[GREAT ZIMBABWE] BENT, J. Theodore

The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland Being A Record of Excavation and Exploration in 1891

London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1895. Third edition. Octavo (19cm). Maroon cloth stamped in silver; brown coated endpapers; [xxx],427,[1],24pp; 24pp publisher's catalogue inserted at rear; black and white plates. A bright copy, lightly rubbed at edges and slightly spine-sunned, a few spots of foxing, publisher's catalogue browned: Very Good.

Archaeological investigations in the Mashonaland region of Zimbabwe, including the first detailed western account of the medieval city Great Zimbabwe. His book was "enthusiastically received...but both his methods and his conclusions came in for trenchant criticism from professional archaeologists and other scholars. His amateur methods damaged sites and artefacts...His removal of the best examples of the famous soapstone birds at Great Zimbabwe has been particularly criticized. Worse than his methods was his conclusion that the sites were constructed by a northern race coming from Arabia and akin to the Phoenicians. There seems to have been no sound empirical foundation for this belief, which rested largely on the assumption that African people were too primitive to have sustained a society which...could construct such complex buildings" (ODNB).

Price: $75.00

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