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Published:
Jan 10, 2022Keywords:
abandonment, droughts, ethnic interaction, Mapungubwe landscape, population dynamics
Article Details
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Research Letter
Copyright is retained by the authors who grant the publisher, the Academy of Science of South Africa, a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide licence to publish their work.
Main Article Content
New AMS dates for the Middle Iron Age in the Mapungubwe landscape
Thomas N. Huffman
Stephan Woodborne
Abstract
Research in the Limpopo Valley has documented over 500 Middle Iron Age sites (AD 900–1320) relevant to the origins of Mapungubwe – the capital of the first indigenous state in southern Africa. Fifteen new accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dates from 11 of these archaeological sites establish the boundaries of the ceramic facies that form the culture-history framework for such diverse topics as land use, ethnic stratification, population dynamics and rainfall fluctuations. Mapungubwe was abandoned at about AD 1320.
Significance:
- Because Mapungubwe developed relatively recently (circa AD 1200), it can clarify the origins of older states.
- Environmental factors such as droughts, along with agriculture and trade, played a role in the abandonment of Mapungubwe.
