Hall, M 1996, 'Heads and tales' , Representations (54) , pp. 104-123.

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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.

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