Editing Great Zimbabwe (section)

==History of research and origins of the ruins==
[[File:Cefala Manich Simbaoe.png|thumb|Great Zimbabwe appears on [[Abraham Ortelius]]' 1570 map ''[[Africae Tabula Nova]]'', rendered "Simbaoe".]]There has historically been much debate around the origins of Great Zimbabwe, termed the "[[Zimbabwe controversy]]".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fontein |first=Joost |url=https://archive.org/details/silenceofgreatzi0000font |title=The silence of Great Zimbabwe : contested landscapes and the power of heritage |date=2006 |publisher=London : UCL |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-1-84472-123-8}}</ref> Mired in racial prejudice, Rhodesians found it inconceivable that the structures could have been built by indigenous Africans, stipulating that archaeological discoveries of Persian bowls and Chinese celadon were the result of pre-Bantu settlement. The colonial government pressured archaeologists to deny that the structure was built by indigenous Africans, because acknowledging it would have dismantled their "[[civilising mission]]" rationale.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2018-07-23 |title=BBC World Service - Witness History, The Whitewashing of Zimbabwe's History |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06fjd1h |access-date=2025-02-25 |website=BBC |language=en-GB}}</ref> The refutation of various fantastical and dehumanising theories ascribing the construction to Jews, Arabs, Phoenicians, and anyone but the Shona, along with other activities of the antiquarians, dominated the historiography of Great Zimbabwe throughout the 20th century.<ref name=":14">{{Citation |last=Pikirayi |first=Innocent |title=Great Zimbabwe, 1100–1600 AD, Rise, Development, and Demise of |date=2020 |pages=4696–4709 |editor-last=Smith |editor-first=Claire |url=https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-030-30018-0_2666 |access-date=2024-12-20 |place=Cham |publisher=Springer International Publishing |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-3-030-30018-0_2666 |isbn=978-3-030-30018-0 |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia |year=2005 |title=Great Zimbabwe: Colonial historiography |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of African History |publisher=Routledge |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203483862/encyclopedia-african-history-3-volume-set-kevin-shillington |last=Leaver |first=Daniel|editor-first1=Kevin |editor-last1=Shillington |doi=10.4324/9780203483862 |isbn=978-1-135-45670-2 }}</ref> Its African origin only became consensus by the 1950s.<ref name="Frederikse 1990 10–11">{{cite book |last=Frederikse |first=Julie |title=None But Ourselves |publisher=Oral Traditions Association of Zimbabwe with Anvil Press |others=Biddy Partridge (photographer) |year=1990 |isbn=0-7974-0961-0 |location=Harare |pages=10–11 |chapter=(1) Before the war |orig-year=1982}}</ref>

===From Portuguese traders to Karl Mauch===
The first European visit may have been made by the Portuguese traveler António Fernandes in 1513–1515, who crossed twice and reported in detail the region of present-day Zimbabwe (including the Shona kingdoms) and also fortified centers in stone without mortar. However, passing en route a few kilometres north and about {{convert|35|mi|km|order=flip|abbr=on}} south of the site, he did not make a reference to Great Zimbabwe.<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.rhodesia.nl/rhodesiana/volume19.pdf |journal=Rhodesiana |date=December 1968 |issue=19 |title=The Pioneer Head}}</ref><ref>Oliver, Roland & Anthony Atmore (1975). Medieval Africa 1250–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 738</ref> Portuguese traders heard about the remains of the medieval city in the early 16th century, and records survive of interviews and notes made by some of them, linking Great Zimbabwe to gold production and long-distance trade.<ref name=Kaarsholm/> Two of those accounts mention an inscription above the entrance to Great Zimbabwe, written in characters not known to the Arab merchants who had seen it.<ref name="Barros">{{cite book |author=McCall-Theal, G. |title=Records of South-eastern Africa |publisher=Cape Colony Printers |year=1900 |volume=VI (book 10) |location=Cape Town |pages=264–273}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=McCall-Theal, G.|title=Records of South-eastern Africa|publisher=Cape Colony Printers|location=Cape Town|year=1900|volume=III|pages=55, 129}}</ref>

