Stone Walls for Portuguese Pests: Swahili Landscape Responses to European Incursion on Zanzibar Island, Tanzania

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology in the Indian Ocean" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Starting in the late fifteenth century, Iberian sailors plied deeply into Atlantic and Indian Ocean networks of exchange. They brought with them notions of Western European cities and city life. In turn, they built trading enclaves that referenced the plans, designs, and aesthetics of European urban spaces. This paper summarizes new excavations at two Portuguese redoubts, Fukuchani and Mvuleni, on Zanzibar Island, Tanzania, as evidence of European planning and practice at settlements that combine settler urban and rural functions in a Swahili urban and rural landscape. It goes on to explore Swahili strategies for containing feral Portuguese pigs and shaping movement throughout rural spaces.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• Historical Archaeology in the Indian Ocean

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 806