After almost three centuries of investigations into the question of what it means to be human and the historical processes of becoming human, archaeologists have amassed a huge volume of data on prehistoric human interactions. One of the largest data sets available is on the global distribution and exchange of materials and commodities. What still remains insufficiently understood is the precise nature of these interactions and their role in shaping the diverse cultures that make up the human family as we know it. A plethora of theoretical models combined with a multitude of methodological approaches exist to explain one important aspect of human interaction—trade—and its role and place in shaping humanity. We argue that trade parallels political, religious, and social processes as one of the most significant factors to have affected our evolution. Here we review published literature on archaeological approaches to trade, including the primitivist-modernist and substantivist-formalist-Marxist debates. We also discuss economic, historical, and ethnographic research that directly addresses the role of traders and trade in both past and contemporary societies. In keeping with the complexities of interaction between trade and other aspects of human behavior, we suggest moving away from the either/or perspective or strong identification with any particular paradigm and suggest a return to the middle through a combinational approach to the study of trade in past societies.

The Archaeology of Trading Systems, Part 1: Towards a New Trade Synthesis

Excavations at the Zimbabwe (enclosure) of Manekweni, in southern coastal Mozambique, have shown that it belongs to the Zimbabwe Culture which was centred on the Rhodesian plateau. Occupation levels have been dated to between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries. The faunal evidence indicates that a section of the population benefited from intensive beef production through transhumant pastoralism on the seasonally-fluctuating fringes of tsetse fly infestation. The settlement pattern of Rhodesian Zimbabwe suggests that their siting was determined by the demands of a similar system of transhumance. This model provides a basis from which to begin to reconstruct some aspects of the economies of early Zimbabwe. It is already clear that Zimbabwe were not simply the products of long-distance trade; rather, their economies integrated farming and cattle-herding as well as gold production and foreign trade.

Pastoralism and Zimbabwe

This article makes two major claims. The first is that independent Botswana was able to generate and sustain a type of developmental state because of the presence of an indigenous initiator state culture that was preserved by the Protectorate state and was inherited by the post-colonial state elites. The second is that the non-emergence of the developmental state in post-colonial Zimbabwe is explained by the presence of a non-initiator indigenous state culture which was preserved by the Rhodesian colonial state and was inherited by the post-colonial state elites. The article briefly reviews the literature, analyses the Tswana and Shona pre-colonial state cultures, and shows that these were preserved by the colonial states and inherited by the nationalist politicians.

State culture and development in Botswana and Zimbabwe

Explanations for the collapse of early states (and complex societies) often assume that they were integrated and stable until something bad happened, usually environmental change or because enemies overwhelmed them. In fact, many of these early states lasted a relatively short time, at least in archaeological reckoning. Others were longer-lived, but struggled to overcome structural weaknesses that eventually resulted in the fragmentation or a large-scale undoing of political orders. Rulers who attempted to institute mechanisms of control often laid the conditions for resistance and the disintegration of their regimes. The central theme of this volume is to undermine some traditional themes that naturalize the state and legitimize its historical claims to permanence.

The Evolution of Fragility: Setting the Terms

From the mid-first millennium ad onwards, southern Africa gradually became enchained to the Indian Ocean rim region, initiating over 1500 years of commodities and values exchange, which linked and transformed not just coastal regions but also their conjoined hinterlands in contrasting ways Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean worlds had varying resource gradients which naturally stimulated conditions for trade and exchange relationships Because of its strategic position, coastal east Africa acted as a conduit which enjoyed benefits from outbound and inbound commercial traffic Whilst a lot of emphasis was traditionally placed on understanding the effect of Indian Ocean connections on coastal communities on the one hand, and hinterland communities on the other, little empirical research has focused on the links between individual coastal regions and their hinterlands The implicit archaeological undercurrent is that the hinterland was always on standby to accept whatever the coast bestowed upon it—making every item of exotic origin a status icon in the interior The popularity of commodities such as glass beads, cowrie shells and copper alloy objects, whose colours were compatible with preexisting cultural logics, when compared with the lack of popularity of imported ceramics, exposes that hinterland communities exercised a great deal of agency when accepting or rejecting inbound values and objects Such selection processes account for why imported ceramics were popular on the coast but failed to appeal to interior populations, where local pottery was deeply wrapped up in transformation, theology and gender relations This paper explores the archaeology of these processes and their consequences, from ad 700 to ca 1700 It shows that whilst imports were incorporated into the hinterland value system, a great deal of continuity and change in selectivity forced the Indian Ocean world to stick to local tastes

Land and Sea Links: 1500 Years of Connectivity Between Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean Rim Regions, ad 700 to 1700

Recent studies by the historians of pre-colonial Africa have tended to assume that external trade has always led to the formation or enlargement of states, and was crucial for the continued existence of these states. An example where an uncritical application of the above ‘trade-stimulus hypothesis’ has led to some distortion of reality has been in the study of the Rozvi empire in Southern Rhodesia in the eighteenth century. Previous students of the Rozvi empire have claimed that the latter was such a loosely connected tribal confederacy that its internal power bases—given as military and religious—were politically so slender that on their own they could not have sustained whatever power the Rozvi ruler wielded. Instead, it is said that the main source of the power exercised by the Rozvi Mambo came mainly from the latter's ability to redistribute the profits of external trade, especially that of the gold trade of which he is said to have had a strictly enforced monopoly.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0021853700013542

S.I.G. Mudenge

Papers

The role of foreign trade in the Rozvi empire: A reappraisal