The Bambadyanalo 1030 - 1220AD
This is a Middle Iron Age settlement bridging the Early Iron Age and the Late Iron Age Cultures on the Zimbabwe plateau. The Iron Age settlement is site on the proximity of 1km west of Mapungubwe. Archaeological excavations concluded that the site thrived for more than 200 years. This was an early forming community with bias on cattle rearing. The central homestead area accommodated the central cattle pen and modern surrounding by smaller other homestead and cattle pens expensive of a sedentary farming and trading communities. Excavations of large quantities of pottery, glass beads and Chinese ceramics from the graves demonstrate that Bambadyanalo was a bustling and trading community.
The Bambadyanalo complex is home to excavated bones mainly of livestock, like cattle, and cereal crops like sorghum, millet, melons and gourds. They were a thriving agricultural society. From the grave excavations, archaeologists unearthed healthy bodies from a rich balanced diet on cereal supplemented by meat and other luxuries from their imports. Discovery of colourful decorated and lighter pottery attest to lucrative pottery industry. The backyard industries produced also large glass beads, body ornaments, wrist, ankle, neck and waist beads and laces, copper, iron, ivory and wooden human plus animal figurines. These rich excavations show a highly skilled level of specialisation. Thousands of people were employed in various fields. The skilled craftsmen generated wealth to stratify and segment the society. They mainly hunted for ivory and skins which they bartered with foreigners in their trade for mainly glass beads and cloth.
The Bambadyanalo settlement shows a hierarchical structure from the hilltops to the valley settlements. The settlement prospered economically to promote wealth based on authority of chiefs, who imposed their will on the entire populace. Even ornaments extracted from some secluded secure graves mainly hidden in caves exposed a grave catch of wealth. The rich cattle and trading tycoons were also buried wearing or wrapped in expensive Asians gowns, beads, bangles, gold and copper jewellery and other ornaments befitting of their high profile status. Some bodies were mummified and well set on expensive chairs. The homesteads of the wealthy cattle tycoons and traders were elaborate to show an aura of authority absent in all other graves, where the ordinary were buried naked. To note also is that religious panephenaria were discovered in homesteads and the graves. Expensive pottery and beads could be found on top of the grave or on a tree shading the grave. The rich, the famous and the politically strong class manipulated religion to hold on to power or pass power down the gutters of their families. The more wealth one generated the more power one assumed and the more obsessed one became of power and wealth and wealthier one also became. This was the true genesis of the creation of states and the aggressive policies adopted by the new crop of leaders. Subjects paid tribute for allegiance and other economic and political favours as the loyal other vassal chiefs were spoilt with foreign gifts and more land to distribute and use. Thus the leadership now controlled not only religion but also all productive forces and lines of credit. They controlled all land, hunting ground, mining and trade making them richer, stronger and brutally aggressive.
Iron Age Economies
The evolution and revolution of Iron Age economies was complex and fundamentally elaborate. The economies evolved to get better in every century from 10 000 BC to 19th Century AD. The phenomenal elaborate economy brought about elaborate permanent settlements with magnificent prestigious towns. Just like the Greek and Roman Empires, Bambadyanalo, Ziwa, Mapungubwe, Great Zimbabwe and Mutapa States sprang up with metropolitan stone fortresses which became eternal bastions of great civilisations. Urbanisation which was premised and supported by the Swahili-Arab trade, Portuguese trade, mineral explorations, pottery, domestication of a variety of crops and animals. Hunting and gathering still determined settlement sites. Salt exploration from hot springs in the middle Save and Matunautsi was a small but lucrative and profitable industry on the Zimbabwe plateau. The Shona people also processed ashes of certain plants and even goat droppings for salt. Salt could be produced for trade and livestock.
Archaeologists discovered a variety of exotic foreign goods at sites like Ziwa, Mabveni, Bambandyanalo, Matapos, Toutswe and Leopard Kopje obtained from China, India, Persia and the Arab civilisations. There were a cocktail of bowels, glass ware cloth, china ware, lamps and bottled beer. The lucrative trading posts included, Sofala, Mogadishu, Mombasa, Ujiji, Kilwa, Angoche and Qwelimane. The commercial trading mantra brought about phenomenal economic growth resulting in the growth of elaborate economic and political towns. Trade on the Zimbabwe plateau led to intensification on the production of gold, iron, ivory, copper, tin, baskets, pots, loin leather and carving figurines. Trade became a political tool to expand the Great Zimbabwe and Mutapa empires. It brought employment and improved living standards.
