Will he be there?
The team of archaeologists from the University of Zimbabwe has finally arrived at their destination, a remote village in the Chimanimani mountains of Eastern Zimbabwe. After bumpy hours on what was, once upon a time, a road, it is now time to stock up on some locally brewed beer: gifts for the chief who rules this area with some degree of autonomy, in cohesion with the country’s Traditional Leader’s Act. The archaeologists are at his mercy.
Will he be there and will he allow them to see what they have come all this way to see? “Sometimes you have to spend the whole day just to establish relationships,” Gilbert Pwiti says, a professor of archaeology at the History Department of the University of Zimbabwe in the capital of Harare.
Here and now
Professor Pwiti, who is heading this mission into the Eastern Highlands, is coordinating the NUFU-sponsored (Norwegian Programme for Development, Research and Education) project ‘Archaeology and Traditions in Eastern Zimbabwe’. It involves archaeologists from the universities of Harare and Bergen, Norway, along with an anthropologist, all set to break new ground in areas hardly investigated before. The region has been known for its rock art paintings for a long time but, it is believed, only a fraction of these have been scientifically recorded.
Now, the researchers are planning to survey large areas south of Zimunya, all the way towards the high mountains of Chimanimani and west towards the Save River.
“These are grey areas in terms of archaeological research,” says Ancila Nhamo.
HOME OF FOREFATHERS: Alec Mutema, a chief’s son living in the highlands of Eastern Zimbabwe, is standing on sacred ground.This is the place to communicate with his ancestors who used to live here. To archaeologists, the site is of purely scientific interest but, to be allowed to dig here, they need the permission of the chief.
She is joining Professor Pwiti on the trip along with Seke Katsamudanga and Paul Mupira. All are affiliated with the archaeology unit in Harare.
“In Chimanimani, only three rock art sites are recorded on the national database. But just by making a few trips into the area we found 15 sites, previously unknown,” she adds.
A previous NUFU-funded project (‘The Ancestral Landscape of Manyikaland’, 2002-2006) registered a large number of rock art sites and other locations tracing settlements from the Late Stone Age (from around 30,000 years ago) through to the Iron Age (beginning around 2,000 years ago) up until the present. A few of these have been excavated as part of the NUFU-project and more excavations are to be undertaken.
But archaeology in Zimbabwe is not just about times gone by. Sometimes it is just as much about right here and now: what scientists see as areas of archaeological interest may well be sacred places of ritual significance to local people. And so the team take their gifts onto their 4x4 and make their way to the chief’s homestead, which is populated by his children and several wives.
On arrival, the visitors are being greeted with friendly but somewhat reserved smiles. This is after all, Zimbabwe, a place where political violence in recent years has left an air of fear, in particular in rural areas.
“You have to work hard to gain trust from people, and to get their trust you have to have nothing to do with politics,” Pwiti says.
In fact, archaeology in Zimbabwe has got everything to do with politics.
Great expectations
Nothing illustrates this better than Great Zimbabwe. A visit here is compulsory when Professor Pwiti and his team take Global Knowledge along on their tour. A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986, Great Zimbabwe is the largest and possibly most important archaeological spot in Southern Africa. It is a contested source of numerous scientific publications as well as national mythology. Most archaeologists who are doing research on similar stone structures tend to relate it to Great Zimbabwe.
ROCK TO REMEMBER: The team of archaeologists inspect one of the ancient rock art sites in the Zimunya district. From left: Ancila Nhamo, Seke Katsamudanga, Gilbert Pwiti and Paul Mupira. Only a few sites in the area have been registered but the researchers expect to fine many more.
Great Zimbabwe (1250-1450) was one of the great civilisations of the medieval world with trading links as far away as Persia and China. The huge complex of stone-built structures was known to Portuguese traders in the 16th century, well before it was ‘discovered’ by the British in the 19th century. In 1891, soon after the British colonisation, the British explorer J. Theodore Bent published a book in which he advanced the view that the structures must have been built by Phoenicians or Arabs. But only a few years later, scientific excavations revealed indications that the structures were indeed built by the local Africans. By 1950 there was no longer serious dispute in the scientific community about the origins of Great Zimbabwe. Politically, though, the notion of sophisticated natives hardly fit into colonial ideology based on racial superiority of white rulers.
“They used to have a golf course here,” Professor Pwiti comments sarcastically as he crosses the fields towards ‘The Great Enclosure’, the largest single ancient structure south of the Sahara. The regime in Rhodesia hung on to falsified theories until its demise in 1980.
The liberation movement, of course, had a very different approach. Crowning its struggle with independence in 1980 and the inception of Robert Mugabe as the new nation’s first prime minister, they were impelled by the ruins as proof of an advanced African civilisation. Freed from colonialism, Great Zimbabwe became the symbol of the new nation, taking its name from it and depicting one of the famous stone birds found there in its flag.
