ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the cultural landscape around Great Zimbabwe using community narrative to understand perceptions of heritage and landscape among the communities that created it. It argues that myths are metaphors of a cultural thought system that translates the intangible to the cultural and environmental present. The chapter focuses on monumentality abbreviated traditional cultural landscapes and how these can be reconstituted through understanding landscape narratives in the form of legends. The landscape was developed for the enjoyment of the European settler population. The inherited colonial legislation that archaeologists use to manage the landscape today defines what is to be preserved and celebrated, but it is apparent from problems experienced that there is a need to listen to community stories in managing and interpreting this cultural landscape. The narratives therefore assist heritage managers in identifying the important elements of a cultural landscape without separating them from the material culture.