Developments in Rural Life on the Eastern African Coast,a.d. 700–1500

The eastern African coast is known for its Swahili “stonetowns.” Archaeological study of stonetowns has overshadowed that of Swahili rural life, and how it reformulated in the context of urban transformations after a.d. 1000. To help redress that imbalance, we focus here on village research carried out in a Swahili heartland—Pemba Island, Tanzania—in the context of two archaeological projects. We feature four settlements: later 1st millennium Kimimba village and its large, trading village neighbor, Tumbe; and 2nd millennium Kaliwa village, neighbor to Chwaka stonetown. Their archaeology, contextualized within a regional landscape, allows us to say new things about the changing nature of rural life on Pemba, and to make a case for the potential of village complexity elsewhere on the Swahili coast.     

Tanzania's endangered heritage: A call for a protection program

There is no doubt that heritage resource loss in Tanzania is proceeding at an alarming rate. Natural and human agencies, adverse storage infrastructures and techniques, and lack of trained conservators and curators and of a proper protection program are the major threats that endanger the heritage resources of Tanzania. As our natural and cultural environments bring irreparable damage to the resources that document our human history, we need to preserve and protect them before they vanish. A preservation and protection program for Tanzania should include public education, the establishment of heritage preservation laws, more progress in the inventory and protection of in situ heritage resources, research into preservation and conservation methods, training of staff, and improvements in the curation of collected heritage resources and records. Preservation and protection of heritage resources are collaborative exercises. The scientific and world community need to support and engage in this proposed program both technically and financially, if the preservation and protection of heritage resources in Tanzania are to succeed.

---

Résumé Il ne fait pas de doute que la perte des ressources du patrimoine historique se poursuit à un rythme alarmant en Tanzanie. Les agents naturels et humains, des techniques et des locaux de conservation inadaptés, el manque de conservateurs bien formés et d'un programme de sauvegarde adéquat sont les principales menaces qui pèsent sur les biens historiques et culturels en Tanzanie. Comme notre environnement naturel et culturel provoque des dommages irréparables aux sources historiques, nous devons les préserver et les protéger avant qu'elles ne disparaissent. Un programme de préservation et de protection pour la Tanzanie devrait inclure l'éducation du public, l'adoption de lois relatives à la sauvegarde du patrimoine, de nouveaux progrès dans l'inventaire et la protection in situdes vestiges, des recherches sur les méthodes de préservation et de conservation, la formation des responsables et l'amélioration des conditions de conservation et de récolte des objets et de la documentation. La préservation et la protection des vestiges du patrimoine impliquent une large collaboration. Pour arriver à la préservation et à la protection des ressources du patrimoine tanzanien, el faut que la communauté scientifique et mondiale s'implique et soutienne ce projet à la fois techniquement et financièrement.

     

Why Land Here? Ports and Harbors in Southeast Tanzania in the Early Second Millennium AD

The east African Swahili ports developed extensive maritime trading links around the Indian Ocean, and supported economic, political, and urban growth in the early second millennium AD. This article identifies ports of varying function and importance in SE Tanzania, and seeks to understand their development in the context of natural harbor advantage, boat technology, sailing practice, and resource needs. Field data from landing places are combined with weather patterns, historical documents, and oral traditions to provide an integrated survey of the ports and harbors that once sustained medieval commerce along this section of the Swahili coast. The emergence of Kilwa as an entrepôt to become the key center is based initially upon its naturally advantageous harbor facilities, safety and flexibility of approach in days of sail, and assurance of monsoon winds. Original natural advantages gradually become self-sustaining with its economic and political growth. To the north and south of Kilwa a series of ports of call with drinking water and boat servicing supported trade to and from the pre-eminent city, although some such as Kisimani Mafia and Kwale-Kisuju developed important trade functions of their own.     

