Work
Great Zimbabwe
Explore in the Atlas →The dry-stone capital of a medieval Shona kingdom, its mortarless granite enclosures and conical tower are the largest precolonial stone structures in sub-Saharan Africa and a refutation of colonial myth.
Power Settlement Exchange
Details
- Type
- Building
- Location
- Masvingo Province, Zimbabwe
Classifications
- Holder
- Communal intergenerational
- Source of authority
- Ancestry
- Subject
- Human centred
- Political position
- Hegemonic
- Degree of codification
- Protocol performed
- Mode of transmission
- Oral song embodiedApprenticeship
- Knowledge type
- Relational embodied
- Epistemic cluster
- African
Connections
- exemplifies Vernacular Architecture
Sources
- Peter S. Garlake. Great Zimbabwe. Thames & Hudson, 1973.
- Innocent Pikirayi. The Zimbabwe Culture: Origins and Decline of Southern Zambezian States. AltaMira Press, 2001.
Cite this entry
First published May 2026Last revised Jul 2026
CLAD. "Great Zimbabwe." Atlas of Architectural Thought. CLAD, 2026. https://www.cl-ad.com.au/research/atlas/work/great-zimbabwe/. Accessed July 17, 2026.