Swahili women since the nineteenth century: theoretical and empirical considerations on gender and identity construction

This paper provides an analysis and update on the theoretical discussion about the link between gender and identity and uses a group of Swahili women in eastern Africa as an example of how this link works in practice. The first part of the study provides a brief overview of gender theory related to the terms "gender" and "identity." It is noted that gender is only one aspect of identity and that the concept of gender has undergone important changes such as the reconceptualization of the terms "sex" and "gender." The second part of the study synthesizes the experiences of Swahili women in the 19th century when the convergence of gender and class was very important. The status of Muslim women is reviewed, and it is noted that even influential women practiced purdah and that all Swahili women experienced discrimination, which inhibited their opportunities for socioeconomic mobility. Slavery and concubinage were widespread during this period, and the participation of Islamic women in spirit possession cults was a way for women to express themselves culturally. The separation of men and women in Swahili culture led to the development of two distinct subcultures, which excluded women from most aspects of public life. The third part of the study looks at the experiences of Swahili women since the 19th century both during and after the colonial period. It is shown that continuity exists in trends observed over a period of 200 years. For example, the mobility of Swahili women remains limited by Islam, but women do exert influence behind the scenes. It is concluded that the socioeconomic status of Swahili woman has been shaped more by complex forces such as class, ethnic, religious, and geographic area than by the oppression of Islam and colonialism. This study indicates that gender cannot be studied in isolation from other salient variables affecting identity.     

Archaeology at the micro-scale: micromorphology and phytoliths at a Swahili stonetown

Geoarchaeological and archaeobotanical techniques are increasingly applied to the study of urban and domestic space. However, they are seldom performed as part of an integrative approach, where the soil and botanical micro-records are used together. This paper presents the preliminary results of ongoing research at Songo Mnara in Tanzania that combines customised intra-site soil macro- and micromorphological analyses, chemical analysis and the study of phytoliths. The research is part of a multidisciplinary project on the use of urban space in Swahili stonetowns. By eliciting multiple datasets from Songo Mnara, this paper illustrates the potential of integrating geoarchaeology and archaeobotany to investigate the use of space in urban contexts. The approach is a novelty within the context of Swahili archaeology and an emerging one in Africa.     

A Review of Ceramics from Tanzania, Malawi, and Northern Mozambique, with Implications for Swahili Archaeology

Typological approaches to locally produced ceramics have played an important role in the archaeology of Eastern Africa. This paper engages with that history as it contextualizes the ceramic material recently recovered from the region around the site of Mikindani on the southern Tanzanian coast with known traditions from the Kenyan and Tanzanian coast, Malawi, and Mozambique. That comparison reveals the shifting connections and interregional relationships the inhabitants of the Mikindani region forged over the past two millennia with other communities in the Indian Ocean world and the African interior. Mikindani's ceramics are shown to provide important evidence of the deep connections between the region and the African interior to the southwest during the early second millennium, at the expense of connections with coastal Swahili sites further north. This pattern is unusual for a coastal site during the florescence of Swahili society and the typical expansion of Swahili involvement in the Indian Ocean world at that time. The typological comparison of the Mikindani material and other regional traditions thus allows us to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the typological enterprise, in terms of what information is brought to light and what information is obscured.     

The Impact of Small-Scale Development Projects on Archaeological Heritage in Africa: The Tanzanian Experience

The governments in Africa implement various development projects to improve livelihoods. The projects are both large and small scale. Large-scale projects include construction of dams, railway lines, roads, industrial complexes, expanding cities and new mines. Small-scale ones include establishing new residential houses and maintenance of roads linking administrative divisions. Both large- and small-scale projects involve land disturbance and have the potential to destroy archaeological heritage particularly when not accompanied by salvage studies. Unfortunately, archaeological salvage studies largely focus on large-scale projects. Only a handful of studies may have investigated the impact of small-scale projects. This paper focuses on small-scale projects and investigates the seven-hectare archaeological site of Bweni in NE Tanzania. The project to build fishing ponds on an area of only 350 m² destroyed archaeological heritage including human remains and ceramics of the early Swahili period, ceramics and beads of the Swahili ‘golden age’ period, and archaeological records of the post-Swahili period.     

