Dr Russell Kapumha

russell profile pic
Postdoctoral Researcher
New Bantu Mosaics project
russell.kapumha@arch.ox.ac.uk

Research Interests:

The archaeology of southern African farming communities (Iron Age): Landscape archaeology, ancient architecture, material culture, GIS and 3D modelling, heritage management

Geographic Area:

Southern Africa, Zimbabwe

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher on the New Bantu Mosaics project (PI: Prof Shadreck Chirikure). I am responsible for material culture studies, GIS applications, and database development. I combine my interest in landscape archaeology with modelling population movements to develop new understanding of how the Bantu people may have spread in relation to resource gradients. Previously, I was with the School of Archaeology as a British Academy Newton International Fellow (NIF). My NIF project titled on missing links and bridging gaps: The Archaeology of Kubiku, a Zimbabwe culture site in Masvingo, south-eastern Zimbabwe, was an attempt to contribute to the unpacking of southern Africa’s ancient urban landscape. I am also a 2018 USA African Studies Association (ASA) Presidential Fellow and a holder of small grants from the British Institute in East Africa (BIEA)

Research Profile

Russell Kapumha is an archaeologist whose research explores how people shaped, and were shaped by, the landscapes and built environments of southern Africa’s past. As part of the New Bantu Mosaics Project, he leads material-culture studies and the application of GIS and database tools to trace patterns of movement, interaction, and resource use across time and space. His work integrates landscape archaeology with computational modelling to build new understandings of how Bantu-speaking communities spread in relation to ecological and cultural gradients.

Before joining the project, Russell held a British Academy Newton International Fellowship at Oxford’s School of Archaeology, where his research, “Missing Links and Bridging Gaps: The Archaeology of Kubiku”, examined a Zimbabwe Culture site in Gutu District, southeastern Zimbabwe. This work redefined narratives of southern Africa’s ancient urban landscapes, highlighting the importance of so-called “peripheral” towns and smaller settlements within wider regional networks.

His broader interests span landscape archaeology, stone architecture, material-culture analysis, GIS, 3D modelling, and heritage management. By combining these approaches, Russell seeks to move beyond the long-standing focus on elite dry-stone capitals such as Great Zimbabwe, Mapungubwe, and Khami, and to illuminate the diversity of communities that made up southern Africa’s dynamic settlement systems from the fifteenth century onward.

Russell holds a BA in Economic History and Archaeology and a DPhil in Archaeology, both from the University of Zimbabwe. He is also a 2018 African Studies Association (USA) Presidential Fellow and a recipient of research grants from the British Institute in East Africa.

ORCID

Publications