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.     

Chapurukha M. Kusimba,Tiequan Zhu,Purity Wakabari Kiura (Eds.): China and East Africa: Ancient Ties and Contemporary Flows

African Archaeological Review -