In 1506, the explorer Diogo de Alcáçova described the edifices in a letter to [[Manuel I of Portugal]], writing that they were part of the larger kingdom of Ucalanga (presumably Karanga, a dialect of the [[Shona people]] spoken mainly in Masvingo and Midlands provinces of Zimbabwe).<ref>{{cite book|last1=Randles|first1=W. G. L.|title=The Empire of Monomotapa: From the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century|date=1981|publisher=Mambo Press|page=5|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=68pBAAAAYAAJ|access-date=16 July 2016}}</ref> [[João de Barros]] left another such description of Great Zimbabwe in 1538, as recounted to him by [[Moors|Moorish]] traders who had visited the area and possessed knowledge of the hinterland. He indicates that the edifices were locally known as ''Symbaoe'', which meant "royal court" in the vernacular.<ref name="Pikirayi">{{cite web|last1=Pikirayi|first1=Innocent|title=The Demise of Great Zimbabwe, ad 1420–1550|url=http://www.msu.ac.zw/elearning/material/1299833592Decline%20of%20Great%20Zimbabwe.pdf|publisher=Post-Med Archaeology|access-date=16 June 2016|archive-date=9 August 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160809041616/http://www.msu.ac.zw/elearning/material/1299833592Decline%20of%20Great%20Zimbabwe.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref> As to the actual identity of the builders of Great Zimbabwe, de Barros writes:<ref>{{cite book|last1=Böhmer-Bauer|first1=Kunigunde|title=Great Zimbabwe: eine ethnologische Untersuchung|date=2000|publisher=R. Köppe|isbn=389645210X|page=221|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=V9EwAQAAIAAJ|access-date=16 June 2016}}</ref>
{{blockquote|When and by whom, these edifices were raised, as the people of the land are ignorant of the art of writing, there is no record, but they say they are the work of the devil,<ref>Note: double translations (local language to Portuguese to English) should be taken cautiously and not literally.</ref> for in comparison with their power and knowledge it does not seem possible to them that they should be the work of man. | João de Barros }}

Additionally, with regard to the purpose of the Great Zimbabwe ruins, de Barros asserted that: "in the opinion of the Moors who saw it [Great Zimbabwe] it is very ancient and was built to keep possessions of the mines, which are very old, and no gold has been extracted from them for years, because of the wars&nbsp;... it would seem that some prince who has possession of these mines ordered it to be built as a sign thereof, which he afterwards lost in the course of time and through their being so remote from his kingdom".<ref name="Pikirayi"/>

De Barros further remarked that ''Symbaoe'' "is guarded by a nobleman, who has charge of it, after the manner of a chief alcaide, and they call this officer Symbacayo&nbsp;... and there are always some of Benomotapa's wives therein of whom Symbacayo takes care." Thus, Great Zimbabwe appears to have still been inhabited as recently as the early 16th century.<ref name="Pikirayi"/>

===Karl Mauch and the Queen of Sheba===
The ruins were rediscovered by Europeans during a hunting trip in 1867 by [[Adam Render]], a German-American hunter, prospector and trader in southern Africa,<ref>{{cite book |last=Rosenthal |first=Eric |year=1966 |title=Southern African Dictionary of National Biography |location=London |publisher=Frederick Warne |page=308 |oclc=390499 }}</ref> who in 1871 showed the ruins to [[Karl Mauch]], a German explorer and geographer of Africa. Karl Mauch recorded the ruins and immediately speculated about a possible Biblical association with King [[Solomon]] and the [[Queen of Sheba]], an explanation which had been suggested by earlier writers such as the Portuguese João dos Santos. Mauch went so far as to favour a legend that the structures were built to replicate the palace of the Queen of Sheba in Jerusalem,<ref>{{cite news |title=Vast Ruins in South Africa- The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland |work=[[The New York Times]] |page=19 |date=18 December 1892}}</ref> and claimed a wooden lintel at the site must be [[Cedrus libani|Lebanese cedar]], brought by [[Phoenicians]].<ref>Pikirayi (2001) p9</ref> The Sheba legend, as promoted by Mauch, became so pervasive in the white settler community as to cause the later scholar [[James Theodore Bent]] to say, {{blockquote|The names of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba were on everybody's lips, and have become so distasteful to us that we never expect to hear them again without an involuntary shudder.<ref name="Tyson"/>}}

