The Central Cemetery at Ingombe Ilede, Zambia: Chronology and Connections

Ingombe Ilede is located just north of the Zambezi River, and has often been seen as a trading station connected to Central Africa, the Zimbabwe Plateau and the Indian Ocean. Discussion of the richly appointed burials in its Central Cemetery has been hindered by uncertainty over their ages. In this article, we report four new radiocarbon dates from Ingombe Ilede and six new dates from sites in northern Zimbabwe that are relevant to a wider understanding of Ingombe Ilede and its connections. These ten dates are all on organic fiber cores within copper and bronze jewelry, for which we also report chemical compositions, lead isotope ratios, and (for bronzes) tin isotopic ratios. We show that the richer burials in the Central Cemetery were interred no earlier than the mid fifteenth century. By this time copper from the Central African Copperbelt, 500–700 km north of the Zambezi, had been transported into northern Zimbabwe for at least two centuries, as had tin from the Bushveld Large Igneous Province (BLIP) 900–1000 km south of the Zambezi. The rich burials at Ingombe Ilede represent a late phase of a longstanding trade in copper from the Copperbelt to the Zimbabwean plateau.