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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Archaeology and racism | 1/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology_and_racism | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T15:06:33.220717+00:00 | kb-cron |
Racism in archaeology covers the phenomenon of interpreting archaeological remains in terms of speculations about the putative racial profiles of the peoples who created the structures which excavations have brought to light. Archaeologist Chris Gosden wrote "Racism occurs when judgements about people always proceed from their physical features of their body; when biology is given social force." Such racial readings of archaeological remains have a history which may be traced back at least to Josiah Priest and his 1833 book American Antiquities.
== Great Zimbabwe ==
A prominent case study of racism in archaeology is the found in the history of analysis of Great Zimbabwe, a medieval city in the south-eastern hills of Zimbabwe near Lake Mutirikwi and the town of Masvingo. Construction on the city began in the 9th century and continued until it was abandoned in the 15th century. Today, it is thought to have been the capital of a little-known great kingdom during the country's Late Iron Age and the edifices are believed to have been erected by the ancestral Shona. Numerous foreign scholars previously attributed the city's advanced architecture to non-indigenous people due to racial prejudice. In the mid-16th century, Portuguese historian João de Barros remarked with awe on the "marvellous grandeur" of these ruins, which far outstripped Portuguese attempts to build castles in Sofala. He did not believe any indigenous culture could have produced them, commenting:
To say how and by whom these buildings could have been made is an impossible thing, for the people of that land have no tradition of that sort of thing and no knowledge of letters: therefore they take it for the work of the devil, for when they compare it with other buildings they cannot believe man could have made it. The first excavation to be carried out at the site was by J. Theodore Bent, who undertook a season at Zimbabwe with Cecil Rhodes's patronage and funding from the Royal Geographical Society and the British Association for the Advancement of Science. This and other excavations undertaken for Rhodes resulted in a book. Bent had no formal archaeological training, but had travelled very widely in Arabia, Greece and Asia Minor. He was aided by the expert cartographer and surveyor Robert M. W. Swan (1858–1904), who also visited and surveyed a host of related stone ruins nearby. Bent stated in the first edition of his book The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (1892) that the ruins revealed either the Phoenicians or the Arabs as builders, and he favoured the possibility of great antiquity for the fortress. By the third edition of his book, published in 1902, he was more specific, with his primary theory being "a Semitic race and of Arabian origin" of "strongly commercial" traders living within a client African city. The first scientific archaeological excavations at the site were undertaken by David Randall-MacIver for the British Association in 1905–1906. In Medieval Rhodesia, he rejected the claims made by Adam Render, Carl Peters and Karl Mauch, and instead wrote of the existence in the site of objects which were of Bantu origin. Randall-MacIver concluded that all available evidence led him to believe the Zimbabwe structures were constructed by the ancestors of the Shona people. Other reports arguing for an African origin followed but were controversial, as the white government of Rhodesia pressured archaeologists to deny its construction by black Africans. Later excavations yielded evidence indicating that Great Zimbabwe was constructed by local African communities rather than an external civilizing population. Stratigraphic studies linked metalwork, masonry, and ceramics to indigenous traditions and settlement patterns associated with early Shona ancestry. Research in the 1970s labeled the site as the economic and political center of a regional state that participated in long-distance trade, contradicting predominant Rhodesian claims that complex architecture required foreign influence. During the colonial period, officials attempted to suppress these findings by controlling excavations, resulting in fewer reports attributing the site's construction to indigenous African societies.
== Mound Builders ==