Ingombe Ilede and the demise of Great Zimbabwe

Antiquity ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 91 (358) ◽  
pp. 1085-1086 ◽  
Author(s):  
Innocent Pikirayi
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Human Mobility ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Spatial Features ◽  
South Central ◽  
Great Zimbabwe ◽  
Regional Population ◽  
New Research

Although new research suggests multi-directional trajectories in the development of the Zimbabwe Tradition (see Chirikure et al. 2016), regional population shifts need not be discounted, as some of these generated states (e.g. Vigneswaran & Quirk 2015). Oral-historical data from northern Zimbabwe counters persistent but often misleading views of pre-colonial states in south-central Africa as exercising power over static and stationary populations (Pikirayi 1993). Rather, human mobility shaped, among other things, the Zimbabwe Culture's spatial features, its strategies for accumulating power and managing resources, and the regional political, social and economic actors to which it was connected. This occurred with the demise of Great Zimbabwe from the second half of the fifteenth century and for much of the sixteenth. Ingombe Ilede attests to post mid fifteenth-century regional shifts in patterns of trade that would lure the Portuguese to south-central Africa from the early sixteenth century onwards. The Zambezi became the preferred inland route. Great Zimbabwe's expansionary thrusts to control this trade undermined its own political control over the southern Zimbabwe plateau, as this spawned new political formations like the Mwene Mutapa state and other polities, including Ingombe Ilede.

Great Zimbabwe: The Iron Age in South Central Africa

1996 ◽  
Vol 51 (164) ◽  
pp. 119
Author(s):  
Tom Huffman ◽  
J. O. Vogel
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
South Central ◽  
Great Zimbabwe

Local Narratives, Regional Histories, and the Demise of Great Zimbabwe

2019 ◽  
pp. 131-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Innocent Pikirayi
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
The North ◽  
Great Zimbabwe ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Local Narratives ◽  
Regional Histories ◽  
Written Sources

Archaeologists struggle to understand the demise of Great Zimbabwe because of poor appreciation of local and regional histories of the southern Zimbabwe plateau, post-fifteenth century. Listening to some of these extant regional histories and living narratives is key to understanding developments around Great Zimbabwe from the sixteenth century onwards. The focus in this chapter is on two sites, Boroma, a toponym east of Great Zimbabwe, and Chizhou Hill, some 80 kilometers to the north. In sixteenth-century Portuguese accounts, "Burrom" (Boroma) is presented as a prince in charge of a 'fortress' whose location coincides with Great Zimbabwe. Local narratives and indigenous histories collected from villagers near Chizhou Hill, as well as documented written sources, connect the site to the resettlement of the area by migrants from the Mutapa State in northern Zimbabwe. Combined, both sites attest to a complex process leading to the demise of Great Zimbabwe and its culture from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.

Islamic Monuments as Christian Trophies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Urquízar-Herrera
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Medieval Chronicles ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Rodrigo Jimenez De Rada ◽  
The Way

Chapter 3 approaches the notion of trophy through historical accounts of the Christianization of the Córdoba and Seville Islamic temples in the thirteenth-century and the late-fifteenth-century conquest of Granada. The first two examples on Córdoba and Seville are relevant to explore the way in which medieval chronicles (mainly Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and his entourage) turned the narrative of the Christianization of mosques into one of the central topics of the restoration myth. The sixteenth-century narratives about the taking of the Alhambra in Granada explain the continuity of this triumphal reading within the humanist model of chorography and urban eulogy (Lucius Marineus Siculus, Luis de Mármol Carvajal, and Francisco Bermúdez de Pedraza).

Literary Conduits for ‘Consent’

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 322-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pankaj Kumar Jha
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
North India ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
The North ◽  
Literary Cultures

The making of the imperial subjects is as much a matter of historical process as the emergence of the empire. In the case of the Mughal state, this process started much before its actual establishment in the sixteenth century. The fifteenth century in North India was a period of unusual cultural ferment. The emergence of the Mughal imperial formation in the next century was intimately related to the fast congealing tendency of the north Indian society towards greater disciplining of itself. This tendency is evident in the multilingual literary cultures and diverse knowledge formations of the long fifteenth century.

