Marginalized Knowledge: An Agenda for Indigenous Knowledge Development and Integration with Other Forms of Knowledge

Mapungubwe

The trading centres of the western Kalahari were eclipsed from the 9^th century by new trading networks originating from the Indian ocean coast which led to the development of a complex, socially and economically differentiated society centred on sites such as Shroda, K2 and, most famously, Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe. While the majority of the population at these centres seem to have been engaged in pastoralism and/or foraging (Hall, 1987; Hall and Smith, 2000), the elite lived and died surrounded by trade goods which included gold and ivory ornaments and woven cloth.

Mapungubwe was built around a sandstone hill rising steeply from the valley adjacent to the Limpopo. At the summit Fouche found what has been termed ‘royal burials’, arguably the most splendid in sub-Saharan Africa. Huffman (1996) notes that three of the burials excavated by Fouche (1937) and Gardner (1963) were associated with gold objects. The first one he discusses, No. 14 ‘was probably that of a woman buried in a sitting position, facing west. She wore at least a hundred gold wire bangles around her ankles and there were over 12,000 gold beads in her grave’ (1996: 188). Huffman suggests that the seated position of the burials is significant since it is associated with high status. The evidence of the 12,000 gold beads in the burial of the female suggests she was ruler in her own right since these were not found in the other graves of the men. Later (referring to the rulers of Great Zimbabawe) Huffman quotes from early Portuguese accounts (Theal (1964 (1898): 368) ‘the Mazarira (great wife and sister) of the Mutapa king in fact supported Portuguese requests for trade’ and adds, ‘although female status is secondary in a structural sense, actual status would be contingent on the forces of individual personalities. Thus there could have been times when a ritual sister and royal mother had greater standing than their male counterparts’ (1996: 188). Mapungubwe was built around a sandstone hill rising sharply from the valley adjacent to the Limpopo river. The burials mentioned above were found at the summit along with the remnants of houses built over many decades.

Central to the importance of Mapungubwe was participation in a network of trade and exchange; firstly with the coast and indirectly with other states on the far side of the Indian ocean. The compilation of travellers’ accounts of the coast by Al-Idrisi in the first part of the 12^th century indicated that the Arabs knew of landing points and collection places along the coast known collectively as Sofala. The city state of Kilwa on the southern Tanzanian coast was first occupied in the 8^th and 9^th centuries by a largely fishing community. Shell beads were common and the presence of spindle whorls (clay weights for the end of spindles) is evidence for the manufacture of cloth, suggesting cotton was spun for trade with the interior with ivory being the major export in return for ceramics from the Persian gulf. By the 9^th century glass beads and other goods from the coast had been received at Shroda. Copper and iron were also traded, in metal form which could be heated and forged on site. Ivory and animal skins were among early exports from the Limpopo valley (Hall, 1987: 78).

Al Mas’udi, who sailed the east African coast in AD 915 noted that the ‘land of Zanj’ produced ‘wild leopard skins’ which were both worn by the people themselves and exported to Muslim countries where they were used as saddles. Al Mas’udi reported that the Zanj hunted elephants by throwing down the bark and leaves of a certain tree for the elephants to eat and then ambushing the elephants when they fell down. This probably refers to the fruits of the morula tree (Sclerocarya caffra) which are known to intoxicate elephants today, as well as providing the ingredients for marula beer made by women in Venda and other parts of Limpopo and consumed on ritual occasions by communities. Marula trees and their fruit are never owned by individuals but belong to the entire local community, an indication of their importance in traditional economies.

By the late 10^th century there was an established flow of goods between the coast and sites in the interior such as K2 and Mapungubwe. Quantities of glass beads and fragments of ivory were found in the middens at K2 and numerous similar beads from the excavations at Mapungubwe. Sciama notes that beads, along with textiles, are among the foremost items of long distance trade. Moved from continent to continent they were often used in conjunction with or in the place of cowries which were brought to the east coast of Africa from the Pacific ocean since the 10^th century BC, as later on were turquoise from Egypt and lapis lazuli from Afghanistan. Glass beads were made in Egypt, Iraq and India as early as the second millennium BC and traded by Phoenicians in the first half of the first millennium. In Africa the possession of certain types of beads was an indispensable requirement to sanction royal status. They figure prominently in early ethnographic descriptions of royal investitures in Nilotic kingdoms. Francesca Declich recorded that the founding ancestress who led the Somali Zigula out of slavery and who presides over women’s initiation rituals, Wanankhucha, is believed to have been buried entirely covered with beads. Tiny white beads like those sometimes found by her grave are required in all women’s transition rituals (Sciama, 1998: 16). Eileen Krige describes a typical Lovedu woman in the 1930s wearing red ‘salempore’ (sometimes called ‘Madras’ ) cloth, ‘while from her neck dangles the ubiquitous snuff box on a necklet of plaited string, holding three or four treasured heirlooms, large deep blue or white beads, and perhaps some small blue, red or yellow ones of the kind that were brought from Rhodesia long before Europeans had come’ (1980 (1943): 17), suggesting that for the Lovedu as well as the Somali, beads were an essential part of initiation into womanhood.

At Mapungubwe there was also evidence of a thriving trade in local ivory making, with bracelets of differing widths and fine bone tools used to work the ivory of which there are more than 600 examples. Spindle whorls at Mapungubwe are evidence of a weaving industry, suggesting cotton plants had already been introduced from central Asia or India (Hall, 1987: 79).

The differences in wealth and status that accompanied this economic system were reflected in patterns of settlement and the association of centres of power and importance with hills as at Mapungubwe and elsewhere. The large collection of clay figurines from Schroda suggest it was a religious centre as well as one with pioneering trade connections. Hall comments that since the only grindstones to come from the hilltop at Mapungubwe come from one side, that side ‘have been the area used by royal wives and their servants’. The other end, which he thinks may ‘have been reserved for the king and his entourage’ was reached by a special staircase and had stone walls and artefacts associated with men’ (1987: 82). Hall thinks that the rulers of ‘any state system must have some form of coercion through which rulers ensure that their subjects acknowledge their right to levy tribute’ and thus he feels that ‘the rulers of Mapungubwe and elsewhere must have commanded military power although there is no evidence of this in the archaeological record’ (my italics) (1987: 89).However, we know from the ethnography of the Lovedu that considerable power was wielded by queen without the use of military force and the same may well have held true for the female rulers of Mapungubwe and perhaps Great Zimbabwe.

Voight records that the last phase of settlement on the hill at Mapungubwe represents the end of the Early Iron Age in the Limpopo valley. No sites have been identified which fall within 1200 to 1400 AD. She suggests that the presence of rattus rattus in the area, together with the relatively densely populated settlement may indicate the destruction of the population through Bubonic plague, at the time ravaging Europe and the Near East. Such a disease would explain the depopulation of a previously much favoured area and opened the way for tsetse fly to encroach into the area and prevent repopulation by herders (1983: 135).