THE ZIMBABWE CULTURE

Ruins and Reactions.

299 pages, colour frontispiece of beads from Zimbabwe and other ruins, folding map, 52 plates - some folding, 26 text figures, blue cloth, a very good copy.

\'The great stone-built ruins at Zimbabwe and neighbouring sites in Southern Rhodesia have excited speculation since their existence first  became know to Europeans. The explorations of Hall and Bent and others gave currency to the romantic view that Zimbabwe was built between 2000 B.C. and the Christian era by Sabaeans and Phoenicians, and was the centre of a great civilization which traded in the gold of the Rhodesian mines. In 1905  Dr. Randall-Maciver investigated the ruins and inferred from the evidence of his finds  that Zimbabwe could not be anterior to the fourteenth or fifteenth century A.D. In order to settle the problem the British Association in 1929 send out Miss Caton-Thompson to make a further archaeological investigation o the site. The present volume contains her fully documented and illustrated account of the work carried out at Zimbabwe and subsidiary sites, among them Dhlo-Dhlo and Matendere, and of the conclusions reached. These indicate that the Zimbabwe civilization is African in origin and may have arisen about the eighth or ninth century A.D.\' Editor\'s note.