Abstract
This review draws from old and new archaeological data and takes interpretive flavor from indigenous African concepts to demonstrate that, within a context of local and external interfaces, Great Zimbabwe’s political economy was a mosaic rooted more in a mix of seasonally specific, household-based, compositional strategies of production and circulation and less in the redistribution of archaeologically low-frequency exotics from the Indian Ocean. An ideology based on the hierarchical triad of land, ancestors, and belief in God underwrote custodial rights and extractive powers that at times enabled rulers to access a share of productive, allocative, and circulative activities in their territories. Simultaneously, households and communities freely participated in the economy, often inside and outside state control and influence, demonstrating the individual, collective, mixed, embedded, and capillary nature of the political economy.
Highlights
The approach has been influential in Mesoamerica and Mesopotamia, where scholars of varying theoretical shades, from Marxists to substantivists, have over time explored topics ranging from the importance of hierarchical and heterarchical logics, relations of production, distribution mechanisms, and among others class entanglements and inequality in the political economy of premodern states and urban systems (Crumley 1995; Earle 1987; Ehrenreich et al 1995; Feinman and Neitzel 1984; Haas 2001; McIntosh 1999; Polanyi et al 1957; Rowlands 1989; Shennan 1993; Stahl 2004)
The inhabitants of some regions labeled as peripheries in parts of Asia and Africa made conscious decisions to be stateless and interacted with the so-called cores in their own ways, demonstrating variability in human strategies across space and time (Scott 2009). This and other limitations precipitated the emergence of newer approaches that explored the mix of strategies employed by societies through collective and individual action to produce, manipulate, mobilize, and allocate resources in different places and at different points in time (Blanton and Fargher 2008; DeMarrais and Earle 2017; Feinman and Carballo 2018; Feinman and Nicholas 2012; Hirth 1996; Smith 2004). These newer models that are based on the examination of the local context within a broader perspective reject the bifurcation of control of political economies into monolithic categories such as command based or decentralized and instead view them as a mix of strategies, collective action included, that could be adopted by households in state and nonstate societies alike (e.g., Chirikure 2018)
The mobilization of surplus goods and labor to finance ritual events in differently organized societies stimulated production through collective action and cooperation and, sometimes, created dependencies and systemic changes in social fabrics (Friedman and Rowlands 1977; Morehart and De Lucia 2015). This point is well illustrated by Norman (2015), who argued that Huedan rulers in Benin in the 17th and 18th centuries were able to employ persuasive strategies to stimulate collective action in the political economy and to increase the number of followers who were converted into wealth-in-people
Summary
As a theoretical and analytical approach to archaeology, political economy— the study of social relations based on unequal access to wealth and power—has a relatively deep history and is popular in the Anglophone archaeological tradition (Chacon and Mendoza 2017; Cobb 1993; Earle 1997; Feinman 2016; Haas 1982; Hirth 1996; McIntosh 1999; Roseberry 1989; Smith 2004; Stahl 2004; Yoffee 2005). The mobilization of surplus goods and labor to finance ritual events in differently organized societies stimulated production through collective action and cooperation and, sometimes, created dependencies and systemic changes in social fabrics (Friedman and Rowlands 1977; Morehart and De Lucia 2015) This point is well illustrated by Norman (2015), who argued that Huedan rulers in Benin in the 17th and 18th centuries were able to employ persuasive strategies to stimulate collective action (sensu Blanton and Fargher 2008) in the political economy and to increase the number of followers who were converted into wealth-in-people (sensu Guyer and Belinga 1995). What are the implications of such evidence for exploring the political economy of Great Zimbabwe?
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