Early Arabic and Portuguese sources provide lacklustre information occasioned by their gluttonous appetite for wealth. Ahmad lbn Madjid in 1502 observed that Great Zimbabwe and Mutapa had been the largest polities in Southern Africa, Central and Eastern Africa. Mutapa reached the coast of the Indian Ocean to control markets of Sofala, Manica and Tete up to Quelimane and Ujiji which they dominated with Gold and ivory trade. Madjid acknowledged the existence of the waning Torwa State. The Arabic document is a bit vague and repetitive with no specific mention of the two great states. They mention Butua and Guruuswa which were enclaves of Khami led Torwa State. The Khami enclave had a host of its archipelagos that paid tribute to it though ultimately acknowledging the great over lordship of the Great Mutapa State. The great acropolis urban concentration at Khami caught the attention of the Swahili Arab traders. They acknowledged the unique stone urbanisation of the Zimbabwean plateau. Vagueness of Madjid's sailing manual does not scamper the importance of these often second hand accounts.
Of importance was also the 1631 to 1649 Portuguese document by Antonio Bocarro. The Portuguese wrote intensively about the elaborate agriculture culture on the plateau .. He talks about the belt of millet, rapoko and maize. He also provides graphic pictures of nhembe or people threshing rapoko on ruware.
In 1506 Diogo Alcacova visited Mutapa when they were building Nhunguza urban stone fortress town to the north of the state. The evidence dispels Eurocentric assertions of the origins of the stone walls and attests to a peaceful stable state. The Portuguse traveller gives pictures of structure fortresses stawn all over the plateau. The information is collaborated by another trvellor, Antonio Gomes in 1648. Gomes observed a national ceremony where the young, old, men and women gathered enmasse to celebrate in song and dance. Mbira, drums, horn trumpets, congos, marimba, magavhu and hosho were played harmoniously and rhythmically the whole and night. All people from different walks of life ate large and drank generously because all was plenty.Varying beats, to eye catching dances -wriggling and jiggling in unison graced the occasion. Women wore local and exotic imported beads and cloths. The ritual was classic, historical and original. The organisation was top notch and phenomenally symbolic of national event. Visitor were all welcome and joined the the occasion. In 1552 Joao de Barros observed the orderliness of the Mutapa settlements carved on stone terressed towns along mountain ranges to villages in valleys. Unique among these settlements were totemic clusters and concentration which made the natural planning. He observed the beautiful scenes of plushy thick forests watered by rivers and mountains breasting from the distant horizons. The imprint was on the administrative prowess and acumen of the Mutapas. The Massapa feira near Fura mountain was bastling with trading activities with hordes of traders and buyers. All these documents are supported by Andre Fernandes who visited Mutapa in 1560 and interacted with hunters of great repute dressed for the arduous accasion. He posted pictures of them wearing unique hairstyles with hair tied into horn shape. It is then a paradox when afrocetric and Eurocentric historians converge to claim Zimbabwe was a nameless geographical expression. All Portuguese reports from 1400 AD call it the Mutapa empire without rancor.
David Livingstone a British explorer visited lnyanga in 1857 and attest to to the Barwe --Tonga terraces, fortresses and pit structures which are dated from 1650 to 1900 which were conquered by Manyika ancestors. During Livingstone's visit part of Manyika was under Sekeletu but ironically they still claimed Mutapa overlordship then rivalled by the Rozvi.
The history of Zimbabwe is richly traceable through mostly Portuguese accounts, both first and second hand accounts. In 1831 Joao Juliao da Silva visited and wrote on Danangombe which was an urban political and economic administrative town of the Changamires from the 1780s to 1830s. These wereequally huge stone terraced fortresses ... covering a wide stretch mountains. The king's palace known as Chitoramano was at Danangombe where it still stands today. In the 1620s Julio Cesar Vertuo reported on Mutapa dwellings he called the king's wives enclosures and claimed the numbered more than a thousand and children as many as flies. The documents are sometimes offside as exagerations justified the interference in the politics of Mutapa, the Torwa and Rozvi' However Vertua brings to fore rivalries in Mutapa like case of Gutu Makuvaza who with seven uncles and seventeen brothers revolted against Mutapa.
