Papers by Thomas Thondhlana
This position paper deals with issues of community engagement and empowerment in museum managemen... more This position paper deals with issues of community engagement and empowerment in museum management and activities with specific reference to the Mutare Museum in Zimbabwe. It is largely informed by documentary analysis of available heritage legislations and policies. It is observed that international frameworks and the Constitution of Zimbabwe have provisions for the involvement and empowerment of local communities in heritage issues. Unfortunately, the current heritage legislation used by Mutare Museum does not have provisions for community involvement in museum management and activities. Therefore, we recommend an enabling legal basis for community engagement and empowerment in Zimbabwe, which can be achieved by aligning the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe Act Chapter 25.11 of 1972 with the international framework for management of heritage.
We report chemical, petrographic and metallographic studies of copper ores and slags recovered du... more We report chemical, petrographic and metallographic studies of copper ores and slags recovered during sporadic surface surveys and excavations over the past fifty years in the Phalaborwa and Murchison Range areas of the northern Lowveld of South Africa. The copper slags around Phalaborwa have unusual mineral assemblages, attributable to the unique geochemistry of the main ore body, the Phalaborwa Complex, where copper minerals were mined from a carbonatite composed of magnetite, calcite and apatite. Strongly reducing conditions had to be avoided to minimise contamination of the copper with iron and phosphorus. As the copper ores contain almost no silicates, silica/alumina flux was added to produce slag. The Precambrian zinc-copper ores of the Murchison Range were also smelted, but during smelting any zinc that was not volatilised was taken up by minerals in the slag, so brass was not produced.
Mining and metallurgy have previously been cited as the sole activities that encouraged the perma... more Mining and metallurgy have previously been cited as the sole activities that encouraged the permanent occupation of the agropastorally marginal region conventionally known as the northern Lowveld of South Africa prior to the nineteenth century. Archaeologists have previously documented more than 50 second-millennium AD settlements, associated with extensive evidence of metal production, around Phalaborwa in this region. Archaeometallurgical research was carried out at Shankare Hill, one of these Iron Age settlements with remarkable evidence of metal production, in order to reconstruct the extractive metallurgical activities represented at the site. To achieve this standard archaeological fieldwork procedures together with post-fieldwork laboratory studies were employed. This paper presents both the archaeological and archaeometric results that enabled the reconstruction, in great detail, of the various metal production activities from ore beneficiation to primary smelting and subsequent metal refining processes that took place at Shankare. Iron smelting debris, which significantly differed both microscopically and chemically from copper smelting slags, was documented at middens with exclusive metal production debris, whilst copper production debris, which included mostly crushed furnace slag and secondary refining ceramic crucible fragments, was confined to low density scatters and domestic middens. The Palabora Igneous Complex, whose unique ore signature is well documented in the geological literature, was identified as the source of both the copper and iron ores smelted at Shankare. Beyond the technological reconstruction, the results are used to discuss the role of metal production and exchange within the wider southern African archaeological context.
The legacy of vandalism and almost a century of continuous focus on drystone wall masonry is that... more The legacy of vandalism and almost a century of continuous focus on drystone wall masonry is that little is known about metal craft production and consumption activities at Great Zimba-bwe. Within these limitations, this paper attempts to explore the metallurgy of Great Zimba-bwe, guided by the framework of archival, chronological and fieldwork-and laboratory-based studies. The paper contends that residents of various components of Great Zimbabwe worked and processed their own metal, pointing to homestead-level production and consumption. Metal from local and regional sources sustained long-distance trade with the Indian Ocean rim.
Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, 2014
This thesis examines metal production debris with the aim of reconstructing extractive metal tech... more This thesis examines metal production debris with the aim of reconstructing extractive metal technologies employed around Phalaborwa during the second millennium AD. Mining and metallurgy were previously identified as exclusive pulling factors for Iron Age human settlement in this agropastoral marginal area. Several Iron Age settlements with extensive metal production evidence were previously documented. This thesis places emphasis on extractive copper metallurgy previously neglected for several reasons. The early second millennium AD site of Shankare is used as the main case study. Whilst previously excavated metallurgical assemblages from late second millennium AD sites are re-investigated to explore diachronic changes in smelting technologies. The thesis is inspired by contemporary theoretical developments by the Francophone school of thought known as the 'Anthropology of Technology'.
Iron and steel by Thomas Thondhlana
Archives, Objects, Places and Landscapes – Multidisciplinary approaches to Decolonised Zimbabwean pasts, Apr 11, 2017
For 400 years before the onset of British colonisation, northern Zimbabwe witnessed increased int... more For 400 years before the onset of British colonisation, northern Zimbabwe witnessed increased interaction between the locals and several Europeans. The most powerful local player was the Mutapa state, while the mercantilism-fuelled Portuguese were the dominant foreign players. These foils were brought together by the lucrative Indian Ocean trade network. The available historical evidence posits that in this trading system, northern Zimbabwe supplied gold, iron, ivory and other local commodities, while the Portuguese brought cloth, glass beads and porcelain. The historical data are, however, silent on the processes, technical or otherwise, associated with craft production in the Mutapa state. Very little is known about the processes of metal production and working, and it also remains unclear whether these centuries of interaction with the Portuguese influenced developments in indigenous African metallurgy. Recent archaeometallurgical analyses of iron production remains and copper based artefacts from Mutapa and related Afro-Portuguese archaeological sites has thrown up insights into the little-understood processes of iron smelting and copper object fabrication. The study of metal objects highlighted that in addition to classic imports such as glass beads and porcelain, northern Zimbabwe also imported brass and high tin bronzes from the Portuguese agents, suggesting that the circulation of goods in the Indian Ocean trade system was more complicated than is currently believed. This demonstrates the potential of materials science-based approaches not only in understanding between group interactions, but also in transcending some of the silences in the oral and written sources of the Mutapa state.
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Papers by Thomas Thondhlana
Iron and steel by Thomas Thondhlana