===Carl Peters and Theodore Bent===
[[File:Alloes-valley-great-zimbabwe.jpg|thumb|The Valley Complex]]
[[Carl Peters]] collected a ceramic [[ushabti]] in 1905. [[Flinders Petrie]] examined it and identified a [[cartouche]] on its chest as belonging to the [[Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt|18th Dynasty]] Egyptian Pharaoh [[Thutmose III]] and suggested that it was a statuette of the king and cited it as proof of commercial ties between rulers in the area and the ancient Egyptians during the [[New Kingdom of Egypt|New Kingdom]] (c. 1550–1077 BC), if not a relic of an old Egyptian station near the local gold mines.<ref>{{cite book|last=Peters|first=Carl|title=The Eldorado of the Ancients|pages=393–394|publisher=C. Pearson|url=https://archive.org/stream/eldoradoofancien00pete#page/392/mode/2up|year=1902}}</ref> Johann Heinrich Schäfer later appraised the statuette, and argued that it belonged to a well-known group of forgeries. After having received the ushabti, [[Felix von Luschan]] suggested that it was of more recent origin than the New Kingdom. He asserted that the figurine instead appeared to date to the subsequent [[Ptolemaic Kingdom|Ptolemaic]] era (c. 323–30 BC), when [[Alexandria]]-based Greek merchants would export Egyptian antiquities and pseudo-antiquities to southern Africa.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Griffith|first1=Francis Llewellyn|title=Archæological Report|date=1903|publisher=Egypt Exploration Fund|page=42|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=m3PSvXWaH5YC|access-date=3 May 2016}}</ref>

[[James Theodore Bent|J. Theodore Bent]] 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 publication that introduced the ruins to English readers. 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 [https://aim25.com/cgi-bin/vcdf/detail?coll_id=6569&inst_id=10 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 (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.

[[Image:Exterior of great enclosure,G.Zimbabwe.JPG|thumb|right|Exterior wall of the Great Enclosure. Picture taken by David Randall-MacIver in 1906.]]

===The Lemba===
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The construction of Great Zimbabwe is also claimed by the [[Lemba people|Lemba]], as documented by William Bolts in 1777 (to the Austrian Habsburg authorities), and by an A.A. Anderson (writing about his travels north of the [[Limpopo River]] in the 19th century).{{citation needed|date=May 2024}} Lemba speak the [[Bantu languages]] spoken by their geographic neighbours, but they have some religious practices and beliefs similar to those in [[Judaism]] and [[Islam]], which they claim were transmitted by oral tradition.<ref name="VanWarmelo">{{Cite journal|author=van Warmelo, N.J.|title=Zur Sprache und Herkunft der Lemba|journal=Hamburger Beiträge zur Afrika-Kunde|volume=5|year=1966|pages=273, 278, 281–282|publisher=Deutsches Institut für Afrika-Forschung}}</ref>

===David Randall-MacIver and medieval origin===
The first scientific [[archaeological excavation]]s 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 that were of Bantu origin. Randall-MacIver concluded that all available evidence led him to believe that the Zimbabwe structures were constructed by the ancestors of the Shona people.<ref>David Randall-MacIver 1873-1945 by David Ridgway, 1984</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Solomon's Mines |pages=RB241 |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |date=14 April 1906}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|title=The Rhodesia Ruins: their probable origins and significance|last=Randall-MacIver|first=David|jstor=1776233|author-link=David Randall-MacIver|journal=The Geographical Journal|year=1906|volume=27|pages=325–336|doi=10.2307/1776233|issue=4|bibcode=1906GeogJ..27..325R |url=https://zenodo.org/record/1449252}}</ref> More importantly he suggested a wholly medieval date for the walled fortifications and temple. This claim was not immediately accepted, partly due to the relatively short and undermanned period of excavation he was able to undertake.

