Archaeological naissance at Mapungubwe

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Archaeological naissance at Mapungubwe

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Article

Archaeological naissanceat Mapungubwe

Rachel KingInstitute of Archaeology, University of Oxford, UK

Abstract

The centerpiece of this essay is a southern African board game known as mufuvha at the

site of Mapungubwe (AD 1220–1290), an object that visitors closely identify with their

relationships to the site but which has largely eluded the attentions of both archaeol-

ogists and recent publicity campaigns. In attempting to illuminate why this is so, I submit

that archaeological practice at Mapungubwe and the political packaging of South African

heritage have created narratives of Mapungubwe incongruous with experiences of local

publics. Further, the mufuvha board is implicated in a process whereby archaeology,

both as material and as social process, is vernacularized. I demonstrate that interrogat-

ing these alternative dialogues is essential to understanding how the archaeological past

is constituted, in terms of both popular imaginaries and the creation (or omission) of

archaeological assemblages.

Keywords

alternative archaeologies, heritage, Mapungubwe, mufuvha

This article explores alternative archaeological views of Mapungubwe, an Iron Agesite in the Shashe-Limpopo Basin (Figure 1), focusing on a southern African boardgame called mufuvha1 carved into the stone within the main complex onMapungubwe Hill. This approach emerged from a series of ethnographic inter-views I conducted to investigate how students and educators visiting the siteengaged with educational material presented. These interviews questioned whetherarchaeological education could usefully be viewed as a ‘bottom-up’ means of fos-tering the notion of a shared past and building capacity in various school subjects

Corresponding author:

Rachel King, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 36 Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PG, UK

Email: [email protected]

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(cf. Esterhuysen, 2000). When asked which aspect of the site they found mostrelevant, some interviewees noted (as expected) the highly publicized golden rhi-noceros and scepter found atop Mapungubwe Hill, primarily as an example ofmaterial heritage appropriated by the University of Pretoria in the 1930s(Meskell and Masuku Van Damme, 2008: 144–5). Almost without exception, how-ever, interviewees drew my attention to the mufuvha board. The overwhelmingsentiment was that because men throughout South Africa play mufuvha today,archaeology remained present in the daily lives of my informants and was thereforerelevant.

These statements were especially intriguing because this particular mufuvhaboard is mentioned only a handful of times in archaeological literature, and thenonly in passing (Huffman, 1982: 144, 1986c, 2005: 44), despite the fact thatMapungubwe has one of the longest histories of research of any southernAfrican site. Comprising the sandstone Mapungubwe Hill and the SouthernTerrace at its base, the site was occupied from c.AD 1220–1290 (Meyer, 2000:10–11; Vogel, 2000: 54), and possibly represents the first state in the subcontinent.Mapungubwe appears to have been at the top of a settlement hierarchy extendingfrom the Shashe-Limpopo Basin to the Kalahari, owing its power to control of aneconomy based on domesticated livestock, agriculture, and imports from theIndian Ocean trade network (Huffman, 2000; Pikirayi, 2001: 110–19). Its social

Figure 1. Mapungubwe National Park, Limpopo Province.

312 Journal of Social Archaeology 11(3)




complexity was expressed spatially, with elites occupying the Hill and the largerpopulation on the Southern Terrace. Research at Mapungubwe has been especiallyprominent of late, as UNESCO named it a World Heritage Site in 2003(Carruthers, 2006) and former president Thabo Mbeki’s African Renaissance rhe-toric emblematized it as an accomplishment of which all South Africans should beproud (Mbeki, 2006).

I argue here that methodological practice in archaeology and heritage rhetorichave produced narratives of Mapungubwe in such a way as to preclude space formufuvha. The ramifications of this omission are twofold: first, mufuvha has come tofigure prominently in vernacular accounts of Mapungubwe, in which a version ofthe past not sanctioned by archaeologists is propagated, discussed, and contested;second, the official archaeological record is bereft of one aspect of Mapungubwe’smaterial culture. I will demonstrate how archaeological history and heritage dis-course have shaped public archaeological dialogues, recognizing that ‘public’ is afraught term in need of dissection, which follows. I then discuss how mufuvhaemerged as part of an alternative archaeological conversation, and finally attemptto write Mapungubwe’s mufuvha board into the archaeological record.

My method of investigation is a targeted form of archaeological ethnography(Meskell, 2005), a holistic, improvisational, context-driven anthropology directedthrough a particular lens, namely archaeological education. As alluded to earlier,two strands of thought informed my ethnography: that South African primary andsecondary school students are currently enjoying the first opportunity since apart-heid to study a black African past free from the racist constraints of ChristianNational Education (Gawe and Meli, 1990; Mazel and Stewart, 1987; Smith, 1983);and the potential therein to produce generations of socially and economicallyempowered students driven by a knowledge of and appreciation for the archaeo-logical past (cf. Shepherd, 2002). Interviews and participant observations focusedon students, educators, administrators, and park staff at Mapungubwe and inclassrooms in Limpopo Province. Subjects’ relationships to Mapungubwe wereinvariably linked with ethnic and political self-identification, and I spoke withpeople proclaiming Venda, Sotho, and Shangaan heritage, as well as more nuancedaffiliations such as Leshiba, Vhatwanamba, Vhangona, and Lemba.2

