This article examines the nature and causes of socio-cultural changes that took place amongst prehistoric farming communities in northern Zimbabwe. Farming was established in northern Zimbabwe by the fifth century AD as a result of human population movements from further north. For the greater part of the first millennium AD, the early farmers were organised as nonstratified village communities. Early in the second millennium AD, complex forms of socio-political organisation developed in northern Zimbabwe. It is argued in this article that rather than migration, the development of complexity was initially the result of changes in economic practices, ideology and population increase. The development of chiefdoms is associated with populations of the Musengezi tradition who in the 15th century, became subjects of the Mutapa state. This was a secondary state, resulting from the northward expansion of the Great Zimbabwe tradition.
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