Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant-The Archaeology of Swahili Social Differentiation: Earth-and-Thatch Neighborhoods at Gede, Kenya, 11th-16th Centuries AD

University Of Virginia Main Campus, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

Under the supervision of Dr. Adria LaViolette, Lynn Koplin will direct archaeological excavations at Gede on the Kenyan coast, where she is conducting research for her doctoral dissertation. The project examines social differentiation in areas of earth-and-thatch domestic architecture at the major 11th-16th-century Swahili stonetown site. Because archaeologists have primarily concentrated on the stone components of these large, architecturally-mixed sites, currently little is known about activities, diet and material culture among the majority, the inhabitants of earthen dwellings, often assumed to have been undifferentiated non-elites. The proposed research will compare frequency and spatial organization of craft production, diet and wealth between stone and earth-and-thatch components of the same town, with a view to elucidating social differentiation within earth-and-thatch areas. When the distribution of activities and goods in non-stone neighborhoods are better understood, spatial variation in production and consumption may suggest axes of social differentiation, with which to trace social reorganization through time. The need to focus on intrasite variation, expressed in archaeologically-recoverable forms of production and consumption, is important as archaeologists attempt to elucidate indigenous forms of social complexity in sub-Saharan Africa. This is especially important as it relates to Swahili society, which until recently was attributed to external factors. This research is part of a new impetus on a larger level to search within Africa for the constitutive dynamics of African societies, and on Swahili sites in general this requires dismantling monolithic conceptions of the society by examining the overlooked majority, those in non-stone dwellings. Beyond the level of Swahili archaeology, this research draws on and will contribute to archaeological literature on the East African Iron Age, rise of complex societies, spatial organization and activity areas. The changes that accompanied the foundation, growth, contraction and abandonment of Gede fit into the larger history of the Iron Age efflorescence on the continent, and Africanist archaeologists are attempting to fill out the magnitude of activities such as pottery making, increased trade, specialized production, farming and other foodways that accompanied social expansion. Additionally, preliminary insights into the principles organizing neighborhoods of earthen architecture will engage the anthropological debates on spatial organization.