‘Ethnic’ interpretations of Mapungubwe were not the aim, however. Education(as a practice and an institution) is an intimate aspect of any household or com-munity, and archaeological education encourages students in a discursive engage-ment with material culture, and thus with imaginings of particular pasts (King,2010). Education therefore constitutes a potentially explosive locus of critical con-sciousness (Freire, 1973: 3), necessitating an investigation aware both of its owncomplex, fractional situation, and of its limitations therein. Consequently, my eth-nography could not but be aware of the fact that Mapungubwe’s stakeholderscannot be described by the catchall tropes ‘locals’ and ‘publics’: these terms areproblematic and gloss the reality that, at Mapungubwe, stakeholders are not pas-sive constituents to be bundled together as ‘locals’, but are more diverse entities,embedded in the process of producing archaeological narratives.

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What follows is not ethnoarchaeology, nor is it an exhaustive study of archae-ological education, Mapungubwe, or mufuvha. My aim is more modest but none-theless intriguing: these (admittedly limited) ethnographies identified an aspect ofMapungubwe’s material culture not reflected in the archaeological record butabounding in current conversation. This article addresses the question of whythis is so through an inquiry guided by ethnographic conversation, rather thanthrough more conventional archaeological hypotheses.

Mapungubwe: 1932–2010

Mapungubwe has been called ‘a prism of South African archaeology’ (Carruthers,2006: 6), reflecting the history and politics of archaeological thought in the sub-continent. As such, the site’s archaeological history has been thoroughly describedelsewhere (Carruthers, 2006; Hall, 1987b, 1996; Huffman, 2005; Mitchell, 2002:300–7).

Mapungubwe was ‘rediscovered’ in 1932 by a University of Pretoria studentwho forced a local black man to escort him to the Hill, upon which was an abun-dance of gold, pottery, and beads (Fouche, 1937). Beginning with the first excava-tions by Leo Fouche of the University of Pretoria in 1933, the Mapungubweexcavations tracked the pace of research at Great Zimbabwe (Caton-Thompson,1931; Garlake, 1973; Summers et al., 1961). These early researchers established aparadigm for the archaeology of the Shashe-Limpopo Basin that included a pre-occupation with linking ill-defined notions of race and culture. This led to theoriesthat Mapungubwe was part of a recent ‘whirligig of native movements’ (Caton-Thompson, 1931: 190), and dividing the past into a system of ‘ages’ borrowed fromthe British Iron Age scheme (Hall, 1984: 459).

Archaeological interpretations of Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe turnedfrom cultural historical to processual and functional in the late 1960s (Collettet al., 1992: 142). Archaeologists such as Robinson (1961), Summers (1971),Whitty (1961), Garlake (1973), and Huffman (1972) systematically studied andcategorized their finds, providing a basis for probing the relationship betweenethnicity and culture (Fagan, 1963, 1964; Robinson, 1966) and attempting thefirst anthropological explanations of the archaeology of the Zimbabwe Plateauand Shashe-Limpopo Basin (Pikirayi, 2001: 17–18).

A significant breakthrough in Early Iron Age research came with the use ofceramic typologies (derived from measurable differences in vessel profile, decora-tion layout, and motif) as a basis for tracking the movement of iron-using farmersacross southern Africa (Huffman, 1971, 1974, 1978, 1979, 1982) and to ‘measure[. . .] identity through pottery’ (Huffman, 1970). At Mapungubwe, ceramic stylesprovided the basis for the sequence of movement into the Shashe-Limpopo Basin:Bantu-speaking farmers first occupied the area between AD 350 and 450, followedby a 400-year hiatus, then the arrival of Zhizo people (named for the site atwhich their pottery was identified) at AD 900 and their disappearance aroundAD 1000 as a new ceramic style appeared at K2, and finally the appearance of





Mapungubwe-style ceramics at the time of Mapungubwe’s occupation from aboutAD 1220 (Huffman, 2007, 2009b).

While ceramic sequences are the foundation for a culture-history sequence,Huffman (1981, 1982, 1986a) has proposed an understanding of material cultureat Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe built on the premise that Iron Age spatialorganization reflects ‘attitudes about status and attitudes about life forces’ as partof a ‘cognitive system’ (1981: 131). This derives from a combination of archaeo-logical data, early Portuguese records, and ethnographies from modernZimbabwean Shona and South African Venda peoples based on a perceived linkwith the earliest southern African farmers (Badenhorst, 2010: 90; Huffman, 1986b,2001, 2007). Although similar approaches have precedent at Great Zimbabwe (seeBeach, 1998), Huffman’s cognitive system provides one of the most comprehensivereconstructions of the archaeology of the Zimbabwe Tradition to date.

