African Iron Age Sites

Great Zimbabwe is an African Iron Age settlement and dry-stone monument located near the town of Masvingo in central Zimbabwe

Aksum (also spelled Axum) is the name of a powerful, urban Iron Age Kingdom in Ethiopia, that flourished in the centuries before and after the time of Christ.

Bosutswe is the name of a deeply stratified Toutswe culture site, located on the Motloutse river (tributary to the Zambezi River) at the eastern edge of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana. Occupied between AD 700 and 1700, the site contains over 200 stone features including grain bin foundations, stone granary platforms and seven semi-circular stone walls.

Igbo Ukwu is an archaeological site near the modern town of Onitsha, southeastern Nigeria. The site was part of the Nri Kingdom, and it was used in the 10th century AD. The site has several parts, including a main elite burial, and associated caches and shrines.

Ile-Ife (pronounced EE-lay EE-fay) is an urban center in southwestern Nigeria, first occupied at least as early as the 1st millennium AD. It was most populous and important to the Ife culture during the 14th and 15th centuries AD, and it is considered the traditional birthplace of the Yoruba civilization, of the latter part of the African Iron Age.

The site of Toutswemogala is a large permanent settlement of the Toutswe Tradition located in the Limpopo River valley of eastern Botswana. It is located on the top of a hill, and was occupied for perhaps as long as 300 years between about AD 1000 and 1300