Chibuene

Chibuene was a trading settlement on the southern Mozambican coast, where goods from the Indian Ocean reached communities of the interior. Glass beads and imported glazed pottery came ashore here in the first millennium, while its inhabitants combined farming and livestock with fishing and the gathering of shellfish. Some fifty kilometres inland stood Manyikeni, a stone-walled settlement of the Zimbabwe tradition where glass beads and marine shells have been found. Chibuene may have helped connect it to the sea. Crucibles from a later phase at the coastal site show that gold was melted there.