Ceramic typology and ethnographically derived organizational models lie at theheart of current discussions of the Zimbabwe Tradition and the expansion of iron-using farmers across the subcontinent more broadly. Ceramic seriation has been acontroversial approach in southern Africa (Beach et al., 1997; Collett, 1987; Collettet al., 1992; Hall, 1983, 1984; Lane, 1994, 1998; Pikirayi, 1999, 2007; Robertsonand Bradley, 2000) but remains widely used and little undermined by its critics(Sadr, 2008).

Recently, Mapungubwe has seen a renewed vigor in research. The 2000 GoodwinSeries volume edited by Leslie and Maggs testifies to the strides made in archae-ological understandings of Mapungubwe: papers therein examine Mapungubwe asa frontier settlement involved in a broader set of regional and temporal relation-ships (Reid and Segobye, 2000) and as a site of complex interactions among farm-ers, herders, and foragers (Hall and Smith, 2000), among other innovativeapproaches. Mapungubwe has also benefitted from long-term integrative studiesof the larger contemporary landscape (e.g. Huffman, 2007, 2009b), and from exam-ining regional migratory patterns, permitting vistas on ethnicity within contempo-rary socio-politics (Segobye, 1998).

More broadly, the Iron Age paradigm itself has faced criticism: many havesuggested jettisoning the term ‘Iron Age’ as inadequate to convey the complexityof the technological, economic, linguistic, and social dimensions of this broadperiod (Maggs, 1992; Maggs and Whitelaw, 1991; Parkington and Hall, 1987;Pwiti, 1996; Stahl, 1999: 47–8), in turn generating challenges to the structuralistfoundations of the age/stage system with respect to Zimbabwe culture sites(Chirikure and Pikirayi, 2008).

In the varied interpretations of Mapungubwe discussed above, mufuvha rarelyfigures, if at all. Perhaps this is because mufuvha is not obviously dispositive ofmany questions posed within the interpretive frameworks applied to Mapungubwe,and as such the game would sit uneasily in the material assemblages constitutedwithin these schema. In any case, Mapungubwe’s mufuvha board is largely absentfrom the archaeological literature, an absence echoed in the heritage project atMapungubwe.

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The heritage experience at Mapungubwe

One useful way to consider heritage is as the past working in the service of thefuture, as constellations of tangible and intangible pasts consciously constituted inthe present to serve ends both socioeconomically and psychologically positive (Halland Bombardella, 2005: 5; Meskell, 2011: 55). While, theoretically, heritage may bean egalitarian concept, to be shaped and invoked by both the state and its citizens,in practice heritage must be claimed, leading to conflicts among claimants whereassertions of ownership to both heritage property and narrative are contested.Conversely, when heritage is propagated as a social unifier (as in South Africa,which has seen a national drive to rehabilitate a past traumatized by apartheid; seeMeskell and Scheermeyer, 2008), using the same vocabulary of objects and placesas the shapers of the very past that is the target of reconstruction often leads toambivalence (Hall, 2001: 59). These elements define the heritage experience atMapungubwe: the ‘African Naissance’ (Maggs, 2000) portrayed at Mapungubwehas been connected with national political trends in which calls for a difference-blind, pan-African citizenry often obscure the workings of political identities thatare not only present in but sanctioned by the South African state.

The ‘African Renaissance’ ideology promoted by the government of formerpresident Thabo Mbeki (1996) advocated progress through globalization andpan-African solidarity. This rhetoric, however, was self-contradictory, calling forAfricans to unite as equals while asserting South Africa’s exceptional claim to amore extensive heritage than other nations (Lodge, 2003). Furthermore, this ubuntuphilosophy of African solidarity glosses over the fact that stakeholders must nego-tiate their prerogatives to heritage through particularized political identities, oftensituated in ethnic descriptions (cf. Weiss, 2007).

A ‘renaissance’ requires a reference point and Mapungubwe emerged as thesymbol of the South African Golden Age. The site has emblematized sociopoliticalcomplexity, technological innovation, and extensive trade to which all SouthAfricans, regardless of color, owe a debt. For example, the Order ofMapungubwe was established as a national award recognizing contributions inscience and technology (Carruthers, 2006: 4).3

Mapungubwe was transferred to South African National Parks’ (SANParks)management in 1998 and designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2003.Through SANParks channels, Mapungubwe’s stakeholders have demanded repa-triation of the artifacts housed in the University of Pretoria and the reburial ofexcavated human remains. However, the reburial process was rife with conflict:political agendas, poorly described protocols, and disagreements among stake-holders frustrated the process and emphasized the ambiguity of the repatriationproject (Nienaber et al., 2008).

National romance with Mapungubwe as heritage has waned in recent years. Thedecision in 2010 to install the Vele coal mine along the park’s border suggests tomany that the government must be reminded of its responsibility to protect itsmaterial heritage (Esterhuysen, 2009; Swanepoel and Schoeman, 2010). At a





provincial level, projects within the park, such as construction of the MapungubweInterpretive Center, have been heavily outsourced to contractors and subcontrac-tors in other provinces, suggesting to Limpopo residents (to whom these jobs wereoriginally promised) that the park and the state have abrogated their responsibil-ities (Meskell, 2011: 232). The electric fence straddling the South Africa/Zimbabweborder in an ideally transfrontier park representing a global and southern Africanheritage is another stark contradiction in the heritage vision.

