Cosmopolitan to Different Degrees: Daily Engagement with Maritime Culture at Swahili Towns at the Turn of the 16th Century

Summary

One of the most important developments from the past couple of decades towards understanding the history of the East African coast has been an appreciation of diversity among Swahili communities. Those communities each experienced the broad trends and developments that have been used to characterize Swahili history, but their experience of those trends was not uniform. This paper explores such diversity towards the end of the Swahili florescence at the turn of the 16th century, drawing on recent work on archaeological materials from four sites: Mikindani, Gede, Songo Mnara, and Pujini. The material from these sites is used to explore the degree to which the inhabitants of these towns engaged with Indian Ocean economic networks and cosmopolitan, Islamic ideals in their daily lives. The archaeological evidence provides clear evidence for differences in their engagement, owing to local conditions and the particular histories of each community. Understanding those differences allows us to better appreciate the causes and implications of Swahili diversity, particularly at this moment of increasing disruption in the Western Indian Ocean.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage