On 1 January 1200 Great Zimbabwe is a village on the granite Hill above the valley, reoccupied in the mid twelfth century after a long gap by a Gumanye (ancestral Karanga) community who built houses with solid clay floors (Period II).
The first stone walling on the Hill, the P-style walls of the Western Enclosure, belongs to the following phase, probably begun at the end of the twelfth or start of the thirteenth century (Chirikure et al. 2017): on this morning the walls are just begun or about to begin. The Great Enclosure and the valley enclosures, the Conical Tower and the town of perhaps up to 10,000 people (Chirikure et al.
2017) are thirteenth to fifteenth century.
Who holds it
- Title
- Seat of the chief of the Hill (see Chief of the Hill)
- Since
- Not pinned
- Confidence
- low
Lord in 1200
The chief of the Gumanye community on the Hill.
How things stand that morning
A chief's hill village; no stone walls or only the first ones.
Charter
None: a settlement under a chief, without written privileges.
Fairs and markets
No fixed markets are known; exchange at the chief's court and with visiting traders.
Walls and castle
Granite boulders of the Hill; first walls just beginning or soon.
Trade and crafts
Cattle, grain, iron; perhaps gold and ivory traded south and east.
What the year holds
What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.
- End of the twelfth or start of the thirteenth centuryFirst stone walls on the Hill.Depends on: The chief's growing surplus. Stopped by: Loss of trade or drought.
Where the sources disagree
- English Wikipedia says stone building began in the eleventh century; the Bayesian chronology says late twelfth or early thirteenth. We follow the latter.
Evidence: Archaeology with a revised Bayesian chronology; the early levels were damaged by early diggers.
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)
- Great Zimbabwe (Wikipedia)
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.