Great Zimbabwe, of which probably 95 per cent remains to be excavated, used to be one of the major tourist attractions in the country – in times when tourists still were coming in notable numbers. “Now, nature is taking over,” Pwiti laments. The last few years have seen most of the qualified staff leaving for better options abroad. Dilapidation is evident, with some parts almost lost. The cultural village and curio market hardly sees any visitors.
Today, Great Zimbabwe has become a reflection of a country not so great anymore.
Time to catch up
All parts of society, including academic life, have taken a serious blow from the crisis of Zimbabwe, culminating during the years from 2007 to 2009. As the Zim dollar lost its value amid surreal inflation rates, shelves in supermarkets emptied and petrol stations ran dry, the University of Zimbabwe quickly lost its former glory. What was once known as one of the best universities in Africa was forced to a near meltdown with staff leaving in droves for greener pastures elsewhere. Students were forced to stay at home due to lack of transport and the closure of campus residences as water supply broke down, which it did in many parts of the capital.
“We didn’t have water at home for two years. We used to bring water back home from the university,” Ancila Nhamo remembers. “I don’t know how we survived, I really don’t know.”
Under the circumstances their research suffered a setback, but did not stand still.
“Most of the time fuel was not available, which made field work difficult, but we managed to keep up some of our work,” Seke Katsamudanga says.
He and Paul Mupira finished their PhDs at the University of Zimbabwe at this time, while Nhamo, who got her Master’s degree at The University of Bergen in 2005, is in her final stages.
Since 2009 a fragile coalition between Mugabe’s Zanu-PF and the two factions of the MDC opposition party has led to donor countries opening their purses. The introduction of the US Dollar as currency in 2009 has helped stabilise the economy, bringing supplies back to the stores.
“Despite all things happening, we have been able to maintain good standards. I have taught and interacted with many universities in Africa. It appears the quality of what we offer is still good. Yes, infrastructure and resources are down, but there are still lots of things we can do,” Professor Pwiti says.
Currently, students can study the basics at Bachelor’s level, they can go on to specialise at Honours level, and soon a Master programme in archaeology is planned to be reinstated.
As the first semester of 2010 draws to a close, there is a whiff of optimism in the air. Just before the archaeologists get ready to jumpstart the next semester, cutting holidays to catch up, they set out from Harare with a full tank in the direction of the chief’s homestead.
The secret formula
CRITICAL CONDITION: The crisis in Zimbabwe has led to most qualified staff leaving Great Zimbabwe for better options abroad. Sites of great historical significance are being lost.
On the way, they stop to take a closer look at one of the rock art sites in the Zimunya district. The site is one of many known to archaeologists since the 1940s, when the Rhodesian rock art enthusiast Lionel Cripps made reproductions of rock art from all over the country. His 280 drawings have since been archived at the archaeology unit in Harare. In 2007 they were all published, compiled by Ancila Nhamo, who added the systematic documentation and interpretation lacking in Cripps work. Already several sites unknown to Cripps have been found and Nahmo expects to find a lot more when they start surveying the area again.
“This area has not been explored at all since Cripp’s time,” she says.
Young boy herders are chatting in the background. The evening sun lights up the paintings of African animals such as zebra, elephant, rhino and kudu, as well as human figures and some mysterious circular patterns. The patterns are unique to the site and the researchers can only speculate about their meaning at this stage.
Neither do they know precisely when people came here to paint these images. What they do know is that they were created by the indigenous San, a hunter-gatherer people, who used to inhabit most of Southern Africa. They may actually be anything between 2,000 to 28,000 years old. Some of the paintings may also been have made by the later farming communities. “Rock art is difficult to date. Our hope lies in new developments in radiocarbon dating. Organic material absorbs carbon, and through a calculation of the carbon remaining in the paint we might find out when it was made,” Nhamo explains.
It is known that the paint was made of a mixture of blood, egg and ochre – and some secret component. Scientists still don’t know how the artists made the paint stay on the wall.
“A problem with the carbon method is that you need to scrape off a significant bit of paint,” Nhamo says.
This is part of the many dilemmas in heritage conservation. Paintings deteriorate as nature has its way.
“There are of course things we can do, like lead away damaging water, but often you create new problems by interfering. In most cases we prefer to document it and leave it to nature.”
In recent decades, archaeologists have shifted from looking purely at structural and aesthetic aspects of rock art, becoming more interested in interpretation, which may tell them more about human behaviour and cultural development. Informed partly by ethnographic and anthropological studies of recent and contemporary San communities, a number of theories exist about the meaning of the art.
Nhamo’s own Master’s thesis concentrated on the kudu, the most common animal depicted in rock paintings in this area. She, along with several others, argues that the kudu could have been seen as possessing supernatural powers, which again may have been used by shamans in healing, rainmaking or other spiritual acts.
