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This year's Munro Lecture will be delivered by Professor Innocent Pikirayi, Department of Anthropology, Archaeology and Development Studies at the University of Pretoria.Recent research on archaeological, geo-hydrological and climate change provide baseline data to address the decline of Great Zimbabwe. The ancient city was located on an aquifer, fed by water from surrounding granite hills, percolating into adjacent etchplains, and then discharged through springs. Geoarchaeological research identified earthen depressions (dhaka pits) within Great Zimbabwe as water reservoirs (Pikirayi et al. 2022, 2023). Their dredging is coeval with declining temperatures in equatorial and eastern Africa during the late sixteenth and mid-eighteenth centuries, characterised by widespread droughts reportedly, "more severe than any recorded drought of the twentieth century" (Verschuren et al. 2000). Jasechko et al. (2024) demonstrates widespread, accelerated and significant groundwater-level declines, especially in regional aquifers. For Great Zimbabwe, dredging of dhaka pits to harvest water from underlying fractured zones implicates its depleting aquifer. With groundwater resources vital to its ecosystem, climate change and increased withdrawals may have triggered diminishing water levels, depleting the pits, negatively impacting on the ancient city.
More information: https://edin.ac/3UyCHjT
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Meadows Lecture Theatre, William Robertson Wing, Doorway 4, Old Medical SChool, Teviot Place, Edinburgh EH8 9AG, The Meadows, Teviot Place, Edinburgh, EH1 2, United Kingdom,Edinburgh, United Kingdom