• involves stone walls enclosing external courtyards outside circular dwellings built of daga
  
  • daga is a compound made of clayey soil binding together a fine gravel aggregate; it is one of the most common indigenous building material in southern Africa
• Together, wall, courtyard, and dwellings form a single functional unit.
  
• Separate enclosures within the complex are defined and surrounded by more or less continuous walls.
  
• The ruins would have looked different originally, when the masonry would have been covered with smooth and, in many places, richly colored daga.
  
• Thick applications of daga were also used to pave the interior of courtyards.

• one of three different styles of masonry at Great Zimbabwe
• Category 1 is carefully formed, differently sized rows of masonry with an inward slope (battering)
• found in parallel passage within the Elliptical building

• one of the three different styles of masonry at Great Zimbabwe
• Less regular and less well matched masonry which is never dressed but rather is fitted loosely with wavy courses and has no battering
• often used in conjunction with boulders occurring in the natural topography
• found in the Hill Ruin and in parts of the Elliptical

• one of the three different styles of masonry at Great Zimbabwe

• Irregularly shaped stones roughly piled up and wedged in position with gaps filled by smaller stones.

• This type of masonry tends to be restricted to low walls, and does not age as durably as the other types

• found in the minor enclosures like Outspan Ruin, Camp Ruin, and Maund Ruin 
  

• walls normally surround large open areas peripheral to the main ruins, for instance in the Ridge Ruin.

Style and Location

• The earliest (category 2) walls are on the Hill, a site that was probably chosen for the seclusion, shelter and defense provided by its rocky environment.
• Its natural advantages were improved by blocking the gaps between boulders with loose stones, and by erecting coursed walls between boulders and on top of rocks – a typical practice throughout the site whenever a rocky topography presents itself.

• walls were built on open level ground free of the boulders.
  
• These walls tend to have doorways with curved sides, high thresholds and very graceful coursing of closely fitting, carefully matched blocks.
  
• A good example is the inner face of the Outer Wall of the Elliptical Building.
  
  • A characteristic feature of this stonework was that abutting walls were never bonded together, but left with open vertical joint between the

• comprises a huge enclosing wall some 20 meters high. Here you see one of the entrances to the ruin.
  
• Inside are curving passageways forming a number of enclosures.
  
• Gradually changing curves eliminate abrupt transitions in the articulation of elements.
•  Curved doorways, round bastions, turrets, and towers echo the shapes of boulders.
  
• The Hill Ruin was said by the local Karanga people living on it in the 19th century to be the only part of the complex properly called Zimbabwe.

• named by European visitors in the 19th century.
  
• A series of small walled enclosures in the earliest masonry style here are separated by narrow twisting passages which lead to the Western Enclosure, the most substantial structure on the hill and in the earlier walling style.
  
• It is bounded by two curved walls, 30 ft high, and capped with turreted and monoliths.
• This enclosure is at least 5 times bigger than the other enclosures and originally enclosed 14 daga houses.
  
• Curved platforms at the ends of walls were intended as stands on which objects could be displayed.

• is believed to have been the ceremonial or religious center of the Ruins because of the number of Monoliths and figurines including most of the carved birds found in the enclosure.
  
• is 200 feet away from the Western enclosure
•  accessed via a narrow stairway that passes between boulders and the cliff face and only wide enough for one person at a time

• The second and most important Feature of Great Zimbabwe is Mumbahuru
  
• The elliptical building lies on the low flat–topped granite shelf on the opposite side of the valley under the Southern Cliff of the Hill.
  
• This is the largest single prehistoric structure in Sub-Saharan Africa and contains 182,000 cubic feet of stonework.
  
• The outer wall is 800 ft long, 17 ft thick, and 32 ft high. It forms an irregular ellipse with a maximum diameter of 292 ft.

• The Outer wall of the Great Enclosure is doubled at the Eastern edge, forming the parallel passage.
  
• This doubling is unique and functionally inexplicable. The Parallel Passage is extremely narrow, only allowing one person to pass at a time.
  
• It adds grandeur to the outside of the building but very little additional shelter or protection to that given by the old wall.
  
• The Parallel Passage may have been the original outer wall, superseded by growing ambition and improved building confidence.

• The Parallel Passage gives onto the Conical Tower, which has an 18 ft diameter, and is 30 ft high.
  
• It is built between the old wall and the new Outer wall. It is decorated around the top with dentelle-patterned frieze and has beautifully regular coursing with a slight batter, giving the slightly irregular conical shape.
•  Visually and technically, this form is the most important single feature of the entire site.

• The world of the ancestors and Mwari are believed to shadow or parallel the human world.
  
• As owners and guardians of the land, and the people on it, they exist separate from it.
•  However, at times, the spirit world does manifest itself in the landscape through rocks, caves, pools and trees. Spirits can also appear as animals, especially lions and eagles.
  
• Most commonly, the spirit world emerges among people themselves, possessing spirit mediums or appearing in dreams.
  
• In parts of the landscape, certain animals and certain people can act as vehicles for communication between the parallel worlds - especially on ritual and sacred occasions.
  
• Thus, excavations at Great Zimbabwe have uncovered eight soapstone monoliths, six of which stood 14 ft high and were surmounted by carved representations of birds. One is in an area considered the ruler's first wife's ancestral shrine. Scholars have interpreted the bird as symbolizing the first wife's ancestors.
  
• The crocodile on the front of the monolith may represent the wife's elder male ancestors, while the circles, called the "eyes of the crocodile," symbolize elder female ancestors.
  
• The double- and single-chevron motifs represent young male and female ancestors.
  
• The bird may represent a bird of prey, such as an eagle, although the feet have humanlike toes, rather than an eagle's talons.
  
• The eagle and the crocodile may have symbolized previous rulers who acted as messengers between the living and the dead, and between the sky and the earth.
  
• The sculptures combine both human and avian elements, substituting human features like lips for a beak and five-toed feet for claws.

• 1500 the site of Great Zimbabwe was abandoned.
  
• Its people had moved in two directions
  •  North to establish the Mutapa statE
  • South to establish the Torwa state
• One theory is environmental
  • a combination of overgrazing and drought caused the soil on the Zimbabwe Plateau to become exhausted.
    
• people of Great Zimbabwe had to move in order to maximize their exploitation of the gold trade network.
  
• A third theory is that after the eclipse of the Great Zimbabwe site, a group in central Matabeleland succeeded to Great Zimbabwe’s power.
  
• Local, traditional lore, however, holds that the Mbire kingdom suffered a shortage of salt.
  
• The ruler of the time, Nyatsimba Mutota, sent emissaries in search of it, eventually finding it in the Dande area of the middle Zambezi valley; whereupon Mutota and his people moved north, conquered the local people, and settled there.
  
• Mutota earned the name Mwena Mutapa, "Master Pillager," from this, which was just the first in a series of campaigns by which he and his successor, Matope, carved out an empire that eventually stretched from the Kalahari desert to the Indian Ocean between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers.
  
• But this empire did not last long; when the Portuguese arrived in the early 16th century, they already found it fragmented.