The Great Zimbabwe “Phoenician” Attribution

Record summary

European explorers and colonial writers reported Great Zimbabwe in the nineteenth century, and many rejected the possibility that local African societies had built its monumental stone architecture. Attributions to Phoenicians, Arabs, Egyptians or biblical peoples circulated despite archaeological evidence for a medieval Shona-associated urban center. The case matters for comparison because it exposes how racial ideology and diffusionism shaped archaeological interpretation. Researchers can trace changing claims through explorer accounts, excavation reports, architecture, radiocarbon evidence and later postcolonial scholarship.