At this point, it is clear that the image of Mapungubwe as a unifying touchstonefor South African pride bears little resemblance to the on-site reality. Within thisheritage project, archaeology has occupied varied positions. Although somearchaeologists have cooperated with park initiatives, this is not to say that archae-ological research has tracked government policy. Ubuntu rhetoric implies a social‘flattening’, conjuring images of past and present pan-African egalitarianism, whicharchaeological evidence of social stratification at Mapungubwe contradicts. In2010, the Association for Southern African Professional Archaeologists circulateda ballot to obtain an interdict against the Vele mine development rights granted bythe Department of Minerals to COAL of Africa. Archaeologists have also under-taken community outreach projects independent of SANParks.4

However, aspects of the heritage project at Mapungubwe are, in a sense, mate-rialized in the archaeological discussions available for consumption. Literature forthe public at Mapungubwe is minimal and provides limited perspectives on thesite’s archaeology (Huffman, 2005). Workbooks from SANParks Kids in Parksprogram offer little discussion of Mapungubwe’s history and instead direct atten-tion to the (less controversial) value of Mapungubwe’s biodiversity. A comic bookproduced by the Mapungubwe Museum at the University of Pretoria and distrib-uted by SANParks offers a romanticized account of the site’s ‘rediscovery’ and aconjectured scene from Mapungubwe foregrounding the much-contested goldenartifacts. It concludes with the curator of the Mapungubwe Museum exhorting asangoma (traditional healer) to allow that the Museum, not community stake-holders, is best qualified to protect Mapungubwe’s heritage (Tiley-Nel andBuchanan, nd).

Turning to the classroom, Mapungubwe has recently been included in thenational curriculum. These modules emphasize Mapungubwe’s technological andeconomic prowess, and propose archaeology as a more ‘real’ way of investigatinghistory, offering case studies of historical events grounded in ‘actual’ places andthings. Such modules have been described as ‘fuzzy’ and ‘unchallenging’, empha-sizing nation-building over skill-building, and further glossing past conflicts infavor of triumphalist readings of history (Rostron, 1999).

In these archaeological experiences, Mapungubwe’s mufuvha board barely fig-ures. A partial explanation is that simply naming this feature is a political state-ment: the term mufuvha is traditionally Venda and its use implies a political choicethat multicultural heritage discourse may wish to avoid. To be sure, the nomen-clature employed in this article, while intended only to maintain uniform terminol-ogy in the literature, is likewise open to charges of partisanship. Further, because

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mufuvha is largely absent from the archaeological record, heritage projects seekingto draw on archaeological assemblages would not have encountered evidence ofmufuvha. The result has been heritage discourses that not only omit mufuvha, butthat may be unaware of this omission.

Revisiting Mapungubwe

My intent in the preceding discussion has been to lay the groundwork for anargument that the mufuvha’s absence from the officially sanctioned Mapungubwenarrative, and the subsequent inclusion of this narrative in problematic heritageexperiences, has produced an ambivalent vision of Mapungubwe. Furthermore,when vernacular experience fails to find purchase in these archaeological records,the result is alienation from the archaeological past. A reason for public fixation onthe mufuvha board is now apparent: it is one of the few objects at Mapungubwethat is not implicated in these marginalizing processes. Stahl (2001: 25) writes ofhistorical narratives fraught with silences, moments when those empowered towrite them could not or did not conceive a space in their accounts for certainaspects of Africa’s past. The mufuvha board represents one such silence, as theobject, neglected in scholarship and heritage rhetoric, has become an active partof localized imaginings. At Mapungubwe, we are witnessing a process in which thepublic is drawing archaeological features into the vernacular without archaeolo-gists’ imprimatur. These alternative archaeologies do not sensationalize or confab-ulate, but articulate a space in archaeological conversations that has hitherto beeninaccessible.

Beyond relating the shortcomings of the heritage project at Mapungubwe, how-ever, I consider an approach that permits examination of multiple local contextswhile investigating both the site and its current imaginings. Continuing on,I explore the history and archaeology of Mapungubwe using the mufuvha boardas an ‘analytical anchor’ (cf. Weiss, 2005), thus allowing me to excavate knowl-edges of this object (and of the site) through time and bring them into dialogue withone another.

Another Mapungubwe

Tshifena Secondary School lies in the area southeast of Mapungubwe oftenreferred to as ‘Venda’. Tshifena spent much time and money planning its visit toMapungubwe and arrived with a clear mandate for the 20 hand-picked, upper levelstudents present. The principal himself conducted the visit, looking over students’shoulders to ensure they were completing the questionnaire that he had prepared.The questions included: Do you identify yourself with the community that isdirectly linked to the heritage site? Identify and write down any noticeable objectthat confirms the culture of the community (claiming to be) linked to the site. Doyou consider the site a genuine representation of the community in question?