===Gertrude Caton Thompson===
[[File:Great Zimbabwe Ruins2.jpg|thumb|The Hill Complex]]
In mid-1929, [[Gertrude Caton Thompson]] concluded, after a twelve-day visit of a three-person team and the digging of several trenches, that the site was indeed created by Bantu. She had first sunk three test pits into what had been refuse heaps on the upper terraces of the hill complex, producing a mix of unremarkable pottery and ironwork. She then moved to the Conical Tower and tried to dig under the tower, arguing that the ground there would be undisturbed, but nothing was revealed. Some further test trenches were then put down outside the lower Great Enclosure and in the Valley Ruins, which unearthed domestic ironwork, glass beads, and a gold bracelet. Caton Thompson immediately announced her Bantu origin theory to a meeting of the British Association in Johannesburg.<ref>{{cite news |title=Ascribes Zimbabwe to African Bantus |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |page=2 |date=20 October 1929}}</ref>{{blockquote|Examination of all the existing evidence, gathered from every quarter, still can produce not one single item that is not in accordance with the claim of Bantu origin and medieval date<ref name="Tyson"/>}} Caton Thompson's claim was not immediately favoured, although it had strong support among some scientific archaeologists due to her modern methods. Her most important contribution was in helping to confirm the theory of a medieval origin for the masonry work of the 14th and 15th centuries. By 1931, she had modified her Bantu theory somewhat, allowing for a possible Arabian influence for the towers through the imitation of buildings or art seen at coastal Arabian trading cities.

===Post-1945 research===
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Since the 1950s, there has been consensus among archaeologists as to the African origins of Great Zimbabwe.<ref>{{cite book|last=Davidson|first=Basil|author-link=Basil Davidson|title= The Lost Cities of Africa|url=https://archive.org/details/lostcitiesofafri00davi|url-access=registration|location=Boston|publisher=Little Brown|year=1959|pages=[https://archive.org/details/lostcitiesofafri00davi/page/366 366]|isbn=978-0-316-17431-2}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Africa from the twelfth to the sixteenth century|editor1=J. Ki-Zerbo |editor2=D.T. Niane |location=London|publisher=James Currey|pages=320|year=1997|isbn=978-0-85255-094-6}}</ref>  Artefacts and [[radiocarbon dating]] indicate settlement in at least the 5th century, with continuous settlement of Great Zimbabwe between the 12th and 15th centuries<ref name="Garlake-dates">Garlake (2002) 146</ref> and the bulk of the finds from the 15th century.<ref name="SAAB"/> The radiocarbon evidence is a suite of 28 measurements, for which all but the first four, from the early days of the use of that method and now viewed as inaccurate, support the 12th-to-15th-centuries chronology.<ref name="Garlake-dates"/><ref name=Huffman2009>{{cite journal|doi=10.1016/j.jaa.2008.10.004|title=Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe: The origin and spread of social complexity in southern Africa|year=2009|last1=Huffman|first1=Thomas N.|author-link=Thomas Huffman|journal=Journal of Anthropological Archaeology|volume=28|pages=37–54}}</ref> In the 1970s, a beam that produced some of the anomalous dates in 1952 was reanalysed and gave a 14th-century date.<ref>Garlake (1982) 34</ref> Dated finds such as Chinese, Persian and Syrian artefacts also support the 12th- and 15th-century dates.<ref>Garlake (1982) 10</ref>

