Farming and herding communities making Gumanye pottery, spread from about the eleventh century over the granite hills and valleys of the Mutirikwi, Tokwe and Runde, the Gutu and Zaka country and the southern Midlands.
Chirikure and Pikirayi call them an ancestral Karanga people. Their villages had clay-floored houses, grain bins and cattle kraals; the chief of the community on the Hill at Great Zimbabwe was one of many. Gold from the Midlands reefs (Shurugwi, Gweru and Kwekwe) and ivory went south and east in trade.
Who holds it
- Title
- Many local chiefs of the Gumanye communities, among them the chief of the Hill at Great Zimbabwe (separate record)
- Since
- Not pinned
- Confidence
- low
Overlord
None that can be named
How things stand that morning
Independent chiefdoms; the Hill at Great Zimbabwe not yet dominant.
Customs
Chiefship and lineage; cattle as bridewealth and wealth; rain shrines on hills (later Shona practice suggests this; not attested for 1200).
Assemblies
Chiefs and elders.
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: Archaeology only (Great Zimbabwe Period II; regional ceramics).
On the map: An outline drawn from the general distribution of the evidence; it is not a border.
Primary sources for Plateau chiefdoms
Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.
- Mapungubwe, the Zimbabwe plateau, Toutswe and the Comoros: the archaeological record (no text; radiocarbon-dated sites). There is no written word from the interior south of the Zambezi or from the Comoros in 1200; all that is known is from excavation. Read online
Sources and studies
- Chirikure and Pikirayi, Inside and outside the dry stone walls: revisiting the material culture of Great Zimbabwe, Antiquity 82 (2008)
- Chirikure et al., A Bayesian chronology for Great Zimbabwe: re-threading the sequence of a vandalised monument, Antiquity 91 (2017)
- Huffman, Ancient mining and Zimbabwe, Journal of the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (1974)
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.