Adria LaViolette is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Virginia. Her interest in the Swahili coast began in 1987 while teaching at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Since then she has conducted archaeological research on the Tanzanian mainland coast and on Pemba and Zanzibar islands. She has been Editor-in-Chief of African Archaeological Review since 2009.

Stephanie Wynne-Jones is currently Pro Futura Scientia Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, affiliated with Uppsala University. She has been Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of York since 2011 and is a core group member of the Centre for Network Evolutions at Aarhus University (DNRF119). She has conducted archaeological research on the Swahili coast since 2000, in Kenya, Tanzania, and on the Zanzibar archipelago.

List of Figures

List of Tables

Maps

Preface

Note on Terminology

Contributors

1. The Swahili world

Section I: Environment, background, and Swahili historiography

2. The eastern African coastal landscape

3. Resources of the ocean fringe and the archaeology of the medieval Swahili

4. The eastern African coast: researching its history and archaeology

5. Defining the Swahili

6. Decoding Swahili genetic ancestry

7. Early connections

8. The Swahili language and its early history

9. Swahili origins

10. Swahili oral traditions and chronicles

11. Manda

12. Tumbe, Kimimba and Bandari Kuu

13. Unguja Ukuu

14. Chibuene

15. Urbanism

16. Town and village

17. Mambrui and Malindi

18. Shanga

19. Gede

20. Mtwapa

21. Pemba

22. Zanzibar

23. Mafia

24. Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara

25. Mikindani and the southern coast

26. The Comoros and their early history

27. The Comoros 1000 - 1350 CE

28. Mahilaka

29. The social composition of Swahili society

30. Metalworking on Swahili sites

31. Craft and industry

32. Animals in the Swahili world

33. Plant use and the creation of anthropogenic landscapes: coastal forestry and farming

34. The progressive integration of eastern Africa into an Afro-Eurasian world-system, first-fifteenth centuries CE

35. Eastern Africa and the dhow trade

36. Early inland entanglement in the Swahili world, c. 750-1550 CE

37. Mosaics and interconnectivity

38. Links with India

39.Links with China

40. Currencies of the Swahili world

41. Glass beads and Indian Ocean trade

42. Quantitative evidence for early long-distance exchange in eastern Africa: the consumption volume of ceramic imports

43. Islamic architecture of the Swahili coast

44. Swahili houses

45. Navigating the early modern world: Swahili polities and the continental-oceanic interface

46. Zanzibar old town

47. The Kilwa - Nyasa caravan route: the long-neglected trading corridor in southern Tanzania

48. Islam in the Swahili world: Connected authorities

49. The legacy of slavery on the Swahili coast

50. Life in Swahili villages

51. The modern life of Swahili stonetowns

52. Identity and belonging on the contemporary Swahili coast: the case of Lamu

53. Pate

54. Mombasa

55. The Swahili house: a historical ethnography of modernity

56. The future of Swahili monuments