Conservation,community archaeology,and archaeological mediation at Songo Mnara,Tanzania

Abstract

During archaeological fieldwork at Songo Mnara, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the southern Tanzanian coast, a storm caused the collapse of a graveyard’s retaining wall. The process initiated by the rebuilding of that wall serves as a case study in addressing the dialogue among researchers, community members, and national and international organizations concerning heritage. During the process of rebuilding the wall, the Village Ruins Committee was called up by the Songo Mnara villagers as a community voice to speak with external stakeholders and to access perceived opportunities to work with UNESCO for financial reward. The committee led the rescue operation at the graveyard, yet was not always recognized as part of the process of conserving the site. In describing the tensions among the hierarchy of stakeholders at Songo Mnara, we explore the benefits and contradictions of international involvement with marginalized communities who might have multiple competing interests. Our study also speaks to good archaeological practice and the ways that we must seek to do community archaeology through recognizing the efforts of local groups who need to forge their own paths to collaboration. The case of Songo Mnara is an interesting example of how international heritage agendas, local historical memory and archaeological research can intersect to strengthen community ties to, and investment in, the monuments of the past.     

The public life of the Swahili stonehouse, 14th–15th centuries AD

Houses are an important subject of archaeological research, normally explored through the households they contain. This has established a deliberately social agenda for the archaeology of houses, yet has had the unintended consequence of creating bounded worlds for study. Although household archaeologies explore the ways that households contributed to broader social and economic realms, it is rare to think through the public role of houses for non-residents and the larger population of the settlement. This paper seeks to explore this more public aspect of houses using the data from archaeology at Songo Mnara, a 14th–15th century Swahili town on the southern Tanzanian coast. This was a time when stone-built domestic architecture was first emerging in this region. The archaeology of the houses provides data for a series of ways that the house was at the heart of the economic and political life of the town, as well as demonstrating a spatial continuity between indoor and outdoor spaces. It is therefore suggested that the domestic and residential functions of the house for a particular household should be balanced with an appreciation of the broader world of the house itself.     

A Review of Swahili Archaeology

The Swahili people have been viewed as of Persian/Arabic or Cushitic-speaking origin. Scholars have used historical and archaeological data to support this hypothesis. However, linguistic and recent archaeological data suggest that the Swahili culture had its origin in the early first centuries AD. It was the early farming people who settled on the coast in the last centuries BC who first adopted iron technology and sailing techniques and founded the coastal settlements. The culture of the iron-using people spread to the rest of the coast of East Africa, its center changing from one place to another. Involvement in transoceanic trade from the early centuries AD contributed to the prosperity of the coastal communities as evidenced by coastal monuments. More than 1500 years of cultural continuity was offset by the arrival of European and Arab colonizers in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries AD. Le peuple Swahili a souvent été consideré comme un peuple dont la langue avait pour origine le Perse/Arabe ou le Cushite. Les chercheurs ont utilisé des donées historiques et archéologiques afin de supporter cette hypothese. Cependant l'étude linguistique de cette langue, ainsi que de nouvelles découvertes archéologiques suggérent que la culture Swahili trouve son origine au début de l'ère chrétienne. Ils furent les premiers fermiers à s'installer le long du littoral, fondant des villages côtiers, vers les premiers siécles de notre ère, les premiers aussi à adopter les techniques du fer et les techniques de navigation. La culture du fer s'étendit rapidement au reste des côtes d'Afrique de l'Est, son centre se déplaçant d'un endroit à un autre. Leur implication dans le commerce océanique contrbua à la prosperité de leur communautés côtières, mise en évidence notamment par les monuments le long du littoral. Plus de 1500 ans de continuité culturelle pris fin à l'arrivé des colonisateurs Européens et Arabes de dixseptième et dixhuitième siècles.     

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.     

Mombasa Island: A Maritime Perspective

Mombasa’s strategic position on the Swahili Coast and fine harbours were key factors in its emergence as a prosperous city state during the early second millennium AD. These same attributes drew the attention of rival powers in the struggle to control the lucrative Indian Ocean trade network, particularly during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Drawing from a rich legacy of cartographic and documentary sources created in the course of Mombasa’s turbulent history, this paper presents the results of a coastal archaeological survey undertaken in 2001 as part of a wider collaborative maritime project.