Debating great Zimbabwe

Abstract

We are humbled by Huffman’s acknowledgement of our contribution to the archaeology of Great Zimbabwe (Chirikure and Pikirayi 2008) and his spirit of constructive debate (Huffman 2010). Any reasonable scholar cannot deny the positive influence that his research has had on the archaeology of Great Zimbabwe. However, research is not just about reaffirming what has been done; it is more about reinterrogating the data even if it means swinging the pendulum of knowledge violently to push back the frontiers of knowledge. Often, some scholars seem reluctant to accept new thinking that contradicts what they believed earlier. As Martin Hall (1996, 6) once remarked, ‘facts like kings are no longer absolute, they cannot sustain themselves forever’. Hall was implying that without a detailed interrogation of both old and new data, there is really no point in doing research. With Great Zimbabwe the extremes would be that cognitive structuralism has explained everything so we do not need to study the site at all or that we should close our minds to new insights that put strong dents in the dominant interpretative reconstructions.