Exploring Smaller Settlements of the Great Zimbabwe Tradition, Buhera Region, Zimbabwe

Most work on the Great Zimbabwe tradition has focused on Great Zimbabwe itself and its major successor settlements. Smaller, contemporary stonewalled sites, some hundreds of kilometres from Great Zimbabwe, have been only mapped in most cases. Our goal has been to begin to explore both the homesteads within stone-enclosures at smaller Great Zimbabwe-tradition sites, and to seek out homesteads lying outside the small stone enclosures. In this paper I discuss ongoing excavations at two Great Zimbabwe-tradition sites, Kagumbudzi and Muchuchu, and survey including shovel-test pits and phosphate analyses. This initiative has begun to allow smaller stone sites and their outlying components, as well as the possible interactions between them, to emerge and be included in an understanding of the Great Zimbabwe tradition.