Great Zimbabwe

Shadreck Chirikure is a Professor of Archaeology and Director of the Archaeological Materials Laboratory, Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town and British Academy Global Professor, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford.

• Part I: Learning, relearning, and unlearning Great Zimbabwe1: Unveiling a ‘confiscated’ past2: Background to ‘Shona concepts’ and the Great Zimbabwe nyika (territory) 3: Biography of Great Zimbabwe: late 18th to 21st centuries4: Chronology of Great Zimbabwe – relative, absolute, and integratedPart II: Objects, their context, and meaning5: Misha nedzimba: on households and homesteads6: Hari, or pottery7: Crafts, science, technology, and innovation8: Exotics: fame, prestige, and valuePart III: Native cosmologies and ways of knowing9: Rise and decline: resilience of Great Zimbabwe10: Urbanism and statehood11: ‘Reclaimed’ Great Zimbabwe in a wider context: from Egyptian pyramids to decolonised global pasts

‘Shadreck Chirikure deploys decolonial thought and indeed decolonial theory as he delves into indigenous African ideation to decolonize archaeology. What is delivered is a refreshing and indeed original re-reading of Great Zimbabwe and its location in world archaeology. This is indeed a timely and essential book coming out at a moment of insurgent and resurgent planetary decolonization.’ Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Professor and Chair of Epistemologies of the Global South, University of Bayreuth, Germany