Shadreck Chirikure
Biographic Data
| ID | 83382 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shadreck Chirikure |
| GIVEN NAMES | Shadreck |
| FAMILY NAME | Chirikure |
| SIGNATURE | CHIRIKURE S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cape Town |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2183-4253 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 102 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 687 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 100 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Early State Formation in Southern Africa
This review draws on the latest insights from archaeology, history, and scientific analyses of archaeological materials to offer a critical reappraisal of the state of the field in southern African early state formation. Combined insights from recent radiocarbon chronologies, ceramic typologies, settlement pattern data, and craft production remnants strongly signal the synchronous emergence of early states at several widely dispersed sites on the…
Ancient Civilizations
Ancient Civilizations: The Emergence of States and Empires offers a comprehensive and straightforward account of the world’s first civilizations and how they were discovered, drawing on many avenues of inquiry including archaeological excavations, surveys, laboratory work, highly specialized scientific investigations, and both historical and ethnohistorical records. This book covers the earliest civilizations in North Africa, Eurasia and the Amer…
Optical and Electron Microscopy in the Archaeology of Sub‐Saharan Africa
Optical and electron microscopy are relatively cheap and versatile techniques for investigating pyrotechnologies, and optical petrography is a proven technique for inferring the geological provenance of pottery. Both have been used for more than three decades in Southern Africa, but few archaeologists based in other parts of sub‐Saharan Africa have made much use of them. We briefly review what applications of these techniques have revealed about …
The Central Cemetery at Ingombe Ilede, Zambia
Ingombe Ilede is located just north of the Zambezi River, and has often been seen as a trading station connected to Central Africa, the Zimbabwe Plateau and the Indian Ocean. Discussion of the richly appointed burials in its Central Cemetery has been hindered by uncertainty over their ages. In this article, we report four new radiocarbon dates from Ingombe Ilede and six new dates from sites in northern Zimbabwe that are relevant to a wider unders…
Introduction
This introduction sets out the rationale for this collection of papers by exploring the question what and how does colonialism from within Africa look like, and can it be compared to other forms? It takes as its starting point the position that colonialism has been a principal component of global history, with material culture holding a grip on people and inducing them to desire and acquire new things and new lands and to seek to dominate others.…
(Post-)colonialism as ideology and power’s grip on material culture
Chris Gosden advanced the very influential idea that colonialism is the grip which material culture has on people. Using the case study of the Shangani Battle Memorial site, Zimbabwe, in this paper we flip this idea. We explore and demonstrate how colonial and post-colonial material culture used to memorialise battles was influenced by who had power and control over ideology in colonial and post-colonial times. In 1893, a battle was fought at Sha…
Colonialism from within versus colonialism from outside
As Bruce Trigger famously stated, a major goal of archaeology is to develop a comparative understanding of human behaviour across cultures and time periods. This paper leverages on this insight to compare the archaeology and materiality of Nguni settlement in southwestern Zimbabwe (1839–1890) and early British settler colonialism (1890–1980). We find major similarities and differences in colonial forms and outcomes. For example, Nguni settlement …
The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Archaeology
96 articles The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Archaeology brings together contributions from a global community of leading scholars to present a comprehensive overview of the current state of the field. The Encyclopedia covers the width of topics and leadings questions in the practice and study of archaeology across the continent, from the emergence of human ancestors and the earliest manifestation of human culture to the role of cultural herita…
Chumnungwa Glass Beads
Routledge Handbook of Critical African Heritage Studies
"This handbook is a foundational reference point for critical heritage research about Africa and its diaspora. Foregrounding the diversity of knowledge systems needed to examine heritage issues in such a diverse continent, the contributors to this volume: - argue for an understanding heritage that is at once both natural and cultural, tangible and intangible, political and dissonant, going beyond the physical and objective to include subjective n…
