Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant: Finding Their Place in the Swahili World: Archaeological Exploration of the Southern Tanzanian Coast

University Of Virginia Main Campus, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

Under the supervision of Adria LaViolette, Matthew Pawlowicz will conduct archaeological research in the vicinity of the mid-size port town of Mikindani on the southern Tanzanian coast. Throughout the second millennium AD and perhaps earlier, Mikindani's residents facilitated the exchange of goods and ideas between the African interior, the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent, part of a broader pattern which characterized the Eastern African coast and Indian Ocean world system at that time. Through their participation in such large-scale systems of exchange, Mikindani's residents and villagers in the town's hinterland came to adopt certain social practices, most notably belief in Islam but also preferences for certain foods, luxury items and ceramic styles, which they shared with other East African coastal cities, and which archaeologists refer to as the Swahili culture. However, neither the trade-reliant economic systems nor the Swahili culture operated in a uniform fashion. This project will investigate how Mikindani's people found their unique place within those systems and how that place changed over time. Specifically, the project will test the relative importance of economic and cultural demands from outside the region against local concerns, goals and norms. This investigation will be accomplished through three phases of archaeological research and careful analysis of recovered data. The first phase of research, currently underway, involves archaeological testing in the town of Mikindani, in order to determine the phases and intensities of its occupation and to establish a material culture baseline for town life. This work will be followed by a systematic archaeological survey of the surrounding region, to uncover other sites in the area and determine what sorts of activities were taking place in that region during each phase, and whether those activities suggest the predominance of local or external concerns. Care will be taken to survey the full range of environmental zones which exist in the region, as determined by geomorphological data. The final phase of research will consist of more intensive excavation of six sites recovered during the survey to fine-tune the picture of the range of activities in the region at different moments in time. At the most basic level, the project will make a substantial contribution to existing knowledge of coastal social processes, describing how the broad Swahili cultural and economic networks functioned at the local level. In so doing it will serve as an archaeological case study describing how local communities fit into the larger-scale economies and cultural systems of the past, with potential applications to other "globalizing" contexts past and present. Further, the regional focus of the project will enable it to participate in significant theoretical discussions within archaeology involving cultural landscapes and landscape theory more broadly. An important component of this project involves public archaeology and extending the knowledge and benefits gained from the project beyond academia. In Tanzania this will comprise public presentations and creating museum exhibits in Mikindani. In the U.S. the project will help publicize the cultural heritage of Africa to a largely under-informed public through teaching and public presentations.