(first approxmiations to the history of the last 2000 years)1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2009
The name ‘Iron Age’ has been given to a complex of post-Stone Age cultures in Southern Rhodesia. The cultures themselves vary very considerably but all are characterized by the use of iron for tools and weapons. Unlike the sequences in Europe and the Near East, that of south Central Africa shows no copper or bronze-using stage between the stone and iron-using phases and even the Neolithic seems to be missing from this part of the world.
2 Their local names were probably Bukaranga and Guruwuswa. The first name appears very occasionally in Portuguese sources, the second has traditional warrant and has been published by D. P. Abraham.
* These two dates were based on specimens from the heartwood of slow growing, long lived trees (Spirostachys africana). They are considered to be anomalous in the light later tests on charcoal from occupation debris belonging to B 1. All other tests are from charcoals.