Heads and tales

Hall, M

Abstract

On 5 September 1871 Carl Mauch, an energetic and credulous explorer of central southern Africa, was led along a "long line of tumbled down stones" to "masses of rubble and parts of walls and dense thickets"; the place that was to become known as Great Zimbabwe. In 1956 or 1957 (the record is unclear), a schoolboy exploring the veld several hundred kilometers to the south discovered the sherds of a broken terra-cotta head. The pieces, which fitted easily together, showed two heavily lidded eyes and a nose, clearly part of a human face, now known as the Lydenburg Heads.

Citation

Hall, M. (1996). Heads and tales. Representations, 104-123

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 1996
• Deposit Date: Dec 10, 2009
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 10, 2009
• Journal: Representations
• Print ISSN: 0734-6018
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Issue: 54
• Pages: 104-123
• Publisher URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2928694