The permanent population in the surrounding valley numbered between 3,000 and 6,000 people; at its height, Great Zimbabwe itself may have had a population between 12,000 and 15,000 people (Ndoro 1997). The site occupies about 1,800 acres and consists of three main parts—the Hill Complex, the Great Enclosure, and the Valley Ruins (Ndoro 1997). The stone walls, rising up to 11 meters, were not constructed according to a preconceived plan. Instead, workers built and expanded walls as the need arose, creating an organic settlement plan.

The Hill Complex occupies the top of the granite hill that dominates the site. This area was inhabited dating to the early Iron Age, before the use of dry stone walling. Sophisticated engineering techniques were employed to stabilize the walls in the complex on the uneven granite boulders that were incorporated into the architecture. The Great Enclosure is located in the valley and includes a 178-meter-long outer wall and an interior conical tower, decorated with stones in a chevron-and-checker pattern. The Valley Ruins are located between the Hill Complex and Great Enclosure and consist of several individual enclosures with parallel passages connecting them (Ndoro 1997).

Erosion has been a problem at the site since Hall’s excavations in 1902, when large soil deposits were removed without backfilling, and it has been made worse by reconstruction efforts that entailed the removal of earthen structures and archaeological deposits surrounding the stone walls. In the 1950s all wooden structural elements were removed for carbon dating, resulting in further damage. Future efforts at the site include the preservation of fragile stone architecture, a more accurate restoration of material remains, and the integration of the Shona’s historical beliefs into the official literature interpreting the site for visitors (Ndoro 1994).

Thalia Gray

References

Callahan, B. 1998. “Early African History through the Era of the Slave Trade.” Image Archive. Available at http://www.virginia.edu/˜history/courses/fall.98/hiaf201/imagearchive/zimbabwe.html

Chipunza, K. T. 1997. A Diachronic Analysis of the Standing Structures of the Hill Complex at Great Zimbabwe, pp. 125–142. In Caves, Monuments and Texts: Zimbabwean Archaeology Today. Ed. Gilbert Pwiti. Studies in African Archaeology 14. Uppsala, Sweden.

The Lost City of Zimbabwe. 1993. Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities and Sciences. (Distributed by Devillier/Donegan Enterprises.)

Mahachi, G., and W. Ndoro. 1997. The Socio-Political Context of Southern African Iron Age Studies with Special Reference to Great Zimbabwe, pp. 89–108. In Caves, Monuments and Texts: Zimbabwean Archaeology Today. Ed. Gilbert Pwiti. Studies in African Archaeology 14. Uppsala, Sweden.

Ndoro, W. 1994. “The Preservation and History of Great Zimbabwe.” Antiquity 68: 616–623.

———. 1997. The Evolution of a Management Policy at Great Zimbabwe, pp. 89–124. In Caves, Monuments and Texts: Zimbabwean Archaeology Today. Ed. Gilbert Pwiti. Studies in African Archaeology 14. Uppsala, Sweden.

Pwiti, G. 1996. “Let the Ancestors Rest in Peace? New Challenges for Cultural Heritage Management in Zimbabwe.” Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites 1: 151–160.

Greece

The astonishing wealth of archaeological material found in Greece over the last 300 years has provided something of interest to virtually everyone that has seen it, and the precise nature of that interest has varied greatly according to the culture and personality of the viewer. Art historians from Enlightenment Europe, intellectuals from a newly independent Greece, U.S. university professors between the two world wars, and the local schoolchildren and foreign tourists of today have all looked for different archaeologies of Greece, and so far, Greece has always been able to provide them.

The history of archaeology in Greece has often been told from the point of view of the