I consider origin mythology centred on Polombwe hill in Ulungu at the southern tip of Lake Tanganyika in Zambia and parallel myths concerning the Tsodilo Hills in north-western Botswana. The temporality of life marked by birth and death in these myths introduces the concept of time, and the founding of a country introduces the concept of history into the cosmology of southern African societies. In both myths, female associates of autochthonous males become vitalizing elements of the landscape, hence incorporating history with geographic space. We thus see in these myths both the establishment of a proper social order with a legitimate leader at its apex and the association of that order with the land in which it exists. These myths narrate the instituting of social legitimacy in those societies based on a complex and potentially unstable resolution of the inherent contradiction between the two concepts of authority and power: lineage and land. I then turn to the cognate Shona Mwari myth recorded by Frobenius as used by Tom Huffman in his analysis of Great Zimbabwe architecture, drawing out parallels among the myths where, in the process of creation, a primal pair in undifferentiated space and time passes through a series of liminal states, thereby bringing structure to the landscape and legitimacy to society. The prominence of hilltops as the residence of paranormal power and the association of this power with human authority is examined and related to archaeological interpretation in the Iron Age sites of Great Zimbabwe, Mapungubwe, Bosutswe (eastern Botswana), and Nqoma in the Tsodilo Hills.

To cite this article: Wilmsen, E.N. 2009. Hills and the brilliance of beads: myths and the interpretation of Iron Age sites in southern Africa. Southern African Humanities 21: 263-274.