David Randall-MacIver FBA (31 October 1873 – 30 April 1945) was a British-born archaeologist,[1] who later became an American citizen. He is most famous for his excavations at Great Zimbabwe which provided the first solid evidence that the site was built by Shona peoples.
In 1901, Nature Magazine were disconcerted, as the Egyptologist Randall-Maciver had suggested: "it is well worth considering whether the pre-dynastic race of Egypt is not in the main a blending in various proportions of Semite and Negro."[5]
Work in Nubia, in Great Zimbabwe, and in Karanog
With funding from Eckley B. Coxe Jr., Randall-MacIver initiated research into the relationship between Egypt and Nubia, uncovering some of the earliest evidence of ancient Nubian culture, dating back to 3100 BCE. Between 1905 and 1906 Randall-MacIver conducted the first detailed study of Great Zimbabwe. The absence of any artefacts of non-African origin led him to conclude that the structure was built by local people. Earlier scholars had speculated that the structure had been built by Arab or Phoenician traders. Between 1907 and 1910 he excavated the site of Karanog, a former provincial capital of the Kingdom of Kush.
Randall-MacIver, D.; Woolley, C. Leonard (1909). Areika. University of Pennsylvania: Publications of the Egyptian Dept. Of the University Museum. Eckley B. Coxe junior expedition to Nubia; 1. Printed by Horace Hart, at the University Press; with a chapter on Meroitic inscriptions by Francis Llewellyn Griffith{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
Randall-MacIver, David. Greek Cities in Italy and Sicily, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1931.
References
^‘RANDALL-MACIVER, David’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2007; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2012; online edn, Oct 2012 accessed 7 Feb 2014
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