Tiny pottery shard links Great Zimbabwe to China, while glass beads reveal trade ties

PC: YouTube(Secrets of the Dead PBS) A small shard of jade-green pottery found at Great Zimbabwe has opened a window onto a journey that crossed continents and the Indian Ocean centuries ago. The fragment looks unlike the earth-brown pieces recovered from the same archaeological trench.Its smooth glaze led archaeologists to identify it as Longquan celadon, a prized type of Chinese pottery made in Longquan kilns in southeast China. According to the Secrets of the Dead PBS YouTube video, the discovery suggests goods reached the southern African city from a distant part of the world. The fragment is more than an unusual object. It offers a physical clue to the long-distance routes that connected Great Zimbabwe with traders and communities far beyond Africa.A Chinese pottery shard found at Great Zimbabwe reveals its distant originsThe fragment caught archaeologists’ attention because its colour and finish differed from the Earth-Brown pottery found elsewhere in the trench. Shadreck Chirikure is an archaeologist and the Edward Hall Professor of Archaeological Science at the University of Oxford. He points to the pale body beneath the glaze and describes the surface as ‘apple green’.The ...