===Gokomere===
Archaeologists generally agree that the builders spoke one of the [[Shona language]]s,<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1017/S0021853700016431|title=Pastoralism and Zimbabwe|last=Garlake|first=Peter|author-link=Peter Garlake|journal=The Journal of African History|volume=19|year=1978|pages=479–493|issue=4|s2cid=162491076}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.2307/3858132|title=Archaeology and early Venda history|first=Jannie H. N.|last=Loubser|journal=Goodwin Series|volume=6|pages=54–61|jstor=3858132|year=1989}}</ref> based upon evidence of pottery,<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1086/203694|title=On why pots are decorated the way they are|last=Evers|first=T.M. |author2=Thomas Huffman |author3=Simiyu Wandibba|journal=Current Anthropology|volume=29|year=1988|pages=739–741|jstor=2743612|issue=5|s2cid=145283490|author2-link=Thomas Huffman}}</ref><ref>Summers (1970) p195</ref> oral traditions<ref name="SAAB"/><ref>Summers (1970) p164</ref> and anthropology<ref name="current"/> and DNA evidence <ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Bodiba |first1=Molebogeng |last2=Steyn |first2=Maryna |last3=Bloomer |first3=Paulette |last4=Mosothwane |first4=Morongwa N. |last5=Rühli |first5=Frank |last6=Bouwman |first6=Abigail |date=2019 |title=Ancient DNA Analysis of the Thulamela Remains: Deciphering the Migratory Patterns of a Southern African Population |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26869049 |journal=Journal of African Archaeology |volume=17 |issue=2 |pages=161–172 |doi=10.1163/21915784-20190017 |jstor=26869049 |issn=1612-1651}}</ref> and recent scholarship supports the construction of Great Zimbabwe (and the origin of its culture) by Shona and Venda peoples,<ref name="Ndoro, W 19972">[[Webber Ndoro|Ndoro, W.]], and Pwiti, G. (1997). Marketing the past: The Shona village at Great Zimbabwe. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites 2(3): 3–8.</ref><ref name="Beach, D. N. 19942">Beach, D. N. (1994). A Zimbabwean past: Shona dynastic histories and oral traditions.</ref><ref name="Huffman20092">{{cite journal |last1=Huffman |first1=Thomas N. |author-link=Thomas Huffman |year=2009 |title=Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe: The origin and spread of social complexity in southern Africa |journal=Journal of Anthropological Archaeology |volume=28 |pages=37–54 |doi=10.1016/j.jaa.2008.10.004}}</ref><ref name="Nelson 2019 102">{{Cite book |last=Nelson |first=Jo |title=Historium |publisher=Big Picture Press |year=2019 |pages=10}}</ref> who were probably descended from the [[Gokomere]] culture.<ref name="Huffman2009" /> The Gokomere culture, an eastern Bantu subgroup, existed in the area from around 200 AD and flourished from 500 AD to about 800 AD. Archaeological evidence indicates that it constitutes an early phase of the Great Zimbabwe culture.<ref name="antiquity" /><ref name="SAAB">{{cite journal|title=The chronology of Great Zimbabwe|first=Thomas N.|last=Huffman|author-link=Thomas Huffman|author2=J. C. Vogel|author-link2=Johann Carl Vogel|journal=The South African Archaeological Bulletin|volume=46|year=1991|pages=61–70|jstor=3889086|doi=10.2307/3889086|issue=154}}</ref><ref>Summers (1970) p35</ref><ref name="Chikuhwa2013">{{cite book|last=Chikuhwa|first=Jacob W.|author-link=Jacob Chikuhwa|title=Zimbabwe: The End of the First Republic|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zQ49AQAAQBAJ&pg=PR19|date=October 2013|publisher=Author House|isbn=978-1-4918-7967-2|page=19}}</ref> The Gokomere culture likely gave rise to both the modern [[Shona people|Mashona]] people,<ref name="Copson2006">{{cite book|last=Copson|first=Raymond W.|title=Zimbabwe: Background and Issues|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2AM7XUBrrqkC&pg=PA43|date=1 January 2006|publisher=Nova Publishers|isbn=978-1-60021-176-8|page=43}}</ref> an ethnic cluster comprising distinct sub-ethnic groups such as the local Karanga clan{{citation needed|date=October 2015}} and the [[Rozwi]] culture, which originated as several [[Shona people|Shona]] states.<ref>Isichei, Elizabeth Allo, ''A History of African Societies to 1870'' Cambridge University Press, 1997, {{ISBN|978-0521455992}} page 435</ref> Gokomere peoples were probably also related to certain nearby early Bantu groups like the [[Mapungubwe]] civilisation of neighbouring North eastern South Africa, which is believed to have been an early Venda-speaking culture, and to the nearby Sotho.

