ABSTRACT
The stories of Great Zimbabwe that have been traced in this book illustrate how place and landscape are 'always in movement and always becoming' (Bender 2001: 4). The meanings and significance attributed to place and landscape are constantly being re-shaped, re-defined and re-negotiated within the changing spatial and historical context of wider discourses, struggles and contestations. Pre-colonial Great Zimbabwe was a sacred site that lay at the centre of disputes among local clans over superiority and land ownership. Colonialism saw Great Zimbabwe alienated from these local clans, and appropriated to provide historical and moral justification for the imperial project. It became the centre of a different contest, known as the Zimbabwe Controversy, between 'professional' archaeologists and 'amateur' Rhodesian 'antiquarians' over the authority to investigate and represent the past. Meanwhile the site itself acquired new meaning as a national monument and a tourist destination, which made not only the appropriation of Great Zimbabwe but also its desecration almost inevitable. Great Zimbabwe became silent; local people's responses to its past and its value were not heard, and the Voice and other mysterious sounds disappeared.