The principal explained that he was demonstrating that while everything in thestudents’ lives is dictated by western influences (especially those introduced byMbeki), the students were ultimately shaped by their history, and thatMapungubwe was, above all else, Venda heritage. When the students were takenup Mapungubwe Hill, he described how the previous year’s reburial was botched,with the bodies buried in the wrong position, how it was incomplete without theoriginal artifacts, and why excavations should halt. His finale involved the mufuvhaboard, demonstrating that this proved Venda connection to Mapungubwe, as stu-dents could still see men playing mufuvha in places like Thohoyandou.

In this alternative archaeology, the principal (in the same vocabulary asMapungubwe’s early excavators) focused on identifying the ethnicity of past inhab-itants, selecting the mufuvha board, the original position of the buried humanremains, and traditional association of Venda peoples to the site as evidence. Hefound the discussion of Mapungubwe within the national educational curriculumunsatisfactory, neither illuminating the archaeological process nor depicting aMapungubwe recognizable to him or his students. For him, the question ofwhether Mapungubwe represented the students’ community centered not on thearchaeological finds that received the most scholarly or media attention, but ratheron the mufuvha board (Figure 2).

While at the time the game served partly as a rhetorical device, the relationshipbetween archaeology, ethnicity, and mufuvha is part of a long-standing conversa-tion in black South African communities that manifested itself during the

Figure 2. Mapungubwe’s mufuvha board. Photo by author.

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Tshifena visit. In the Soutpansberg Mountains, for example, mufuvha has been acontentious issue between black and white settler communities, specifically overtrekker narratives. In his historical and archaeological account of Schoemansdal, aGreat Trek settlement, Sidney Miller (1993) treats white history and ‘the BlackFactor’ (Die Swart Faktor) separately, describing how whites relied on blacks forlabor, but neglecting African material culture found in excavations atSchoemansdal. The Schoemansdal Museum, in its Venda Exhibition, displays itsown mufuvha board and alleges that the Venda imported mufuvha from GreatZimbabwe. The artifact is unprovenanced and black visitors have accused curatorsof retrospectively imposing these stories and ethnic identifications on the exhibit,emphasizing migration stories to justify trekker mythologies (Mulaudzi, 2007: 39).

The reaction of Limpopo’s black public to such accounts has been to re-appro-priate the material culture implicated therein, using it as a rallying point for renew-ing pride in their history. In his review of Venda’s musical history, Kruger (1999:footnote 75) notes that an association for mufuvha and morabaraba was formed in1996 and sponsored competitions wherein the goal was for the winner to ‘put ourcultural heritage on the map’. Taking advantage of the space in Mbeki’s Africanistrhetoric for crafting indigenous identities, educational scholars have argued forusing indigenous games such as mufuvha and its various regional permutationsto provide an African perspective on mathematics and science (Mosimege, 2000;Nkopodi and Mosimege, 2009; Rambane and Mashige, 2007).

This is not to suggest that mufuvha forms the basis for a cohesive Venda culturalfront. Mapungubwe stakeholders identify (or self-identify) on the basis of ethnicityfragmented along numerous nuanced socioeconomic and ethnic lines, and all havecomposed archaeologies of Mapungubwe from various lines of evidence. AsTrouillot (1997: 26–7) observes, historical narratives are not circumscribed by asingle historian or framework, but rather consist of ‘bundles of silences’ (akin tothe archaeological silences described earlier), uniquely constituted and requiringspecific deconstruction.

Returning to the Tshifena principal, his account partly intended to establish theprimacy of his constituency at Mapungubwe, and thus its entitlement to benefitsthereby accrued. Discussion of past ethnic differentiation at Mapungubwe (e.g.Calabrese, 2000a) was therefore dismissed. Other vernacular narratives similarlyfavor certain lines of evidence. The Vhangona Cultural Movement has marshaledlinguistic evidence to demonstrate that only they can interpret the etymology of thename ‘Mapungubwe’ relative to other archaeological finds: under their interpreta-tion, the name references goldworking, which better relates to the archaeologicalassemblage than the common translation of ‘hill of the jackals’. Vhatwanamba oraltraditions refer to social stratification at Mapungubwe as the historical basis fortheir present social structure. Furthermore, as part of the consultation for thereburial process, the Mapungubwe Steering Committee (which includes represen-tatives of these and other stakeholder groups) allowed special studies of the humanremains, including radio-carbon dating, DNA analysis, and stable isotope analysis.In particular, the Lemba Cultural Association requested DNA analysis to





determine the genetic affiliation of the remains, but became disinterested on real-izing that this was unfeasible (Nienaber et al., 2008: 166, 169).

There is also an exclusionary element to these archaeologies, as claims to pri-macy or ownership rely on exclusion to validate them (Appadurai, 2001: 44–5,Hodder, 2008: 199). The Letshiba and Vhatwanamba claim an ancestral relation-ship to one another but the efforts of each to justify their rights to Mapungubwehave resulted in narratives that gloss over or even disavow these associations tostrengthen their respective positions. Indeed, the period preceding the wholesaleexpulsion of black residents within the present borders of Mapungubwe NationalPark, resulting in the wide dispersal of stakeholder groups seen today (Bonner andCarruthers, 2003), is often glossed over in favor of accounts highlighting the his-torical ‘intactness’ of a stakeholder. The potential inclusion of the modern Shonaas stakeholders by virtue of their possible ancestral connection to Mapungubwe(Manyanga, 2007) is almost never mentioned (Chirikure et al., 2010: 35). Mufuvhais included in these exclusionary accounts. The Letshiba and Vhangona have sug-gested that because mufuvha embodies a distinctly Venda heritage, and because theLemba have claimed origins elsewhere, the mufuvha board at Mapungubwe refutesLemba claims to the site.

