Thulamela: Gold, Human Burials, and a Forgotten African Kingdom

Thulamela was the centre of an African kingdom that flourished during the mid-second millennium AD. Research carried out in the 1990s, however, is incomplete and under-reported, and knowledge of the settlement is largely assumed or based on published scraps of information and borrows heavily and uncritically from research at what are thought to be similar state centres. Thulamela remains an enigma. In this paper, we present the story of Thulamela, and how we aim to redress the dominant narratives of the site and its history. Our study reviews the work carried out during the 1990s at the walled complex and revisits the original collection of finds, most of which remains underanalysed and unpublished. We lay the groundwork for future in-depth inter-disciplinary research that aims to shed new light on this neglected kingdom and the history of southern Africa.