Trade and Exchange in the Greater Mapungubwe Landscape

Summary

This is an abstract from the "African Archaeology throughout the Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Our understanding of the trade and exchange networks systems in Southern Africa during AD 700 to AD 1300 has mostly been drawn from sites located in the Shashe Limpopo Confluence Area (SCLA); a drainage basin that is positioned on the borders of Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe. This has led to bias interpretations and conceptualisation on how trade and exchange networks were structured. The question of control and access to materials such as gold, copper, iron, glass beads, ivory and many other remain central. Was access to these objects controlled, if so how? Similarly, more questions need be asked about the objects that archaeologists associate with the high-status elite communities. Were these objects always reserved for and restricted to elite consumption? Alternatively, can we identify variable patterns in the distribution of the different objects, both spatially and temporally? Such question is crucial in reconstructing and understand the trade and exchange network systems in the Greater Mapungubwe Landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• African Archaeology throughout the Holocene   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26242