Reimagining governance in the Zimbabwe culture: Some lessons from ancient Mberengwa

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Cooperative and Noncooperative Transitions in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This study examines the persistent challenges in the historiography of early governance and state formation in the Zimbabwe culture (CE 1000–1900). Traditional analyses of Great Zimbabwe, and other large collectives such as Mapungubwe and Khami rely heavily on outdated socio-evolutionary models that portray these states as centralized, despotic regimes controlling vast resources and rigidly hierarchized power structures. Despite the global shift toward recognizing more collective governance paradigms in regions like Mesoamerica, these interpretations still dominate southern Africa's Iron Age studies. Additionally, studies often focus disproportionately on large political centers, marginalizing smaller contemporaneous collectives, such as those in Mberengwa in southern Zimbabwe. These smaller polities, though rich in resources, are often dismissed as peripheral and insignificant. Colonial biases in archaeology have privileged Eurocentric frameworks over African epistemologies, obscuring the diverse governance strategies that shaped precolonial southern Africa. Using Mberengwa—a gold-rich, understudied region—as a case study, this research explores the dynamic socio-political structures within Zimbabwe culture. Preliminary findings suggest that early governance was not strictly top-down but operated within fluid, cooperative systems, minimizing elite power abuse. This study challenges prevailing Eurocentric models and contributes to the decolonization of African archaeology by emphasizing indigenous systems of governance and African perspectives on political organization.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Cooperative and Noncooperative Transitions in the Archaeological Record   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50557