Mapungubwe. I. The Excavations and Culture

The story of the discovery of Mapungubwe, which led to its systematic excavation, makes reading as vivid and exciting as any adventure-fiction of our youth.The site is one of many precipitous sandstone kopjes which rear their almost perpendicular sides some 200 ft. above a valley-floor tributary to the Limpopo, which lies only a mile distant, at the point where the Shashi river, flowing from Rhodesia, joins forces with it. Messina—archaeologically famous for its pre-European copper mines—lies about 50 miles west, and it overlooks the meeting point of Transvaal, Bechuanaland and Southern Rhodesian territory. Fortunately for science, British administration being parsimonious in these matters, the hill lay within the Transvaal border.