明代蜀藩亲王墓葬的分布及相关问题试析

明代蜀藩墓葬自20世纪50年代以来发现颇多。结合对《明实录》等文献的梳理,推测潘家沟蜀王墓为明晚期的蜀端王墓,圹志碑未写蜀王谥号或与继任者"遽奏名封"一事有关。根据墓葬形制及蜀王文集、地方志等文献,凤凰山"蜀王妃"墓应是一座明早期的郡王级墓葬,墓主为崇庆王的可能性更大。结合部分亲王妃、郡王等略低等级墓葬的分布情况,可知蜀藩亲王墓可分为成都北郊、成都东南郊、黄龙溪、仁寿4个墓区。明初蜀王墓的选址经过较严格的规划;僖王使用了尚在郡王位时即已选定的墓址;此后的和王、定王选址较分散,距成都较远;怀王之后均相对集中葬于成都东南郊,或有政令因素的影响。     

从壁画中轺车图像的演变看三座高句丽壁画墓的编年

高句丽壁画墓的编年在学界长期存在分歧,通过对墓室壁画中轺车图像演变的研究,推定了通沟12号墓、高山洞7号墓与药水里壁画墓的时代,并以此为基础,修正集安地区相关高句丽壁画墓的编年,探讨其谱系,进而提出高句丽积石墓向封土石室墓的过渡约在5世纪前叶展开,封土石室墓的出现存在本地积石墓自然过渡与外地成熟封土墓直接导入两大渊源。     

集安禹山两座高句丽时期积石墓的时代及相关问题

禹山M2112与M0540是集安洞沟古墓群禹山墓区的两座阶坛积石圹室墓,二者均为高句丽王陵的调查对象。M2112经1994、2003年两次发掘,1994年度发掘报告根据墓葬出土莲花纹瓦当的形制,认为该墓年代约为4世纪末至5世纪初,稍早于太王陵[1]。M0540于2003年清理,发掘者根据墓葬阶坛与墓室的形态,认为该墓当略早于千秋墓,又依据圹室内出土四耳展沿壶的形     

浙江安吉笔架山春秋战国墓葬发掘简报

浙江安吉笔架山春秋战国墓结构分为两类,出土了大量器物。以原始瓷和印纹硬陶为标准器,可将墓葬分为早、晚两期,其年代应处于战国早期,此墓葬为研究浙江地区春秋战国时期文化过渡及战国时期墓葬葬期提供了新的材料。     

宋代多层墓葬研究

多层墓葬是指在墓葬中构造出多个立体空间的墓葬形制。从层次结构上看,可分为三层和双层两类,以双层结构为主。这种多层构造最早出现在北宋中期,作为一种御赐的"地下石藏"来使用。在北宋晚至南宋初期,多层墓葬的形制和构造均发生一定的变化,隔层的功能也发生改变,但总体上仍可以看作是"地下石藏"的变形。到了南宋中期,多层构造的使用方式也发生了很大的变化,上层空间的实用性明显增强,出现葬人或密封防潮等利用方式。多层墓葬的结构和功能随着时代发展,其目的大多离不开对棺椁和尸体的保存。     

Dietary Diversity on the Swahili Coast: The Fauna from Two Zanzibar Trading Locales

Occupants of coastal and island eastern Africa—now known as the ‘Swahili coast’—were involved in long‐distance trade with the Indian Ocean world during the later first millennium CE. Such exchanges may be traced via the appearance of non‐native animals in the archaeofaunal record; additionally, this record reveals daily culinary practises of the members of trading communities and can thus shed light on subsistence technologies and social organisation. Yet despite the potential contributions of faunal data to Swahili coast archaeology, few detailed zooarchaeological studies have been conducted. Here, we present an analysis of faunal remains from new excavations at two coastal Zanzibar trading locales: the small settlement of Fukuchani in the north‐west and the larger town of Unguja Ukuu in the south‐west. The occurrences of non‐native fauna at these sites—Asian black rat (Rattus rattus ) and domestic chicken (Gallus gallus ), as well as domestic cat (Felis catus )—are among the earliest in eastern Africa. The sites contrast with one another in their emphases on wild and domestic fauna: Fukuchani's inhabitants were economically and socially engaged with the wild terrestrial realm, evidenced not only through diet but also through the burial of a cache of wild bovid metatarsals. In contrast, the town of Unguja Ukuu had a domestic economy reliant on caprine herding, alongside more limited chicken keeping, although hunting or trapping of wild fauna also played an important role. Occupants of both sites were focused on a diversity of near‐shore marine resources, with little or no evidence for the kind of venturing into deeper waters that would have required investment in new technologies. Comparisons with contemporaneous sites suggest that some of the patterns at Fukuchani and Unguja Ukuu are not replicated elsewhere. This diversity in early Swahili coast foodways is essential to discussions of the agents engaged in long‐distance maritime trade. © 2017 The Authors International Journal of Osteoarchaeology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