Decoloniality and critical African heritage studies
This paper explores the potential coloniality of Critical Heritage Studies (CHS) as it is experienced by some in African contexts. In response it calls for a decolonial turn that recognises a need for epistemological pluralism in this disciplinary area. The paper begins by distinguishing between decoloniality and decolonisation. It then summarises the colonial roots of heritage and their persistence in some African heritage thinking and practice …
The Global Dynamics of Inequality (Gini) project
The GINI project investigates the dynamics of inequality among populations over the long term by synthesising global archaeological housing data. This project brings archaeologists together from around the world to assess hypotheses concerning the causes and consequences of inequality that are of relevance to contemporary societies globally
The Conundrum of Great Zimbabwe
Great Zimbabwe (ad 1100-1700) was a substantial settlement comprising elite residences and non-elite housing, largely characterized by complexes of massive stone-walled structures. Its growth had an impact on energy resources within its immediate and broader environment, with water playing a key role in the development and persistence of the settlement. The settlement layout that extends beyond the monumental structures comprises water reservoirs…
Hunting and the Social Lives of Southern Africa’s First Farmers
Perspectives on human–animal relationships are changing in archaeology and related disciplines. Analytical models that distinguish foraging from food production remain popular, but scholars are beginning to recognize greater variability in the ways people understood and engaged with animals in the past. In southern Africa, researchers have observed that wild animals were economically and socially important to recent agropastoral societies. Howeve…
Material Science and the Present and Future of African Archaeology
Constellations of practice in copper ingots from Zambia and northern Zimbabwe, cal. AD 500–1700
Rectangular, fishtail and croisette copper ingots have been found in many locations in Central and southern Africa where excavated samples date to between the fifth and eighteenth centuries cal. AD. For more than fifty years, scholars have debated whether these ingots were all made in the Central African Copperbelt, where there are many finds of matching moulds, or if moulds found in Zimbabwe show that copies were produced locally. Lead isotopic …
Archaeological science, globalisation, and local agency
Great Zimbabwe (CE1000-1600) is world famous for outstanding cultural innovations and localised and globalised entanglement with trans-Africa and trans-Indian Ocean exchange. New excavations yielded fragments of over a hundred gold processing vessels comprising reused pottery and purpose-made crucibles from stratified contexts in the Eastern Ridge Ruins and adjacent areas. Selected samples were studied using archaeological, microscopic, and compo…
Global commodities
From money to commodity
Archaeological studies of money typically focus on its initial emergence and mature development. This study examines the denouement of a commodity money and the economic, social, and political implications of the transition from a money to a commodity role. Previous studies of money emphasize that it is socially constructed, shapes markets, and is historically contingent. Geographic and chronological variability of money systems is well supported…
Global commodities in precolonial Southern Africa
Colonial Statues in Post-Colonial Africa
The establishment of African colonies by European countries was not a benevolent exercise; neither was it a benign act. Colonies were established through violence, often resulting in the massacre of those that resisted. This was followed by a Europeanisation of African landscapes. New trees were imported from Europe while European names were imprinted onto African mountains, rivers and towns among others for example the Victoria Falls, Lake Victo…
Recycling and the material science tetrahedron
This paper applies the Material Science Tetrahedron concept to explore practices of pottery recycling in selected craft activities performed in first and second millennium CE southern Africa. It combines analyses of pottery decorative style on vessels and their fragments used for metal processing with fabric inclusion mineralogy and chemical composition to show that recycling was a sociotechnical endeavour integral to making and remaking everyday…
Mtanye revisited
In southern Zambezia, the early second millennium AD witnessed socio-political transformations within local agropastoralist societies. Research continues to unearth evidence of multiple places that likely functioned as the centres of state-based polities. This paper reports on surveys and excavations undertaken at Mtanye, located about 50 km east of Gwanda in southwestern Zimbabwe and approximately 90 km north of the Shashi-Limpopo Confluence Are…
Climate-smart harvesting and storing of water
