702 Pages
    by Routledge

    702 Pages
    by Routledge

    The Swahili World presents the fascinating story of a major world civilization, exploring the archaeology, history, linguistics, and anthropology of the Indian Ocean coast of Africa. It covers a 1,500-year sweep of history, from the first settlement of the coast to the complex urban tradition found there today. Swahili towns contain monumental palaces, tombs, and mosques, set among more humble houses; they were home to fishers, farmers, traders, and specialists of many kinds. The towns have been Muslim since perhaps the eighth century CE, participating in international networks connecting people around the Indian Ocean rim and beyond. Successive colonial regimes have helped shape modern Swahili society, which has incorporated such influences into the region’s long-standing cosmopolitan tradition.





    This is the first volume to explore the Swahili in chronological perspective. Each chapter offers a unique wealth of detail on an aspect of the region’s past, written by the leading scholars on the subject. The result is a book that allows both specialist and non-specialist readers to explore the diversity of the Swahili tradition, how Swahili society has changed over time, as well as how our understandings of the region have shifted since Swahili studies first began.





    Scholars of the African continent will find the most nuanced and detailed consideration of Swahili culture, language and history ever produced. For readers unfamiliar with the region or the people involved, the chapters here provide an ideal introduction to a new and wonderful geography, at the interface of Africa and the Indian Ocean world, and among a people whose culture remains one of Africa’s most distinctive achievements.

    List of Figures





    List of Tables





    Maps





    Preface





    Note on Terminology





    Contributors



    1. The Swahili world



    Section I: Environment, background, and Swahili historiography



    2. The eastern African coastal landscape



    3. Resources of the ocean fringe and the archaeology of the medieval Swahili



    4. The eastern African coast: researching its history and archaeology



    5. Defining the Swahili



    6. Decoding Swahili genetic ancestry



    7. Early connections



    8. The Swahili language and its early history



    9. Swahili origins



    10. Swahili oral traditions and chronicles



    11. Manda



    12. Tumbe, Kimimba and Bandari Kuu



    13. Unguja Ukuu



    14. Chibuene



    15. Urbanism



    16. Town and village



    17. Mambrui and Malindi



    18. Shanga



    19. Gede



    20. Mtwapa



    21. Pemba



    22. Zanzibar



    23. Mafia



    24. Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara



    25. Mikindani and the southern coast



    26. The Comoros and their early history



    27. The Comoros 1000 - 1350 CE



    28. Mahilaka



    29. The social composition of Swahili society



    30. Metalworking on Swahili sites



    31. Craft and industry



    32. Animals in the Swahili world



    33. Plant use and the creation of anthropogenic landscapes: coastal forestry and farming



    34. The progressive integration of eastern Africa into an Afro-Eurasian world-system, first-fifteenth centuries CE



    35. Eastern Africa and the dhow trade



    36. Early inland entanglement in the Swahili world, c. 750-1550 CE



    37. Mosaics and interconnectivity



    38. Links with India



    39.Links with China



    40. Currencies of the Swahili world



    41. Glass beads and Indian Ocean trade



    42. Quantitative evidence for early long-distance exchange in eastern Africa: the consumption volume of ceramic imports



    43. Islamic architecture of the Swahili coast



    44. Swahili houses



    45. Navigating the early modern world: Swahili polities and the continental-oceanic interface



    46. Zanzibar old town



    47. The Kilwa – Nyasa caravan route: the long-neglected trading corridor in southern Tanzania



    48. Islam in the Swahili world: Connected authorities



    49. The legacy of slavery on the Swahili coast



    50. Life in Swahili villages



    51. The modern life of Swahili stonetowns



    52. Identity and belonging on the contemporary Swahili coast: the case of Lamu



    53. Pate



    54. Mombasa



    55. The Swahili house: a historical ethnography of modernity



    56. The future of Swahili monuments

    Biography

    Adria LaViolette is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Virginia. Her interest in the Swahili coast began in 1987 while teaching at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Since then she has conducted archaeological research on the Tanzanian mainland coast and on Pemba and Zanzibar islands. She has been Editor-in-Chief of African Archaeological Review since 2009.





    Stephanie Wynne-Jones is currently Pro Futura Scientia Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, affiliated with Uppsala University. She has been Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of York since 2011 and is a core group member of the Centre for Network Evolutions at Aarhus University (DNRF119). She has conducted archaeological research on the Swahili coast since 2000, in Kenya, Tanzania, and on the Zanzibar archipelago.

    “This edited volume provides a compilation of research carried out on the Swahili coast and its archaeological sites”
    Stéphane Pradines, Aga Khan Centre, UK, Antiquity Publications

     

    "This book is a great resource for those working along the Swahili coast and interior areas with similar archaeological deposits. Indeed, I finished reading the book with a better understanding of the history, archaeology, linguistics, and anthropology of the Swahili coast. From these perspectives, the authors have explored the Swahili coast’s history from what they consider to be the earliest settlements to the remains of complex monumental structures found there today. This unique wealth of the detail on past of the Swahili coast is the true strength of the book that Wynne-jones and LaViolette produced for us."

    Elgidius B. Ichumbaki, African Archeological Review