Ancient and Historic Metals

Gold Foil, Strip, and Wire in the Iron Age of Southern Africa ANDREW ODDY Gold has been an important metal in the southeastern part of Africa for at least the last millennium, and possibly longer, and many sites show signs of primitive (although usually undated) mining activity (Summers 1969). There are three main sites in Southeast Africa where gold artifacts from the later Iron Age have been found: Mapungubwe in the northern Transvaal, which flourished in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; Great Zimbabwe, which flourished in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; and some rich burials at Ingombe Ilede in Zambia, which date from the late fourteenth and/or fifteenth centuries. Gold was one of the commodities that brought early explorers and traders south on the Red Sea. Although in the time of Solomon the ships had probably reached only as far south as the Gulf of Aden, by the first century C.E. at the latest, Greeks from Egypt had rounded Cape Guardafui and sailed down the East African coast, probably as far as Rhapta opposite the island of Zanzibar (Casson 1989). The map (Fig. 1) shows this ancient route. It is likely, however, that Arabs had penetrated into the Indian Ocean well before this time; Arab traders subsequently reached as far south as Sofala, establishing trading posts along the coast, at least from the ninth century C.E. These posts were outlets for the products of the interior, of which gold was probably one of the most important.1 As a result of the settlements by Arabs and their intermarriages with the indigenous peoples, the Swahili culture developed along the coast, and this culture had maritime trading connections with the Red Sea, the coast of Arabia, and ultimately with India. Even shards of Chinese ceramics dating from the Sung Dynasty (C.E. 960–1279) onward have been found at Great Zimbabwe (Summers 1963:46, fig. 14). The tenuous contacts with the cultures of Arabia and India, which are proven by imports from these regions, raise the question of when external influences first penetrated the African interior. The cultural origins of the great stone ruins in modern Zimbabwe, the best example of which is Great Zimbabwe, were much debated in the earlier part of this century. It has long been recognized, however, that the ruins were FIGURE 1. Map of Africa showing principal sites men- tioned in the text. built by a wholly indigenous (Bantu) civilization. This recognition stands, despite ongoing arguments for the penetration of the gold-producing areas by Indians and even Indonesians at least two thousand years ago (Hromník 1981). In fact, the history of gold use is intimately bound up with that of other metals. It is also well known that the exploitation and use of metals by the peoples of the African continent varies greatly from region to region. The great natural barriers created by geography and climate meant that the use of metal did not show the same pattern of development in West and East Africa, nor in the Mediterranean coastal regions north of the Sahara. During the early first millennium C.E., iron use occurred at sites in eastern sub-Saharan Africa as far south as the Transvaal, but its method of introduction has been much debated and is still unclear. The beginnings of food production and the first working of iron appear to be roughly contemporary, however. At about the same time, a movement of peoples took place, accompanied by the spread of the Bantu family of languages. Whether these concurrent cultural changes all resulted from the same event or were purely coincidental is still being argued. In the past it has even been suggested that iron smelting was an independent discovery in sub-Saharan Africa, but the increasing availability of radiocarbon dates for Iron Age sites now supports the view that knowledge of iron was introduced from the north and spread southward (Phillipson 1985:149). One of the links in the chain was, presumably, the kingdom of Meroë, which was established in the sixth century B.C.E. in what is now Sudan, where vast deposits of slag from iron smelting have been found. Meroë is separated from Egypt by desert. For this and for political reasons, communications were established in other direc- 184 G OLD F OIL, S TRIP, AND W IRE IN THE I RON A GE tions, particularly eastward toward the Red Sea and southeastward toward the emerging Aksumite civilization in the highlands of Ethiopia. The heyday of iron production at Meroë was apparently during the last centuries B.C.E. when iron was exported in return for luxuries from the north and east, which were imported via the Red Sea route. Iron use appears to have been established in the area around Lake Victoria during the last few centuries B.C.E., and reached as far south as Natal by about C.E. 300. It is noteworthy that over an enormous area of eastern and southern Africa, the earliest iron-using communities show a remarkable degree of cultural homogeneity (Phillipson 1985:171ff). This all began to change in about the tenth century C.E. when the Iron Age pop- ulation began to expand. Domestic animals became more common, and actual mining for metal ore supplanted—or at least augmented—collection from the surface. At the same time, regional differences in the material culture became marked in the archaeological record. Powerful kingdoms began to emerge in which trade and the resultant wealth were controlled by an elite stratum of society. In the area of present- day Zimbabwe, many sites preserve remains of stone-built monuments dating back to the early centuries of the present millennium (MacIver 1906). Few of these sites have been excavated systematically, and many were deliberately ransacked in the nineteenth century by treasure hunters searching for gold; but some archaeological investigations have been carried out that have preserved evidence for the use of gold by the indigenous Africans. Gold artifacts are known to have been found—either by excavation, treasure hunting, or accident—on about twenty sites altogether, all of which are within or close to the main gold fields in present-day Zimbabwe. The earliest site to have produced gold in any quantity is the acropolis at Mapungubwe, a site in the northern Transvaal, about two kilometers south of the Limpopo River. The acropolis consists of a long, narrow, steep-sided sandstone hill, which has only two paths to the top and was, therefore, very easy to defend. At the top are traces of stone walls and rock-cut cisterns. It is thought that the thin cov- ering of soil must have been transported to the top in baskets and that the hilltop was the living area as well as the burial place of the nobility. Serious excavations at Mapungubwe began in 1933. Several of the site’s rich graves, thought to date from the twelfth century, were found to contain iron-wire bangles, ivory bangles, bone tools, pottery, and gold. Excavations on the site have continued intermittently since then (Fouché 1937; Gardner 1963). Four different types of gold objects have been identified: coiled-strip anklets, wire circlets, objects made of gold foil, and beads.2 G OLD S HEET ( F OIL) The best known of the finds from Mapungubwe is a small rhinoceros (Fig. 2) made of gold sheet. Although rather crude in appearance, the body and legs are all made from one piece by hammering, indicating a passing familiarity with the principles of repoussé work. The front hips are nicely delineated, but on the whole, the execu- tion of the rhinoceros does not exhibit much skill, as the shaping has been partly achieved by folding and creasing the gold. 185 O DDY FIGURE 2. Gold-foil rhinoceros from Mapungubwe. Pretoria University. Inv. no. DAPU 33.170. One feature of the rhinoceros that has raised questions about the manufacture of the goldwork is the animal’s single horn. It thus appears to be an Indian rhinoceros rather than the African species, which has two horns. This discrepancy clearly pre- sents a problem of interpretation, since the figurine could also represent a young animal that has not yet started to develop a second horn. However, the more likely explanation may simply be that the artisan lacked the skill necessary to fit the head with more than one horn. The head is, in fact, made from a separate piece of gold to which the ears and horn have been added. The tail is also separate. No archaeological evidence is available to indicate the methods of manufacture of the gold sheet from which the rhinoceros was made, but since the technology was already available for smelting iron, it was certainly available for melting gold. One might postulate, then, that gold was collected from rivers and streams and possibly obtained by mining, then melted and cast into flat sheets that were subsequently hammered on an anvil to form the thin foil out of which the sheet-gold objects were formed. The inside of the rhinoceros is not visible, but when the other sheet-gold finds are examined, a clear difference may be seen between the surface textures on the two sides of the foil. The surviving finds from Mapungubwe include gold-sheet fragments of several other incomplete animal figurines. Microscopic examination shows that the outer surfaces were polished with a coarse abrasive, which left deep scratches on the surface (Fig. 3). The inner surfaces, however, have a rough, granular-looking fin- ish which shows no sign of polishing (Fig. 4).

Load more