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

ABSTRACT

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Urbanization
• ruralization
• Swahili coast
• countryside
• stonetown

Acknowledgements

We extend our warm thanks to our project co-director, Bertram Mapunda, and the many people from Pemba and elsewhere who worked with us in the field. We offer our appreciation to the late Hamad Omar, former Director, Department of Archives, Museums, and Antiquities, Zanzibar; to Salim Seif, Antiquities Representative on Pemba during our fieldwork; and to Abdallah Ali, Head of Antiquities on Zanzibar, for their enormous support. Fleisher’s fieldwork was funded by the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, US National Science Foundation (NSF) (INT9906345), Wenner-Gren Foundation (Small Grant), University of Virginia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and Explorers Club-Washington Group. The collaborative project was funded by the US NSF (Grant BCS0138319), with additional support from the Universities of Virginia and Dar es Salaam. Thank you to Jeff Hantman, Erendira Quintana Morales, two anonymous reviewers, and the editor for their helpful input. LaViolette thanks members of the “Undocumented Stories Workshop: Writing Africa and the Americas across the Disciplines,” Columbia University (Spring 2017), to whom a version of this paper was presented, for their warm reception and insightful commentary. All remaining deficits are our own.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on Contributors

Adria LaViolette (Ph.D. 1987, Washington University in St. Louis) is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Virginia. She has been conducting archaeological research on the Tanzanian mainland coast and Pemba and Zanzibar islands since 1987. She is co-editor with S. Wynne-Jones of The Swahili World (Routledge, 2018) and Editor-in-Chief of the African Archaeological Review. She is currently researching the archaeology of Swahili/Portuguese countryside interactions in Zanzibar.

Jeffrey B. Fleisher (Ph.D. 2003, University of Virginia) is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Rice University. His regional specialty is the ancient Swahili coast of eastern Africa, focusing on rural and non-elite residents in and around 1st and 2nd millennium urban centers. His current research focuses on the use of open and public space at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Songo Mnara in southern Tanzania, and on issues of mobility in Iron Age Zambia.

ORCID

Adria LaViolette http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7689-5099