Paper short abstract:

There are several pointers to Great Zimbabwe as have strived a lot from gold trade.The paper argues that recent mining activities along the Great Zimbabwe Masvingo road by amakorokoza attests to the presence of gold in the area.

Paper long abstract:

There is evidence that during its heydays people who established Great Zimbabwe had access to gold of which the surplus was trade. Over the years different scholars have suggested that trade contributed immensely to the establishment of Great Zimbabwe as a state (Garlake 1973, 1970, Huffman 1972, Pikirayi 1999, 2001). It is widely believed that the gold that is found in archaeological contexts at Great Zimbabwe was coming from the Zimbabwe plateau as tribute. The immediate environs of Great Zimbabwe are largely portrayed as being devoid of any meaningful gold deposits. However, recent mining activities along the Great Zimbabwe Masvingo road by the makorokoza (small scale artisanal miners) attest to the presence of gold in the area. This paper takes a landscape approach taking into cognisance that activities that were happening a few kilometres from the site could have had an influence on the spatial configurations. It has been well documented that in the case of gold mining in Zimbabwe, the tendency has been to mine where there is evidence of ancient mining of the material (Summers, 1969). The presence of gold has been since observed but the origins or the gold mines remain one of the mysteries that the current paper unravels by providing parallels where ancient gold mining areas has been reopened. The paper argues that gold was mined not very far from the site as would be suggested by earlier scholars.