Understanding past water management is crucial to address contemporary human-environmental challenges in \nsub-Saharan Africa, where urban growth is impacting upon water availability and supply. This study integrates \nsoil profiles, high-resolution topographic data, historical sources, and socioecological memory to reconstruct \nhow the ancient urban society at Great Zimbabwe negotiated water security. New evidence shows for the first \ntime tha…
Gathering and Hunting Farmers; Farming Gatherers and Hunters
The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Archaeology
96 articles The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Archaeology brings together contributions from a global community of leading scholars to present a comprehensive overview of the current state of the field. The Encyclopedia covers the width of topics and leadings questions in the practice and study of archaeology across the continent, from the emergence of human ancestors and the earliest manifestation of human culture to the role of cultural herita…
Community Involvement in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Management
Community archaeology has conferred an alternative dimension on conventional archaeology and heritage management, empowering previously powerless peoples, particularly the indigenous and local communities that have lost rights to their heritage through colonialism. So important has its impact been that there has been only limited reference in the literature to its problems. Examination of case studies from various parts of the world reveals that …
Unfulfilled promises? Heritage management and community participation at some of Africa's cultural heritage sites
The application of participatory management has had varied success in the field of heritage management depending on the context in which it has been applied, and the evidence from some heritage sites in sub‐Saharan Africa reveals mixed results; some far from satisfactory. Most of the goals – particularly those aimed at involving local communities in decision making in heritage resources – still remain unfulfilled and at best experimental. This co…
Exotica in Context
Metals in Past Societies
Inside and outside the dry stone walls
Any study of Great Zimbabwe has to rely a great deal on re-examining and re-assessing the work of early investigators, the men who removed all the most important finds from the ruins and stripped them of so much of their deposits' (Garlake 1973: 14). The authors have here done us a great service in reviewing the surviving archaeological evidence from this world famous site. They challenge the structuralist interpretation - in which different part…
Land and Sea Links
New Pathways of Sociopolitical Complexity in Southern Africa
Decisive Evidence for Multidirectional Evolution of Sociopolitical Complexity in Southern Africa
When ceramic sociology meets material science
When science alone is not enough
The southern African recent past is replete with examples of elite settlements, some of which were occupied sequentially, and by different rulers. Shona, Venda and Tswana traditions identify the many dry stone walled capitals with former kings who ruled during different reigns. This historical reality is often not factored when considering the issues of political centres and urbanism in the Iron Age. The resolution of radiocarbon dating produces …
The technology of tin smelting in the Rooiberg Valley, Limpopo Province, South Africa, ca. 1650–1850 CE
Debating Great Zimbabwe
Huffman has used historical data and evidence from other Zimbabwe settlements to critique Chirikure and Pikirayi (2008)'s interpretation of Great Zimbabwe. However, we argue that he has misunderstood Portuguese written accounts and that his treatment of the radiocarbon chronology is methodologically unsound. Moreover, use of other Zimbabwe settlements to interpret Great Zimbabwe has poor analytical weight on the site itself because it requires un…
The Production, Distribution and Consumption of Metals and Alloys at Great Zimbabwe
The legacy of vandalism and almost a century of continuous focus on drystone wall masonry is that little is known about metal craft production and consumption activities at Great Zimbabwe. Within these limitations, this paper attempts to explore the metallurgy of Great Zimbabwe, guided by the framework of archival, chronological and fieldwork‐ and laboratory‐based studies. The paper contends that residents of various components of Great Zimbabwe …
Ethno' plus 'archaeology
This paper is a commentary on the Debates in World Archaeology issue for December 2016
Metals in society
Indigenous iron working has received considerable attention from Africanist archaeologists but its contribution to the evolution of political process has never attracted serious interest in southern Africa. In this article, comparative historical and archaeological data presented suggest that specialist iron working was linked with the configuration and reconfiguration of political and economic systems. This is because iron was produced within a …
Stringing Together Cowrie Shells in the African Archaeological Record with Special Reference to Southern Africa
