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Joost Fontein. The Silence of Great Zimbabwe: Contested Landscapes and the Power of Heritage. New York: UCL Press, 2006. Distributed by Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, Calif, xvii + 246 pp. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $69.00. Cloth. $34.95. Paper.
The Silence of Great Zimbabwe examines the politics of landscape and heritage around the internationally renowned site of Great Zimbabwe. Fontein claims that his work is merely another addition to the ever-expanding literature on Great Zimbabwe, but I disagree. Emphasis in writings on Great Zimbabwe in the past has been on origins, economics, religion, and more recendy on symbolism. But Fontein adds a new and interesting perspective, exploring how both knowledge of the past at Great Zimbabwe and the management of the site itself have continued to be dominated by what he calls "disembedding mechanisms" in postcolonial Zimbabwe: "The continued alienation of Great Zimbabwe from local communities has resulted in both a silence of unheard voices and untold stories - die unrepresented past of local communities - and die silence of anger - die alienation, and indeed die desecration of Great Zimbabwe" (12-13).
The Silence of Great Zimbabwe is based on several years of ethnographic fieldwork among communities who live around Great Zimbabwe, archival research at the National Archives of Zimbabwe and in National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe (NMMZ), and interviews with war...