Sites containing rock art are still places of spiritual rituals in some communities today.
Making movies
DOCUMENTING: Ancila Nhamo documents old stone walls built by the Alec Mutema, the ancestors of the chief's son.
This is something one of the Norwegian archaeologists in the project, Tore Sætersdal, became acutely aware of.
“You just don´t mess with these places,” Sætersdal said in an interview at his office in Bergen.
“Places we approach with archaeological motives may be important to local people for completely different reasons.”
He was about to do fieldwork in the Manica region in neighbouring Mozambique for his PhD when he learnt a lesson.
He said: “It turned out that digging was out of the question in that particular locality because of the sacred significance of the site to the local community. We documented some rock paintings, and that was all.”
It was this kind of understanding that led to Frode Storaas joining the project, an associate professor at The University of Bergen. As part of the project he applies the methods of the visual anthropologist, documenting contemporary communities and their current use of rock art and other ancient locations. Storaas (together with Liivo Niglas, University of Tartu, Estonia), has already produced two films through a related project on the Mozambican side of the border. One with a rather telling title, ‘If the Vagina had Teeth’, and another on rain-making rituals, ‘Making rain’, where women play crucial roles in performing their ‘ritual power’.
“Women may seem to be without power and without political influence in this society but our studies show that this is far from the truth,” Storaas said.
He hopes to do another documentary as part of the archaeology project, this time about the several wives of the chief his fellow researchers have travelled to meet in the Chimanimani mountains. Their meeting might decide if Storaas gets to do it or not.
Sacred and scientific
It turns out he is not there. The old chief has left for a hospital to get treatment for his bad legs. But one of his sons, the acting chief as it is, might be around. One of the young ones is sent out to call for him. He turns up, presents himself as Alec Mutema (Mutema being the name of the Chieftainship) and, after exchanging greetings with the researchers, he starts a long conversation to clarify the goals of their visit. Who will get this information? How are they going to use it? Has it got anything to do with politics?
Eventually he concludes that, yes, he will take them to the place.
The Traditional Leader’s Act of Zimbabwe prevents people from taking advantage of the area without the chief’s consent. The actual site is situated close to a gum tree plantation and could well have been part of it, was it not considered sacred by the chief and his people. So even if the archaeologists might be prevented from researching the site, the act is also the reason there still is anything to research.
Mutema first leads them to some dry stone wall enclosures partly hidden by vegetation. Then he goes further and they all find themselves in the tropical forest, surrounded by spectacular fig trees. The silence is only broken by the sound of humming insects, rustling leaves and distant drum beats from the church in the village. Even the men and women of science seem to be taken by the magic for a moment. Then they start taking notes and pictures.
“This place is very, very important,” the chief’s son says. In front of him there are more stone walls. Professor Pwiti roughly estimates that they are from somewhere in between the 15th and 18th century. To Alec Mutema’s knowledge, the last person to stay here was born in 1818.
The trees are mediums for communication with ancestors, he explains, and right here is the setting for the most important rituals and ceremonies of his community. It is a place where ancestors are remembered and asked for advice.
“That is where our forefathers lie,” Mutema says, pointing towards an elevated area hidden behind a fairly high stone wall. He will not allow the archaeologists to go there, that place is only for special representatives of the community. But the archaeologists are happy. The chief’s son has already shared more than they expected.
Rough road ahead
“This was very good for us,” Professor Pwiti says. “But now the critical thing is: Can we excavate? It will require some delicate negotiations, but I think it is possible that we will get a permission.”
But what does the chief’s son honestly think about these archaeologists coming from the capital?
“Personally, I am pleased,” he says. “It reveals the importance of our culture.”
After an exchange of mobile phone numbers and another stop at the shop for a couple more beers/gifts, it is high time for the research team to get going – before the dark makes the bumpy road back even less tempting to negotiate.
It is challenging enough on the main roads where not everyone has bothered with, or been able to pay for, proper lights on their cars – instead, some hold out glowing mobile phones hoping other drivers will see them. They have to get back to the hotel in time, a hotel where one single generator-driven light bulb lights up the reception under the portrait on the wall of the now 86-year-old president Robert Mugabe. Then the generator is off and the guests are left to moonlight and candles.
Forecasts are improving, though. It looks like it is going to be possible to get some good fieldwork done this year. Professor Pwiti takes the opportunity to praise his Norwegian counterparts.
“This is a real and equal partnership, scientifically and in other ways. This is not one of those programmes where the North is just giving and we receiving,” he says, himself educated in Cambridge and Uppsala after finishing his lower degrees in Zimbabwe.
“When I look to the end of the tunnel, I think I see a light. We must have some kind of inbuilt resilience in us. I’ll take the Zimbabwean way of looking at things and say, ‘yes the situation will improve, Inshallah!’”