These archaeologies referencing mufuvha undoubtedly have more complexdimensions than can be adequately explored here. Van Binsbergen (1996) likensplaying mancala (a related game) to a form of divination, confronting and manip-ulating time. Following Straight’s (2005) study of the similar ntotoi game as‘memory performance’ among the Samburu of East Africa, mufuvha in the presentor recent past could itself be a locus of historical production (including remember-ing and forgetting), which has particular resonance with archaeological narrativesin which mufuvha is implicated.

Finally, while mutually cross-cutting and contradictory, the narratives discussedhere have a common element: they demand recognition of political identities poten-tially obscured under the generalized heading of ‘stakeholders’ or ‘communities’.Mapungubwe’s mufuvha board provides an ideal opportunity to take advantage ofthe multicultural political economy offered by heritage projects (cf. Clifford, 2004:8). Furthermore, mufuvha is an aspect of the black South African past that has notbeen mediated by archaeologists or heritage rhetoric: because it has been so widelyoverlooked, the game is unassociated with the ‘tight parcelling of Iron Age infor-mation’ (Hall, 1990: 64) and has never been wrapped in the idioms of archaeolog-ical research and heritage agendas.

Thus, the corollary of making archaeological finds available to various publics isthat they become part of the archaeological dialogue – at times overtly so, at othersmore subtly and unpredictably.

A re-excavation

Where does this leave us as archaeologists? Being aware of the ramifications of thearchaeological process offers little guidance on how to proceed. Taking a cue from

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indigenous archaeology theorists (cf. Atalay, 2006; Colwell-Chanthaphonh andFerguson, 2004; Watkins, 2000), it could prove illuminating to approach thearchaeological site not as answering a pre-fabricated set of questions within awestern empirical framework, but as a collaborative venture between archaeolo-gists and non-archaeologists (cf. Lane, 2011). In this case, the limited ethnogra-phies that I collected revealed an aspect of Mapungubwe’s material culture thathad largely been excluded from the written record. In this section, I propose anarchaeological interpretation of Mapungubwe’s mufuvha board and bring it intodialogue with the Iron Age research corpus.

Taking mufuvha as part of an ongoing ‘culture-in-the-making’ allows an under-standing of change and continuity. Doing so without direct historical analogyavoids conveying a sense of timelessness (Stahl, 1994). Therefore, identifyingpoints of comparison between ethnographic, historical, and archaeological sources(cf. Stahl, 2001; Wylie, 1989) permits a comparative view of long-term history thatconsiders multiple actors in the socio-historical process.

Modern ethnography tells that only men are allowed to play mufuvha, a tradi-tion that apparently holds true for almost the entire range of the game’s distribu-tion, which includes the African subcontinent and parts of east and west Africa (DeVoogt, 1999; Townshend, 1979). Informants have told me that it is now associatedwith gambling, with wagers varying from money to beer. There is no single set ofrules and each board is different, but games are always swift and involve capturingopponents’ pieces to win (Nkopodi and Mosimege, 2009). In Basotho oral poetry,there are strong associations between morabaraba and cattle herding or stealing,whether because the game is symbolic of herding or because it is a pastime ofherders is unclear (Coplan, 1987: 18–19).

Historical sources (and I treat past ethnography as historical to avoid‘stretching’ the ethnographic present) also maintain a connection between mufuvhaand cattle. Blacking (1964: 32, 1969: 241) describes how among Venda herders,younger boys must tend to the animals while older boys play mufuvha and super-vise, implicating the game in a power structure of this ‘micro-society’. Van der Vliet(1974: 221) supports Blacking’s hint that mufuvha shapes boys’ culture, while in thesame volume Shaw (1974: 111–12) dismisses it as a quaint activity where the gamepieces represent ‘men’ as in chess.

Archaeologically, it is difficult to bring the mufuvha board into dialogue with theother finds at Mapungubwe, or indeed with ethnographic or historical sources, andso what I propose here is a possible interpretation rather than a probable one. Theboard’s stratigraphic location is unknown: while Fouche (1937) and Gardner(1955, 1958) trenched in its general vicinity, neither they nor Van Riet Lowe(1936) in his official synopsis of the early excavations mention it. It is possiblethat either their trenches did not uncover it, or they simply did not record itsfind. The first record of it is in a note by Huffman (1982: 144), but without pro-venience, and later references are also in passing (Huffman, 1986c, 2005: 44).Furthermore, I am loath to impute the same symbolism attached to the gametoday to the board at Mapungubwe. Thus, addressing mufuvha as a platform for





a set of social actions rather than as symbolic habitus provides a compelling modeof enquiry.

