Dynamic Coasts and Landscapes of Resilience: Archaeological and Environmental Hotspot Modelling on the Swahili Coast (6th – 19th century CE)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

With over forty percent of the global population residing within 100 kilometers of a coastline, coastal regions stand at the forefront of the climate breakdown. This paper adopts a diachronic approach to investigate how Swahili coastal communities, who inhabited the northern Tanzanian coasts from the late 6th to the 19th centuries CE, adapted to a spectrum of climatic and environmental stressors. Situated in tropical East Africa, this region has weathered a complex history of severe droughts, floods, storm surges, and other extreme natural phenomena. Our research leverages environmental data and incorporates known archaeological site locations as training data to develop an Archaeological Predictive Model (APM). This APM will simulate areas of high archaeological potential and validate the significance of environmental hotspots in shaping the coastal settlement network. This model will center on the coastal hinterland of Pangani Bay (5° 25′ 60″ S, 39° 0′ 0″ E), a region with tremendous potential to illuminate the interconnected factors at the climate-environment-society nexus that shaped settlement patterns and impacted subsistence strategies, food security, infrastructural adaptations, and governance frameworks across time.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41714.0