Baobabs, Caves, and Towns: An Alternative View of Island Urbanism in Precolonial Zanzibar

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Islands around Africa: State-of-the-Art and Future Directions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Studies of urbanism in East Africa have tended to focus on the medieval “stone towns” that dot the coast. However, studying these more traditional expressions of urbanism produces an incomplete picture of the settlement patterns of precolonial East Africa. In islands such as Zanzibar, settlement patterns are unique due to the presence of limestone caverns with access to freshwater. These caverns, which number more than 500, have served as dwelling places for humans for millennia. Further, forager camps, fishing stations, and seasonally occupied locations cannot be ignored. I argue that the activities of town-dwellers, cave-dwellers, mobile foragers, fishers, and seasonal visitors intersected in creative ways that challenge traditional understandings of urbanism and force us to look beyond traditional settlements to a landscape of practice across which different human groups interacted in a variety of ways.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Islands around Africa: State-of-the-Art and Future Directions   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41667.0