Huffman (2005: 44) describes the mufuvha board as being placed ‘in front of thepalace’ atop Mapungubwe Hill, and so it is reasonable to begin with the assump-tion that the board was roughly contemporary with elite settlement there. Huffmandescribes the game as a pastime of those guarding elites, but this overlooks the factthat this is an object carved into a space at the top of a social hierarchy. Such apermanent alteration to this significant space cannot be overlooked, nor can it bearbitrarily dismissed.

As an object through which members of a society (or ‘micro-society’) interactthrough repeated games, one can consider mufuvha as implicated in enacting andre-enacting a set of rules and regulations. While Huffman (2005: 44) has suggestedthat the game was used by the guards of Mapungubwe’s elites, for the purposesof this discussion and to accommodate the limited data available, I choose toexamine the possibility that the game was played by all those atop the Hill, includ-ing elites.

Following Giddens (1984: 14–16), recursive behavior constitutes a ‘dialectic ofcontrol’, producing power relations between agents capable of ‘making a differ-ence’ to a pre-existing state of affairs. Power is thus not constituted by accumulat-ing resources but rather by enacting rules (cf. Miller and Tilley, 1984). Structuringand repeating such rules conveys to these agents an ‘ontological security’ (Giddens,1984: 23) that is particularly necessary during the longue duree of an institution orcomplex political entity, not only for those in the upper political echelons but alsoin the lower.

Objects can ‘naturalize’ power and authority (Hodder, 1982, 1984) and wheremeaning and memory are anchored in these objects, they may be involved in heg-emonic projects (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983) and in projects that assert theexistence of lifeworlds outside the remit of those atop a social hierarchy(Meskell, 2004). The act of playing mufuvha in such a politically charged spacethus becomes a way for multiple actors, elites and non-elites, to negotiate powerrelations. It is possible to imagine how, in each game played, elites could enact andre-affirm their hegemony, and non-elites (soldiers and those providing immediateand essential services for elites) could share practices, norms, values, and discourseswhile affirming their personal lifeworlds in Habermasian fashion (Meskell, 2004:167). The ‘ontological security’ thus engendered is especially significant given thechanging social dynamics of the Shashe-Limpopo Basin from AD 1220–1290.

While Mapungubwe’s origin and decline remain incompletely understood, thetransition from its predecessor site, K2, occurred suddenly between AD 1220 and1230. The Hill was not a major occupation center until after 1250, implying a build-up of factors that led to social stratification in the Southern Terrace and surround-ing landscape (Meyer, 2000). Although many include integration in the IndianOcean trade network and climate change in these factors (Huffman, 2009b),Pikirayi (2001: 112) argues that meeting local economic needs was a prerequisitefor these circumstances. This may have begun at K2, as the increased cattle wealth

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in surrounding settlements was concurrent with population growth and was pos-sibly associated with reconfiguring the social value of cattle, leading to the aban-donment of K2’s central kraal as an expression of this social shift (Huffman, 2009b:43).

As part of the ‘socioecology of agricultural production’ (Hassan, 1988), socialconnections among cattle owners developed and, in some cases, were strategicallyexploited to allow certain lineages to gain control over pastoral and agriculturalwealth and, eventually, over goods associated with coastal trade (Hall, 1987a).Thus, Pikirayi’s (2001: 113) thesis is that the people of the Shashe-Limpoporegion at this time were part of a social system naturally inclined toward allowinghierarchies to form, a feature enhanced by the region’s resources and location incoastal trade networks.

This is not to suggest that Mapungubwe’s population was unaffected by envi-ronmental and external social forces. Huffman (2008, 2009a, 2009b), drawing onSchoeman’s (2006) archaeological identification of rain-places, argues that regionaldrought between AD 1200 and 1250, combined with emerging social ideologies,allowed rain-makers to solidify sacred leadership and thus produce a more central-ized state (see also Murimbika, 2006). Evidence of various non-domestic foodexploitation strategies from Malumba and Mwenezi Farm, neighboringcontemporaries of Mapungubwe, support the idea that populations were strugglingto cope with a drier environment at this time (Manyanga et al., 2000; see alsoHolmgren et al., 2001; O’Connor and Kiker, 2004).

Metallurgy was also likely tied to emerging sociopolitical complexity, particu-larly involving gold possibly obtained from local alluvium or Zimbabwean mines(Mitchell, 2002: 305). Miller (2001) has demonstrated that metal-working yieldedgold, iron, and copper jewelry, especially atop the Hill. Related to this isCalabrese’s (2000b) argument that political leadership and its associated beliefswere tied to tightly controlled metal-production (Mitchell and Whitelaw, 2005:238–9), thus supporting Huffman’s (1996: 189) contention that the golden rhinoc-eros found on the Hill symbolized leadership.

As Mapungubwe rose to the top of a five-tier settlement system including smal-ler settlements and elite contemporaries such as Mapela, Little Muck, andMmamgwa Hill (Huffman, 1986c), it formed part of a prestige goods system(Mitchell, 2002: 306): cattle and military service flowed in to Mapungubwe andglass beads (especially distinctive Garden Rollers; see Wood, 2000), cloth, andother goods flowed out to regional centers (Hall, 1987a).

