africa. Evidence within Wonderwerk cave has been called the oldest controlled fire. Wonderwerk means "miracle" in the Afrikaans language.
Elizabeth Anne Voigt was director of the McGregor Museum in Kimberley, South Africa, and, as an archaeozoologist, served a term as president of the South African Archaeological Society. In retirement, Voigt was appointed a research associate of the McGregor Museum. She was born in Cape Town on 26 April 1944 and died on 7 April 2010 in Kimberley.
The Kathu Archaeological Complex is a cluster of significant archaeological, principally Stone Age, exposures situated in and near Kathu, a mining town in the Northern Cape Province, South Africa. The sites include a suite of sinkhole exposures, the Kathu Pan sites, north west of the town, the immensely rich spread of artefacts at what is referred to as Kathu Townlands on the eastern side of Kathu, and surface and subsurface horizons including handaxes on farms further eastward. These are subject to on-going archaeological research.
Clarence van Riet Lowe was a South African civil engineer and archaeologist. He was appointed by Jan Smuts as the first director of the Bureau of Archaeology and was among the first group to investigate the archaeological site of Mapungubwe.
Valerie Mizrahi is a South African molecular biologist.
Daniel Rossouw Kannemeyer was a South African medical practitioner, naturalist, archaeologist and palaeontologist, the son of Daniel Gerhardus Kannemeyer and Johanna Susanna Rossouw He is best remembered for his contributions to palaeontology and archaeology although his collections of zoological specimens are greatly valued by the museums which acquired them.
Peter Bernhard Beaumont was a South African archaeologist noted for his excavation and finds at Wonderwerk Cave, Kathu, Canteen Kopje and Border Cave, all in South Africa. His work led to the conviction that, rather than trailing Europe and Asia, Southern Africa's Stone Age technology and culture had set the pace.
Shadreck Chirikure is a Professor at the University of Cape Town, and holds a British Academy Global Professorship within the School of Archaeology at Oxford. He is a leading archaeologist, studying pyrotechnology and southern Africa.
References
- ↑ "The South African Archaeological Society - Lectures - Outings - Excursions - Professional Journal - Amateur Magazine". archaeologysa.co.za.
- ↑ "About Us". archaeologysa.co.za.
- ↑ "Mining in the Mapungubwe Area to go ahead". archaeologysa.co.za.
- ↑ The Association of Southern African Professional Archaeologists (ASAPA) was founded as the Southern African Association of Archaeologists (SA3) by Ray Inskeep in 1971 to provide a platform for archaeologists to establish their professional identity.
- ↑ "ASAPA – Home". asapa.org.za.
- ↑ "Home Page". archaeology.org.za.