Swahili Cosmopolitanism in Africa and the Indian Ocean World, A.D. 600–1500

Coastal peoples who lived along the Eastern African seaboard in the first millennium A.D. onwards began converting to Islam in the mid-eighth century. Clearly rooted in and linked throughout to an indigenous regional Iron Age tradition, they created a marked difference between themselves and their regional neighbors through their active engagement with Islam and the expanding Indian Ocean world system. In this paper I explore three ways in which interrelated cultural norms—an aesthetic featuring imported ceramics, foods, and other items, Islamic practice, and a favoring of urban living—created and maintained this difference over many centuries. These qualities of their identity helped anchor those who became Swahili peoples as participants in the Indian Ocean system. Such characteristics also can be seen to have contributed to Swahili attractiveness as a place for ongoing small-scale settlement of Indian Ocean peoples on the African coast, and eventually, as a target for nineteenth-century Arab colonizers from the Persian Gulf. This paper examines the archaeology of these aspects of Swahili culture from its early centuries through ca. A.D. 1500.     

盱眙小云山六七号西汉墓发掘报告

小云山六七号西汉墓同为夫妻台葬墓,结合墓地其他墓葬分布情况推测,此处应为家族墓地,墓主属东阳城内居民。此次发掘为研究汉代城市平民的生活习俗提供了新的资料。     

Two Vanished African Maritime Traditions and a Parallel from South America

Maritime traditions that extend along coastlines are more vulnerable to disruption and disappearance than areal trading networks. The paper describes two cases from Africa, the likely early movement of Bantu speakers down the coast of West Africa and the Swahili trading diaspora that reached southern Mozambique by at least the seventh century. Both of these have disappeared from the ethnographic and historical record but can be recovered through archaeology and linguistics. A parallel is made with the trade route that linked the coastal region of Peru and Ecuador with Western Mexico and may have been active from as early as 4,000 bp until the Spanish conquest. The hypothesis is that areal networks, such as those in island Southeast Asia and the Pacific, which are driven by colonisation and bidirectional exchange, are more likely to persist because they are more resilient due to the number of broken ‘links’ they can withstand. Linear expansions may be driven by a quest for trade and resources but are usually not necessary to survival.     

广东博罗横岭山墓地分析

广东博罗横岭山墓地是一处较大型的商周时期墓地,随葬品丰富,据随葬品的差别可分为砺石墓、纺轮墓、兵器墓与第四类墓。四类墓葬在随葬品的总数、组合与配置方面具有明显的差异,因此,分析四类墓葬的特点对探讨当时的墓地布局、埋葬习俗、墓葬等级、社会分工、社会分层等具有重要的意义。     

我国东北地区的高句丽封土石室墓

分布于我国境内的众多高句丽墓葬,总体上可分为积石墓和封土石室墓两大类。大型的封土石室墓,不仅规模大,而且室内多绘有壁画。大量的中小型封土石室墓,石室与墓道合成的平面多为刀形和铲形,墓顶结构有平盖顶、叠涩顶和抹角顶不等。连云港地区发现的唐代封土石室墓与此相似,其墓主人,在以往推测为百济移民或新罗移民的同时,高句丽移民也要考虑在内。     

Beyond the Stone Town: Maritime Architecture at Fourteenth–Fifteenth Century Songo Mnara, Tanzania

