Although new research suggests multi-directional trajectories in the development of the Zimbabwe Tradition (see Chirikure et al. Reference Chirikure, Bandama, House, Moffett, Mukwende and Pollard2016), regional population shifts need not be discounted, as some of these generated states (e.g. Vigneswaran & Quirk Reference Vigneswaran and Quirk2015). Oral-historical data from northern Zimbabwe counters persistent but often misleading views of pre-colonial states in south-central Africa as exercising power over static and stationary populations (Pikirayi Reference Pikirayi1993). Rather, human mobility shaped, among other things, the Zimbabwe Culture's spatial features, its strategies for accumulating power and managing resources, and the regional political, social and economic actors to which it was connected. This occurred with the demise of Great Zimbabwe from the second half of the fifteenth century and for much of the sixteenth. Ingombe Ilede attests to post mid fifteenth-century regional shifts in patterns of trade that would lure the Portuguese to south-central Africa from the early sixteenth century onwards. The Zambezi became the preferred inland route. Great Zimbabwe's expansionary thrusts to control this trade undermined its own political control over the southern Zimbabwe plateau, as this spawned new political formations like the Mwene Mutapa state and other polities, including Ingombe Ilede.

Available conventional radiocarbon dates from Ingombe Ilede and sites with associated pottery excavated by Peter Garlake (Reference Garlake1970) in the Hurungwe area of north-western Zimbabwe lack the precision to allow for meaningful interpretations of Ingombe Ilede's status and regional context (Phillipson & Fagan Reference Phillipson and Fagan1969), with date ranges often spanning two centuries or more. Despite this, Lancaster and Pohorilenko's (Reference Lancaster and Pohorilenko1977) discussion of Ingombe Ilede's connections with the Zimbabwe Tradition is informative and needs reconsideration in the light of McIntosh and Fagan's new AMS dates. There has never been any doubt that the Ingombe Ilede inhabitants were in contact with Great Zimbabwe (Garlake Reference Garlake1972). In fact, Ingombe Ilede was key to the Zimbabwe Culture's connections with regions north of the Zambezi. From the late fifteenth century, it seems, considerable developments took place, not only involving the gold trade along the lower Zambezi, but also the copper trade, which became important in the Hurungwe (Urungwe) area of north-western Zimbabwe. By the sixteenth century, northern Zimbabwe had become the preferred destination for traders from the Indian Ocean coast.

Lancaster and Pohorilenko (Reference Lancaster and Pohorilenko1977: 17–18) desired a firmer bead chronology for Ingombe Ilede to confirm some of the events that would pre-date the Portuguese trade, involving the Karanga of the Zimbabwe plateau and the Swahili from the coast. The thousands of beads recovered at Ingombe Ilede require compositional analyses to determine their dating and the broader regional and global context in which they were traded. This type of analysis is already happening at Baranda (the feira of Massapa), in northern Zimbabwe (Koleini et al. Reference Koleini, Pikirayi and Colomban2017). More precise dating of Ingombe Ilede not only depends on some of these imports, but also on critical consideration of the archaeological context where charcoal is the only datable material and tends to give dates older than imported ceramics and glass beads. This was the case at Baranda, where luminescence dates were in agreement with the imports confirming a sixteenth-/seventeenth-century date for the site (Pikirayi Reference Pikirayi1993: 80). Thus, the re-dating of Ingombe Ilede challenges us to reconsider not only its broader regional context, but also the specific events connected with individuals interred there. Burials 3 and 8 at Ingombe Ilede reflect trading activities at the time that the Portuguese penetrated the south-central African interior, as well as an increased presence of the Mwene Mutapa in the commerce of the Hurungwe copper mines (Birmingham Reference Birmingham1981; Pikirayi Reference Pikirayi2001: 152–53).

According to Lancaster and Pohorilenko (Reference Lancaster and Pohorilenko1977: 19), later developments at Ingombe Ilede-type sites in Hurungwe presumably paralleled contemporaneous Portuguese activity at sixteenth-/seventeenth-century feiras at Dambarare and Ongoe. Rather than view these as parallel events, however, there were direct connections between the Portuguese and trading activities involving Ingombe Ilede in south-central Africa. References to the silver mines at Chicova in maps by Manuel Godinho de Eredia (1615–1622) attest to a much deeper Portuguese penetration into the central African interior (Cortesao & da Mota Reference Cortesao and da Mota1960: volume 4). The production and trade in copper in south-central Africa also indicates changing and shifting patterns in regional trade in other precious metals, as is attested by the new dates from Ingombe Ilede and the historical period contexts of the Chedzurgwe finds in north-western Zimbabwe.