Public and Private: The Late Medieval Wall Paintings of Haddon Hall Chapel, Derbyshire

2006 ◽  
Vol 86 ◽  
pp. 179-205
Author(s):  
Mellie Naydenova
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Wall Paintings ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Public Statement ◽  
The Public ◽  
Parish Church ◽  
Public Persona ◽  
Private Devotion

This paper focuses on the mural scheme executed in Haddon Hall Chapel shortly after 1427 for Sir Richard Vernon. It argues that at that time the chapel was also being used as a parish church, and that the paintings were therefore both an expression of private devotion and a public statement. This is reflected in their subject matter, which combines themes associated with popular beliefs, the public persona of the Hall's owner and the Vernon family's personal devotions. The remarkable inventiveness and complexity of the iconography is matched by the exceptionally sophisticated style of the paintings. Attention is also given to part of the decoration previously thought to be contemporary with this fifteenth-century scheme but for which an early sixteenth-century date is now proposed on the basis of stylistic and other evidence.

Imperial Policy and Church Income: The Sixteenth Century Mexican Church

1986 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Hennessey Cummins
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Internal Conflict ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Church Finance ◽  
Church Hierarchy ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
New Research

The long-traditional view of the Roman Catholic Church in Spanish America as a monolithic, wealthy, and all powerful institution has been gradually modified by successive studies over the last thirty years. From these examinations emerges the picture of a complex institution characterized by diversity, and internal conflict. New research continues to enlarge and clarify understanding of the Church's role as an institution of the Spanish empire.What follows will, in highlighting the colonial Church's relationship to the Spanish crown, add to this view of it as a complex and diverse institution. An examination of crown policy with regard to Church finance in the sixteenth century shows that the episcopal hierarchy of the Mexican colonial Church had a subordinate relationship to the crown in the era of the Counter Reformation. Rather than a strong Church influencing the crown, what emerges is the portrait of a relatively weak, dependent institution, supported by the king. The secular church hierarchy had only enough power to carry out its function and serve as a counterpoint to the religious orders, not enough to achieve financial independence on its own. The basis for this relationship lies in the patrimonial nature of Castilian government and its dominant position over the Church hierarchy because of the Patronato Real.

Women in Gabon

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire H. Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
Central Africa ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
African Women ◽  
Female Population ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Tropical Woods ◽  
New Research ◽  
Export Revenue

Gabon, a small oil-rich country straddling the equator on the west coast of Africa, is the wealthiest of France’s former colonies. An early period of colonization in the 19th century resulted in disease, famine, and economic failure. The creation of French Equatorial Africa in 1910 marked the beginning of the sustained lucrative exploitation of Gabon’s natural resources. Gabon began off-shore oil production while still a colony of France. Uranium was also discovered in the last decade of the French Equatorial African empire. Coupled with rich reserves in tropical woods, Gabon has achieved, since independence in 1960, a higher level of export revenue per capita of population than any other country in sub-Saharan Africa in the postcolonial era. However, significant inequality has characterized access to wealth through paid employment throughout the recorded history of monetized labor. While fortunes have been amassed by a minute proportion of the female population of Gabon associated with the ruling regime, and a professional female middle-class has emerged, inequalities of opportunity and reward continue to mark women’s experience of life in this little-known country of West Central Africa. The key challenge facing scholars researching the history of women in Gabon remains the relative lack of historical resources. While significant strides have been made over the past decade, research on women’s history in Francophone Africa published in English or French remains embryonic. French research on African women began to make a mark in the last decade of colonization, notably with the work of Denise Paulme, but then remained a neglected area for decades. The publication in 1994 of Les Africaines by French historian Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch was hailed at the time as a pioneering work in French historiography. But even this new research contained no analysis of and only a passing reference to women in Gabon.

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