The towns of the Swahili coast of East Africa are widely acknowledged as the remains of a maritime society whose relationship with the ocean was fundamental to their economy and identity. Yet research that links the terrestrial environments of the towns to their adjacent maritime landscapes is rare, and urgently required in the light of marine erosional processes unmitigated by human actions. In the Kilwa archipelago of southern Tanzania, survey of the coastal foreshore has documented maritime architecture??particularly a series of coral-built causeways??that serve to link the medieval towns of this area to coastal resources and to expand the limits of the settlements themselves. This paper reports on survey recovering these causeways on Songo Mnara Island, putting the structures into context as part of the broader spatial manifestation of the island??s fourteenth?Cfifteenth century town. Several possible uses of the causeways are discussed, including functional explanations linked to the exploitation of oceanic resources, and more social reasons of territoriality and spatial demarcation.     

Finding Meaning in Ancient Swahili Spatial Practices

The development of the Swahili world involved new ways of organizing and conceiving of space. Archaeology and historical linguistics are both crucial in charting the trajectory of changing spatial practice during the late first and early second millennium ad, yet their respective datasets have been correlated only in specific and restricted ways. In this paper, we take the first steps toward working between archaeological and historical linguistic data to understand the changing contexts and meanings of Swahili spatial practice. We develop this argument in three parts. First, we review archaeological approaches to space in the Swahili world and develop a holistic view of towns, including both confined and delimited space. Second, we offer an archaeologists’ perspective on the development of historical linguistics in relation to the Swahili world, exploring the changing relationship between linguistics and archaeology and arguing for a greater appreciation of context in how archaeological materials are deployed with linguistic data. Finally, drawing on new data from Songo Mnara, a fourteenth–sixteenth-century Swahili town on the southern Tanzania coast, we make a preliminary attempt to reconcile some aspects of the archaeological and linguistic datasets. Using published lexical innovations, we suggest ways that meaning might be found alternatively in archaeological and linguistic data. Our hope is to make some tentative steps toward a mutually satisfying way of working between disciplines.     

江苏连云港“土墩石室”遗存性质刍议——特别是其与新罗移民的关系

江苏省连云港地区"土墩石室"曾被学术界划入"吴越石室土墩文化圈",认定为春秋吴国"军事设施"等。对其分布、形制及出土物等资料的研究显示,其应为唐墓。结合日僧圆仁《入唐求法巡礼行记》关于唐代连云港地区新罗移民的记载,及对考察朝鲜半岛5至8世纪横穴式石室墓的相关考察,连云港地区"土墩石室"可推断为唐代新罗移民的墓葬。     

A history of conservation of built heritage sites of the Swahili Coast in Tanzania

The interaction between the Swahili Coast of the present-day Tanzanian coast and other parts of the Indian Ocean world dates back to the first millennium AD. This commercial communication resulted in the rise of several coastal city-states (stonebuilt towns), some of which date back to the tenth century. Unfortunately, some of these states started to collapse during the second half of the second millennium and the majority of them is in a ruinous state. These material remains, which according to the Tanzania’s Antiquities Act of 1964 deserve legal protection, have not been studied comprehensively mainly to establish their conservation history. The current article addresses this problem, and by analysing documents, it establishes the conservation history of monuments and historic buildings of the Swahili Coast in Tanzania. Research results indicate that some built heritage sites started decaying during the fourteenth century AD. Because of recognising the importance of these built heritage sites, communities of the region embarked on strategies to care these built heritage sites. This observation contradicts the European conventional wisdom maintaining that, in Africa, conservation of built heritage sites such as monuments and historic buildings began in the nineteenth century and was propagated by European colonialists.     

The last 200,000 years (or thereabouts) in Eastern Africa: Recent archaeological research

Research in Eastern Africa is hampered by a variety of logistical constraints common in underdeveloped and politically fragmented regions. The later Middle and early Upper Pleistocene are attracting attention in the debate over the origins of anatomically modern humans. There has also been considerable field research and discussion of the development of specialized pastoralism. Archaeology, history and several other disciplines have combined to study the development of social complexity in the Great Lakes region and along the Swahili coast, the Aksumite civilization and African agricultural systems. Finally, the rise of a cadre of indigenous archaeologists is fostering debate over what constitutes explanation and over the relevance of the discipline within Africa.