===Recent research===
[[File:Great zimbabwe 2.jpg|thumb|Passageway in the Great Enclosure]]
More recent archaeological work has been carried out by [[Peter Garlake]], who has produced the comprehensive descriptions of the site,<ref name="Garlake 2002">Garlake (2002)</ref><ref>Garlake (1973)</ref><ref>Garlake (1982)</ref> [[David Beach (historian)|David Beach]]<ref name="current"/><ref>Beach, David N. (1990) [http://archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/African%20Journals/pdfs/Journal%20of%20the%20University%20of%20Zimbabwe/vol17n2/juz017002006.pdf "Publishing the Past: Progress in the 'Documents from the Portuguese' Series"]. Zambezia, Vol. 17, No. 2, 1990, pp. 175–183.</ref><ref>Beach, David N. (1999) [http://archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/African%20Journals/pdfs/Journal%20of%20the%20University%20of%20Zimbabwe/vol26n1/juz026001003.pdf "Pre-colonial History, Demographic Disaster and the University"]. Zambezia, Vol. 26, No. 1, 1999, pp. 5–33.</ref> and [[Thomas Huffman]],<ref name="SAAB"/><ref>Huffman, Thomas N. (05-1985) [https://www.sfu.ca/~wwl10/huffman%20soapstone%20birds.pdf "The Soapstone Birds from Great Zimbabwe."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120705173410/http://www.sfu.ca/~wwl10/huffman%20soapstone%20birds.pdf |date=5 July 2012 }} African Arts, Vol. 18, No. 3, May 1985, pp. 68–73 & 99–100.</ref> who have worked on the chronology and development of Great Zimbabwe and [[Gilbert Pwiti]], who has published extensively on trade links.<ref name="Zambezia"/><ref name="Pwiti2004">{{cite journal |author=Gilbert Pwiti |year=2004 |title=Economic change, ideology and the development of cultural complexity in northern Zimbabwe |journal=Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa |volume=39 |pages=265–282 |doi=10.1080/00672700409480403 |s2cid=161890031}}</ref><ref>Pwiti, Gilbert (1996). Continuity and change: an archaeological study of farming communities in northern Zimbabwe AD 500–1700. Studies in African Archaeology, No.13, Department of Archaeology, Uppsala University, Uppsala:.</ref> Today, the most recent consensus attributes the construction of Great Zimbabwe to the Shona people (a [[Bantu peoples|Bantu group]]).<ref name="Ndoro, W 19972"/><ref name="Beach, D. N. 19942"/> Some evidence also suggests an early influence from the probably [[Venda people|Venda]]-speaking peoples of the [[Mapungubwe]] civilization.<ref name=Huffman2009/>

===Damage to the ruins===
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Damage to the ruins has taken place throughout the last century. European [[antiquarian]]s looted and pillaged Great Zimbabwe and similar structures from the 1890s to 1920s, greatly inhibiting the work of future archaeologists by destroying its [[stratigraphy]]. The removal of gold and artefacts in amateurist diggings by early colonial antiquarians caused widespread damage,<ref name=Kaarsholm/> notably diggings by [[Richard Nicklin Hall]].<ref name="Tyson">{{cite web|title=Mystery of Great Zimbabwe|author=Peter Tyson|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/israel/zimbabwe.html|publisher=Nova Online|access-date=12 January 2010}}</ref> More extensive damage was caused by the mining of some of the ruins for gold.<ref name=Kaarsholm/> Reconstruction attempts since 1980 caused further damage, leading to alienation of the local communities from the site.<ref name=":0">{{cite journal|author=Webber Ndoro|title=The preservation and presentation of Great Zimbabwe|journal=Antiquity|volume=68|issue=260|year=1994|pages=616–623|doi=10.1017/S0003598X00047128|s2cid=161099034}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|title=Closure at Great Zimbabwe: Local Narratives of Desecration and Alienation|author=Joost Fontein|doi=10.1080/03057070600995723|journal=Journal of Southern African Studies|volume=32|year=2006|pages=771–794|issue=4|s2cid=143105508}}</ref> Another source of damage to the ruins has been due to the site being open to visitors with many cases of people climbing the walls, walking over archaeological deposits, and the over-use of certain paths all have had major impacts on the structures at the site.<ref name=":0" /> These are in conjunction with damages due to the natural weathering that occurs over time due to vegetation growth, the foundations settling, and erosion from the weather.<ref name=":0" />