Glass beads first appear in the archaeological record of southern Africa around the mid-first millennium CE, marking the earliest signatures of extensive connections between the southern African region, the East African coast, and the broader Indian Ocean rim. Key research focused on glass beads, particularly from notable southern African polities, like the renowned Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe sites, has laid the groundwork for a regional taxonomic series of these beads, emphasizing their role as indicators of wealth and social status. This paper introduces new data on 59 glass beads from a recently excavated and lesser-known Zimbabwe culture site in the Mberengwa region of south-central Zimbabwe. The analysis employs non-invasive techniques, including typological classification and laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS). The investigation identifies six glass bead series from Chumnungwa, composed of plant ash-lime (v-Na-Ca), vegetable soda-high alumina (v-Na-Al), and soda-based glasses with high-alumina concentrations (m-Na-Al). These beads, widely distributed in Asia and Africa between the eight and seventeenth centuries, shed new light on the geochemistry, provenance, and circulation patterns of glass beads in southern Africa, particularly within a community situated beyond the well-known Iron Age polities. Notably, Chumnungwa emerges as the first known Zimbabwe culture site in southern Africa to yield m-Na-Al 6 glass beads. However, as recently demonstrated at the Toutswe sites in Botswana, it is probable that other Zimbabwe culture sites in the region also possessed m-Na-Al 6 glass beads. These beads may have been misclassified as m-Na-Al 2 glass since this group was only recently unveiled on the East African coast, after the bulk of the currently available literature had been published. Insights drawn from contextual recovery data and Shona anthropology form the basis for an extended discussion on the consumption and sociality of glass beads in Iron Age southern Africa. Ultimately, the study underscores the challenge of typologically categorizing beads into established series without the application of LA-ICP-MS and other scientific approaches.

When established, bloomery iron smelting profoundly transformed farming communities that settled in Africa south of the Sahara. Sustained research in the Lowveld region of northern South Africa identified multifarious evidence of metal working dating to the Early Iron Age (Common Era 200-900). Not surprisingly, the region is celebrated in oral traditions, myths, legends, and other reservoirs of local knowledge for its highly skilled metallurgists who reduced exceptionally rich magnetite (Fe3O4) and hematite (Fe2O3) ores at locales such as Tshimbupfe, Tshirululuni, Vuu, Thomo, and Thengwe. However, the technology of iron smelting and how the smelted iron (Fe) transformed producer and user communities in the region is a subject that, until recently, attracted limited archaeometallurgical work. We present the results of archaeometallurgical analyses of iron production remains from Mutoti 2 using complementary macroscopic (physical examination), microstructural (Optical Microscopy), and compositional techniques (WD-XRF). The results show that the technology of iron smelting fitted within the bloomery method. However, the quantities of iron production remains at the site suggest a scale and organization of production geared for needs beyond single villages. This embedded first-millennium CE iron production into the socio-economic, political, and environmental transformations that shaped the political economy of farming communities of the time.

Before now, historiographies and archival accounts of African innovations have often been told from mainly a Western and Eurocentric perspective. This chapter aims to expand this argument. It does this through a philosophical appraisal of the trajectory of progression in the traditional architectural designs and building technologies in the pre-colonial Vhavenda communities. This means exploring the scientific bases behind the progression of the different shapes and forms of the architectural designs and the building technology in the traditional Vhavenda communities. What counts is not whether these progressions have followed a Eurocentric notion of science, but rather unearthing the local rationale within which they are justified, and are hence ought to be regarded as “science.” Following these objectives, two questions are very important: (1) What are the major changes in the traditional Vhavenda architectural designs and building infrastructures? (2) How are these changes justified within the Vhavenda indigenous knowledge system?

What games did the inhabitants of ancient southern Africa play to enrich their lives during the Iron Age (500-1900 CE)? We address this question by drawing from archaeological fingerprints of board games (tsoro/ mufuvha) documented at farmer and forager sites in different parts of southern Africa. The typology of games and their spatial locations in the archaeology were compared with historical and contemporary gaming in selected African communities to map continuity and change in social significance temporally and spatially. Within limitations imposed by a lack of well-resolved chronologies for the material remains of board games, the comparison provided a platform to make inferences about how and why the games were played in the everyday life of Iron Age communities. Based on the strong correlation between the ethnographic and archaeological data, the conclusion of the paper is that board games were played for edutainment, skills development, gambling, and social engineering. However, this is tentative and opens possibilities for further research into the role of indigenous games in the development of ancient southern African communities.

Throughout the world, the entanglement of humans and landscapes varies from area to area depending on the time scale. In southern Africa, the impact of humanity on the physical environment is largely discussed in the context of modern rural and urban societies, and, usually, most contributions come from human geography, agriculture, and earth sciences. Very limited research is usually extended into the deep past, yet the archaeological record is replete with valuable information that gives a long-time depth of past human land use practices. Consequently, the contribution of the physical environment to the development of complexity over time remains poorly understood in most parts of Iron Age (CE 200–1900) southern Zambezia, particularly in Mberengwa and other gold-belt territories that have often received cursory research attention. What remains obscured is how did inhabitants of these gold-belt territories transform their landscapes in the long and short-term and how did these transformations intersect with their everyday lives? In this study, we combined archaeological, historical, and anthropological data of the Zimbabwe tradition societies that lived in ancient Mberengwa to probe these issues. The preliminary outcome suggests that despite vulnerability to high temperatures, tsetse-flies, and low rainfall, Later Iron Age societies that inhabited this gold belt territory were innovative risk-takers who successfully adapted a mix of land use practices to achieve longevity in settlement and prosperity in agropastoralism, mining, crafting, and much more. This proffers useful lessons on sustainable land use. Hopefully, with modification to suit the present, such solutions may help policy makers and modern societies living in similar environments to combat current global challenges related to environmental change.

"Archaeology and archaeometallurgy in Limpopo Province, South Africa: case studies of the Early Iron Age sites of Mutoti and Thomo." Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, 56(2), p. 280