Mapela

Mapela Hill was a major centre of the early Zimbabwe tradition, its slopes and summit furnished with extensive dry-stone walls and terraces. Houses stood on solid clay floors, and pottery, metal ornaments and spindle whorls testify to the work of its inhabitants. Across the Shashe-Limpopo country, Mapela was one of several centres whose communities shared styles of building and craft.

Mapela flourished from the eleventh into the fourteenth century, overlapping with the rise of Mapungubwe to the south. Thousands of glass beads found on its terraces reveal connections to long-distance trade reaching the Indian Ocean. The scale of the hilltop settlement and its elaborate stonework point to a centre of considerable local power, rather than a mere dependency of its neighbours.