Archaeological explorations of the meaning of ‘trade objects’, such as glass beads and cowrie shells, remain hampered by theoretical and methodological limitations in both their analyses and interpretations. In this paper, we develop a methodology for critically engaging in multi-scalar questions of the circulation, exchange, and value of cowrie shells in African archaeological contexts. Species, size, dorsal modifications, and depositional conte…
Making archaeology relevant to global challenges
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No Big Brother Here
In southern Africa, there has been a long-standing but unsubstantiated assumption that the site of Khami evolved out of Great Zimbabwe's demise around ad 1450. The study of local ceramics from the two sites indicate that the respective ceramic traditions are clearly different across the entire sequence, pointing towards different cultural affiliations in their origins. Furthermore, there are tangible typological differences between and within the…
Elites and commoners at Great Zimbabwe
Archaeological indicators of inequality at major historic centres of power have long been poorly understood. This paper is the first to address the archaeology of class and inequality at Great Zimbabwe (AD 1000–1700) from an African-centred viewpoint. Data from new excavations, combined with insights from Shona philosophy, practice and ethnography, suggest that the categories of ‘elite’ and ‘commoner’ were situational and transient, and that they…
Eiland crucibles and the earliest relative dating for tin and bronze working in southern Africa
Iron smelting in pre-colonial Zimbabwe
Beyond Static Models
To what extent do we need structuralist cognitive settlement models such as the Central Cattle Pattern and the Zimbabwe Pattern for future research and understanding of Iron Age social life in southern Africa? How will alternative approaches enable us to progress beyond the present status of knowledge? While the three last decades of debate have underpinned key aspects of archaeological inquiry, notably questions of social change, gender dynamics…
A Bayesian chronology for Great Zimbabwe
Great Zimbabwe is one of the most iconic sites in southern Africa and indeed the world, but like so many famous monuments it has suffered from the attention of early excavators who have destroyed key categories of evidence. Chronology is crucial to understanding the development of the various elements of Great Zimbabwe and its relationship to other important regional centres such as Mapungubwe. A number of radiocarbon dates are available, however…
Usable Pasts Forum
Outstanding Universal Value and, consequently, are unique assets for humankind (Ndoro, 2015a). Nominated sites must, after deliberations and input from advisory bodies to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, meet at least one of the ten criteria (six cultural and four natural) consonant with cultural, historical, scientific, or other forms of significance
Ores, Furnaces, Slags, and Prehistoric Societies
Iron smelting in pre-colonial Zimbabwe
New Light on Njanja Iron Working
Victorian ideas on evolution had strong adherents amongst the European men and women who colonized Africa. Such individuals perceived themselves as superior and viewed African societies and cultures as primitive. Yet, some missionaries who encountered Njanja iron-workers in what is now Zimbabwe were astonished by the sophistication of their industry and even labelled it 'the Wolverhamptonof Mashonaland'. This is unexpected given the stereotypical…
Metals in society
Indigenous iron working has received considerable attention from Africanist archaeologists but its contribution to the evolution of political process has never attracted serious interest in southern Africa. In this article, comparative historical and archaeological data presented suggest that specialist iron working was linked with the configuration and reconfiguration of political and economic systems. This is because iron was produced within a …
Language and Archaeology in Southern Africa
Inside and outside the dry stone walls
Any study of Great Zimbabwe has to rely a great deal on re-examining and re-assessing the work of early investigators, the men who removed all the most important finds from the ruins and stripped them of so much of their deposits' (Garlake 1973: 14). The authors have here done us a great service in reviewing the surviving archaeological evidence from this world famous site. They challenge the structuralist interpretation - in which different part…
Community Involvement in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Management
Community archaeology has conferred an alternative dimension on conventional archaeology and heritage management, empowering previously powerless peoples, particularly the indigenous and local communities that have lost rights to their heritage through colonialism. So important has its impact been that there has been only limited reference in the literature to its problems. Examination of case studies from various parts of the world reveals that …
