Ziwa Ruins

Mashonaland Central, Zimbabwe

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Ziwa Ruins, located in Mashonaland Central Province in eastern Zimbabwe near Nyanga National Park, represent a significant archaeological site featuring extensive stone terraces, enclosures, pit structures, and hill forts from late Iron Age farming communities dating to around the 15th century.

Spanning over 3,300 hectares and declared a National Monument in 1946, the complex shows evidence of human occupation from Stone Age hunter-gatherers through early farming settlements around 200 AD, with advanced agriculture, iron smelting furnaces, pottery, and rock art preserved across terraced hillsides.

Once part of private farmland that faced degradation, it now includes a site museum offering guided tours, walking trails, camping, and birdwatching, highlighting the ingenuity of ancestral Shona-like peoples in terraced cultivation on steep landscapes.​