African Archaeology

One of the enduring mysteries of Indian Ocean history is how and why speakers of a Bornean language came to settle on the island of Madagascar. The Dutch explorer Frederik de Houtman (1603) drew attention to the similarities between Malay and Malagasy more than two centuries before Wilhelm von Humboldt (1836-39) proposed the name Malayo-Polynesian for the language family to which they both belong, now classified as a branch of the Austronesian language phylum. Subsequent scholars speculated on the nature of ancient contacts between Indonesia and East Africa, and a various theories were advanced about the settlement of Madagascar. The puzzle deepened when Otto Christian Dahl (1951) concluded that Malagasy is most closely related to Ma'anyan and the East Barito languages of southeastern Borneo, a hypothesis that is now widely accepted. How did the Bornean ancestors of the Malagasy, members of a group that has no apparent maritime tradition, reach Madagascar? Were they brought on the vessels of Malay (Srivijayan) or Bajau ('sea nomad') traders and/or raiders visiting the coast of East Africa, as some have suggested? How did they pick up the smattering of Bantu vocabulary and linguistic habits that are evident in Malagasy? Was Madagascar already settled by Africans before their arrival, as Dahl argued?

Languishing in a hospital bed recently, my feverish mind swirled with memories of earlier hospitalisations - my own and others' - many of them in East Africa. The institution I came to know best, as both patient and visitor, was Mombasa Hospital, memorably situated on the sea front next to Fort Jesus. If I close my eyes I can still feel the strong breeze blowing off the Indian Ocean into an upstairs ward. And I'll never forget my first visit there, the last time that I saw Jim Allen.

Last week I received my copy of a paper written with archaeologist Stephanie Wynne-Jones and just published in the journal History in Africa. It's about the changing role of slavery in the stories that local people tell about the past in Shimoni, in southeast Kenya. Here's the beginning of our paper, preferably read while listening to Roger Whittaker's "melodramatic warblings" (Trillo 2002: 514):

There's a hole in the side of Africa, where the walls will speak if you only listen / Walls that tell a tale so sad, that the tears on the cheeks of Africa glisten / Stand and hear a million slaves, tell you how they walked so far / That many died in misery, while the rest were sold in Zanzibar / Shimoni, Oh Shimoni, / You have to find the answer, and the answer has been written down in Shimoni

When Kenya-born singer-songwriter Roger Whittaker sang these doleful words in 1983, the village of Shimoni was a relatively quiet backwater on the southern Kenya coast, known primarily for its deep-sea fishing club.

Excavations of the Archaeological Triangle
10 years of Archaeological excavations in Fatimid Cairo (2000 to 2009)
Located in the southern part of the historic city at the footsteps of the prominent Citadel built by Salah ad-Din at the end of the twelfth century, the district of Darb al-Ahmar is an extension of the Fatimid city consequent to the construction of the eastern City wall by Salah ad-Din (Fig. 1). This City wall was uncovered recently and is the eastern boundary of the district. Much of the dense urban fabric constituted since the thirteenth century remains intact and important monuments act as major landmarks for a still lively Community. The Al-Azhar Park, opened to the public in late 2004, provides a gateway and access to tourist circuits in the Historic City and is acting as a catalyst for the regeneration of the Darb al-Ahmar district. The construction of the park in 1998 was at the origin of our archaeological Project.

The ethnographic record indicates that disposal of the dead by leaving their corpses in the bush was once a widespread feature of mortuary practice in East Africa, practised by many Bantu as well as non-Bantu speakers. The following notes describe an interesting variation upon this practice, recorded (and still remembered) among different groups of Bantu speakers in what is now south-west Tanzania. Whereas most peoples known to have disposed of their dead in this way appear to have done so in any convenient spot away from habitation, the Sangu and others referred to below “threw away” their dead in particular sites designated for this purpose. These sites for communal disposal are recognisable by their common names and, though no longer used in quite the same way, are still feared through their association with death.

