Continuity and Change : An Archaeological Study of Farming Communities in Northern Zimbabwe, AD 500-1700

This thesis addresses two main questions about the iron-using farming communities in northern Zimbabwe: when did they become established and how dd they .develop in space and time? New data is provided showing that fanning was practised in northern Zimbabwe by the 5th century AD, earlier than previously thought. During the first millennium AD, non-stratified farming communities cultivated crops, reared livestock and hunted and gathered. Small stock and cattle were few in number and hunting was import.ant for subsistence.

Early in the 2nd millennium AD complex forms of socio-cultural organisation developed innorthern Zimbabwe as in most of southern Africa. The changes in social and political organisation, are accompanied by changes in settlement and crafts eg ceramic style and greater participation in external long distance trade. Rather than migration or diffusion, the changes depended upon the relationship between economy and ideology and specifically a shift from an ideology which emphasised equality to one which encouraged accumulation of wealth. The development of chiefdoms is associated with populations of the Musengezi Tradition who during the 14th century became subjects of the Mutapa state. This was a secondary state, resulting from the northwards expansion of the Great Zimbabwe Tradition.

The relationship between landscape and culture specifically between archaeological sites, soils and vegetation is examined through field survey, Site Territorial Analysis (ST A) and GeographicaI Information Systems (GIS). Using archaeofaunas and other data, it is argued that climatic and environmental change in the research area from the period under investigation to the present was localised and minimal and it is therefore legitimate to infer the spatial behaviour of the prehistoric populations using observations of the current landscape.