Living site, living values: the Matendera festival as practice in community conservation and presentation

The Matendera festival is a ceremony conducted annually to celebrate the intangible heritage of the Shona people of Buhera in eastern Zimbabwe, popularly known as the Vahera, through their native dances, traditional music and cuisine, and a marathon. The ceremony is hosted annually at Matendera, a spectacular dry-stone-walled Iron Age site whose builders are historically connected to the Vahera. Through co-ordinating the efforts of the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe (NMMZ), the Buhera Rural District Council (BRDC) and other secondary stakeholders, the Vahera community gathers at Matendera to showcase their traditional foods, dances and games as part of their efforts to celebrate and experience Hera history and culture in relation to the tangible aspects of Matendera, a former abode of their ancestors. In this paper, we show how we used archaeological ethnography as a methodology for engaging the communities in conversations about the intangible meanings and importance of this festival. We illustrate how the circulation of knowledge in a festival is different from that in a traditional museum, by presenting aspects of intangible heritage that manifest in the form of traditional dances, foods, songs and social games. Ultimately, the fact that the history and archaeology of Matendera is largely enshrined within its monumental architecture enables the use of archaeological ethnography as a tool for understanding the contemporary social context of the site. Thus, we argue that Matendera cannot be divorced from the intangible practices that are showcased there during the festival.