Le rapport ethnographique indique que le système de se débarrasser des morts en jetant leurs cadavres dans la brousse était à un certain moment une pratique funèbre très répandue en Afrique orientale chez la plupart des peuples bantu et même parmi d’autres qui ne parlent pas la langue bantu. Les notes qui suivent décrivent une variété intéressante de cette pratique enregistrée (et toujours en cours) chez les différents groupes parlant le Bantu dans ce qui est de nos jours le sud-ouest Tanzanien. Alors que la plupart de gens connus pour s’être débarrassé des morts de cette manière semblent l’avoir fait en un endroit convenable à cet effet loin des habitations, les Sangu et bien d’autres abandonnaient leurs morts dans des sites particuliers désignés pour cette cause. Ces sites où les corps étaient jetés en commun se reconnaissent par leurs mêmes dénominations et bien qu'ils ne soient plus utilisés de la même façon, ils inspirent toujours la peur car ils sont associés à la mort.

The Swahili are virtually unique among the peoples of East Africa in their possession of a maritime culture. Their early adaptation to the exploitation of marine resources, coupled with a growing involvement in the trade networks of the western Indian Ocean, both enabled and prompted them to establish settlements along more than a thousand miles of coastline and offshore islands. The only other peoples to share in this spectacular maritime expansion were the Mwani and Comorians, speakers of closely related Sabaki Bantu languages. At the same time the Swahili and their close relatives did not live off the sea alone. They also carried with them an Eastern Bantu inheritance of mixed farming, cultivating grain and root crops and keeping cattle and other livestock.

Though it is sometimes easy to forget, hunting and gathering were also a component in this inheritance and therefore the eclectic economy and varied diet of the Swahili. Not surprisingly, hunting and gathering plays much the same role in rural Swahili communities as it does among other Eastern Bantu, and the main differences (including differences among the Swahili themselves) are ones of degree. Swahili methods of hunting and trapping are little different from those of their mainland neighbours, and the range of permissible animal foods is very similar, except for the Islamic prohibition upon pig-meat (which does not stop pigs being hunted as vermin and fed to dogs). Birds, rodents and herbivores are generally fair game: carnivores, primates, reptiles and amphibians are not. The Swahili, like most East African Bantu, have fewer dietary restrictions than Cushitic pastoralists and mixed farmers and the speakers of Nilotic lang-uages who have been influenced by them (and who, like some northern Swahili clans of Eastern Cushitic origin, do not eat fish). However, they are nowhere near as omnivorous as formerly “pure” hunter-gatherers like the Hadza.

Here's the abstract of 'Continental Island Formation and the Archaeology of Defaunation on Zanzibar, Eastern Africa' by Mary E. Prendergast, Hélène Rouby, Paramita Punnwong, Robert Marchant, Alison Crowther, Nikos Kourampas, Ceri Shipton, Martin Walsh, Kurt Lambeck, and Nicole L. Boivin, 'Continental Island Formation and the Archaeology of Defaunation on Zanzibar, Eastern Africa'. It's published by PLOS ONE and can be viewed online or downloaded via the links embedded in this paragraph.

The Empire of Ghana is one of the earliest known political formations in West Africa. Within the context of a growing trans-Saharan trade, Arabic sources begin to mention “Ghāna,” the name of a ruler as well as of the city or country he ruled, in the 9th century. Repeatedly named in connection with fabulous riches in gold, Ghāna had acquired a preeminent role in the western Sahel and was a leader among a large group of smaller polities. Ghāna’s influence waned, and by the mid-14th century its ruler had become subordinate to the Empire of Mali. Over the course of a complex history of research, the Empire of Ghana became equated with the Soninké people’s legend of Wagadu and the archaeological site of Kumbi Saleh in southern Mauritania was identified as its capital. Yet between historical sources, oral traditions, and archaeological finds, little is known with certainty about the Empire of Ghana. Most questions on this early West African empire remain unanswered, including its location, development, the nature and extent of its rule, and the circumstances of its demise.

Indigenous theories of historical knowledge and time may capture the interest of Western scholars, but when they do, it is a radical departure from the dominant discourse in Western archaeology, resulting in their denial as viable, and then being shuffled off-stage once again. Serious historical engagement with other ontologies is viewed as insidious rather than informative empirical evidence, even seen as threatening conventional historical methods and  protocols. Rather than listening to and learning from the ontologies of history-making peoples, this view argues that non-Western ontologies omit what we in the West comprehend as chains of causality, thus their consideration and use in our archaeologies defeats the principles of linear, progressive time in archaeology. Such denial of other ontologies introduces confusion and cast doubts on attempts to learn from other time-space realities. I argue here that when alternative local ontologies arise amid our archaeological practice, we are compelled as part of our responsibility as historians to account for how they structure physical phenomena that relate directly to space-time issues.