That is not to say that Mapungubwe controlled its regional contemporariesabsolutely. In the Kalahari, Reid and Segobye (2000) have drawn attention tothe low concentration of Mapungubwe-derived beads along with possible coastaltrade involving salt, hides, ivory, and ostrich eggshell beads to demonstrate that theeast coast trading network operated outside of Mapungubwe’s direct control.Denbow et al. (2008) suggest that, while enjoying contact with Mapungubwe andshared trade connections, Bosutswe, at the eastern edge of the Kalahari, was notdependent upon these: the settlement experienced growth and changes in social





complexity until c.AD 1650, in part through establishing cultural contacts with theOkavango region and Zimbabwe and Khami settlements to the northeast.

Further elaborating on Mapungubwe’s social landscape, Hall and Smith (2000)suggest that around the beginning of Mapungubwe’s occupation, foragers were stillpresent in the region but were increasingly cut out of barter arrangements andforced to the social and spatial peripheries, where the rock art in Salt Panand Little Muck Shelters attest to struggles for control among foragers, herders,and farmers (cf. Meyer, 1998). Of particular interest here is a mankala board foundat Little Muck, dated to Zhizo or Leopard’s Kopje periods and ethnographi-cally associated with farmers, which may further demonstrate these farming com-munities’ extensive appropriation of the landscape from foragers (Hall and Smith,2000: 37).

Despite these changes in social relationships and economy, augmented by pres-sure from climatic changes, Mitchell (2002: 307) notes that scant evidence of pop-ular resistance has been identified (but see Kim and Kusimba, 2008). I submit thatgenerating the ‘ontological security’ mentioned earlier, while not direct resistance,could have constituted a means of coping with the changes taking place atMapungubwe, which, although occurring over a relatively short period of time,were intense and pervasive. Validating the past is the surest means of finding secu-rity in the future, and this could be done through the kind of recursive behaviorentailed on a small scale in mufuvha. For those who played it, mufuvha might havebecome part of their material habitus that enabled them to negotiate power and tochallenge change through repetitive practice.

Concluding thoughts

In this article, I have demonstrated that there is no clear distinction between ‘prac-tice’ and ‘social practice’ in archaeology (contra Huffman, 2004: 66). I haveaddressed archaeological practice as a socio-historical process that may producesilences in the archaeological record (as with the mufuvha board); however, asarchaeology is foremost grounded in material culture, these silences can potentiallybe revisited and revised.

I take the case of mufuvha as an example of one such revision: once incorporatedinto the archaeological record, it is possible to conceive of the object not simply asa physical feature of Mapungubwe, but as an integral part of a landscape com-posed of multiple transformative acts, and therefore of multiple realities extendingbeyond our spatiotemporal demarcation of an archaeological past (cf. Lefebvre,1991; Lazzari, 2008: 648–9). As such, we can begin to imagine Mapungubwe as alandscape that does not simply represent a remembered past but, for many in thepresent, is that memory (Kuchler, 1993; Van Dyke and Alcock, 2003; Rubertone,2008), whether through direct links to an ancestral past (cf. Schmidt, 2010) orthrough more amorphous connections to a mythologized history (cf. Gosdenand Lock, 1998).

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Acknowledgements

I thank Sibongile Masuku Van Damme, Edgar Neluvhalani, Tshimangadzo Nemaheni,Paballo Mohafa, Gideon Mkwena, Cedric Sethlako, Alie Hayani Chauke, Antonia

Bezuidenhout, Ben Smith, Thembi Russell, Geoff Blundell, and Amanda Esterhuysen fortheir insights and conversation. Thanks also to Lindsay Weiss and two anonymous reviewersfor comments on versions of this article. I am grateful to Peter Mitchell for his guidance andthoughtful discussions. I especially thank Lynn Meskell for her constant support. This

research was made possible by the Stanford Department of Anthropology and by aClarendon Scholarship from Oxford.

Notes

1. The game and its variations are also called morabaraba or mmela by Sotho speakers,umlabalaba by some Nguni speakers, and mancala (mankala) by many historians. Theterm mufuvha is used primarily by Venda speakers and as these were the majority of the

informants interviewed, it is the term that I use here, acknowledging that some mayidentify this particular board by other names.

2. Although I have attempted to be comprehensive, my subjects do not constitute a ran-

dom or representative sample of stakeholders or the Limpopo public. These inter-views are significant because of the ideas expressed, as opposed to the generality ofthose ideas.

3. The archaeological community has similarly invoked Mapungubwe as symbolic of rebirthand innovation: following exclusion from the World Archaeological Congress (WAC) in1986 in protest against apartheid, South African archaeologists rejoined the Congress in1994 and hosted WAC4 in Cape Town in 1998, where Mapungubwe goldwork (including

the golden rhinoceros) was implicated in signifying a turning point in the political pres-ence of archaeology (White, 1999).

4. For example http://blogs.up.ac.za/mapungubwe.php

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Author Biography

Rachel King is a PhD candidate in Archaeology at Oxford University.

King 333




Archaeological naissance at Mapungubwe

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