Beyond furnaces and slags
Combustion was pivotal in the heat-mediated process of indigenous metalworking in precolonial Africa. For such combustion to be initiated, a consistent supply of air was essential and because bellows generated the air that precipitated the chemical reactions integral to smelting and forging, they were thus critical apparatus in these pursuits. Surprisingly, bellows have failed to attract much academic research when compared to other components of…
Forum Respondents
On Evidence, Ideas and Fantasy
The technology of tin smelting in the Rooiberg Valley, Limpopo Province, South Africa, ca. 1650–1850 CE
Continuing Conversations at the Frontier
Researchers involved or interested in the 500 Year Initiative (FYI) gathered at the University of Cape Town in June 2008 to explore how different disciplines engaged in historical studies may better communicate and collaborate within and between each other. Appropriately titled ‘Continuing Conversations at the Frontier’, participants in this conference challenged themselves to cross the theoretical and methodological borders separating archaeolog…
Maritime Archaeology and Trans-Oceanic Trade
Unfulfilled promises? Heritage management and community participation at some of Africa's cultural heritage sites
The application of participatory management has had varied success in the field of heritage management depending on the context in which it has been applied, and the evidence from some heritage sites in sub‐Saharan Africa reveals mixed results; some far from satisfactory. Most of the goals – particularly those aimed at involving local communities in decision making in heritage resources – still remain unfulfilled and at best experimental. This co…
Evidence for indigenous strip-drawing in production of wire at Mapungubwe Hill (1220–1290 AD)
Debating Great Zimbabwe
Huffman has used historical data and evidence from other Zimbabwe settlements to critique Chirikure and Pikirayi (2008)'s interpretation of Great Zimbabwe. However, we argue that he has misunderstood Portuguese written accounts and that his treatment of the radiocarbon chronology is methodologically unsound. Moreover, use of other Zimbabwe settlements to interpret Great Zimbabwe has poor analytical weight on the site itself because it requires un…
Reverse Archaeology or Relevance Seeking Archaeology
When science alone is not enough
The southern African recent past is replete with examples of elite settlements, some of which were occupied sequentially, and by different rulers. Shona, Venda and Tswana traditions identify the many dry stone walled capitals with former kings who ruled during different reigns. This historical reality is often not factored when considering the issues of political centres and urbanism in the Iron Age. The resolution of radiocarbon dating produces …
Heritage conservation in Africa
Page 3 of 3 of the archaeology profession is weak and ethics and good conduct are only perfunctory. Governments and professional associations should enforce high standards of practice and work with other
Ores Sources, Smelters and Archaeometallurgy
The Southern Waterberg in Limpopo Province is archaeologically rich, especially when it comes to evidence of pre-colonial mining and metal working. Geologically, the area hosts important mineral resources such as copper, tin and iron which were smelted by agriculturalists in the precolonial period. In this region however, tin seems to be the major attraction given that Rooiberg is still the only source of cassiterite in southern Africa to have pr…
New Pathways of Sociopolitical Complexity in Southern Africa
A Bayesian chronology for Great Zimbabwe
Great Zimbabwe is one of the most iconic sites in southern Africa and indeed the world, but like so many famous monuments it has suffered from the attention of early excavators who have destroyed key categories of evidence. Chronology is crucial to understanding the development of the various elements of Great Zimbabwe and its relationship to other important regional centres such as Mapungubwe. A number of radiocarbon dates are available, however…
The Cambridge World Prehistory 3 Volume Set
The Cambridge World Prehistory provides a systematic and authoritative examination of the prehistory of every region around the world from the early days of human origins in Africa two million years ago to the beginnings of written history, which in some areas started only two centuries ago. Written by a team of leading international scholars, the volumes include both traditional topics and cutting-edge approaches, such as archaeolinguistics and …
Power Imbalance and Unequal Benefit at Unesco World Heritage Sites
Land and Sea Links
Archaeology (70 works) · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies (70 works) · History (63 works) · Geography (60 works) · Sociology (44 works) · History (37 works) · Political science (37 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (35 works) · Anthropology (24 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (23 works)