Episode 21

View to a Kilwa: The Medieval Swahili Coast

This week, while Anna and Amber's actual selves will be on the West Coast, the show heads for the East Coast-- of Africa, that is! Take a whirlwind tour of the Swahili coast and the economic and cultural exchanges over land and sea it has enjoyed for more than a thousand years, before zooming in on the very powerful, and very cool, medieval sultanate of Kilwa Kisawani.

To learn more:

Making History: An archaeologist unearths the history of the Swahili States (Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin)

East Africa: Five Million Years of History (The Public Medievalist)

Early African History: fire, farming, Egypt, and the Bantu (Quatr.us)

Collins & Pisarevsky (2004). "Amalgamating eastern Gondwana: The evolution of the Circum-Indian Orogens". Earth-Science Reviews.

Richard Pankhurst, An Introduction to the Economic History of Ethiopia, (Lalibela House: 1961)

Recipe for ambergris and eggs

Early Global Connections: East Africa between Asia, and Mediterranean Europe (Global Middle Ages)

Kilwa Kisiwani: Medieval Trade Center of Eastern Africa (Thought.Co)

A lost city reveals the grandeur of medieval African civilization (Gizmodo)

Chami FA. 2009. Kilwa and the Swahili Towns: Reflections from an archaeological perspective. In: Larsen K, editor. Knowledge, Renewal and Religion: Repositioning and changing ideological and material circumstances among the Swahili on the East African coast. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitututet.

Fleisher J, Wynne-Jones S, Steele C, and Welham K. 2012. Geophysical Survey at Kilwa Kisiwani, Tanzania. Journal of African Archaeology 10(2):207-220.

Pollard E. 2011. Safeguarding Swahili trade in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: a unique navigational complex in south-east Tanzania. World Archaeology 43(3):458-477.

Pollard E, Fleisher J, and Wynne-Jones S. 2012. Beyond the Stone Town: Maritime Architecture at Fourteenth–Fifteenth Century Songo Mnara, Tanzania. Journal of Maritime Archaeology 7(1):43-62

Wynne-Jones S. 2007. Creating urban communities at Kilwa Kisiwani, Tanzania, AD 800-1300. Antiquity 81:368-380.

Wynne-Jones S. 2013. The public life of the Swahili stonehouse, 14th–15th centuries AD. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 32(4):759-773.

Wynne-Jones S, and Fleisher J. 2012. Coins in Context: Local Economy, Value and Practice on the East African Swahili Coast. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 22(1):19-36.

Zhao B. 2012. Global Trade and Swahili Cosmopolitan Material Culture: Chinese-Style Ceramic Shards from Sanje ya Kati and Songo Mnara (Kilwa, Tanzania). Journal of World History 23(1):41-85.

Stone Towns of the Swahili Coast (Archaeology)

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Archaeology, Anthropology, and our shared human past.

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The Dirt Podcast

As science communicators in anthropology and archaeology, we hosts of The Dirt acknowledge that we hold a position of considerable privilege and opportunity, and commit ourselves to continuous learning, unlearning and reflection. We recognize that our disciplines, as well as our own lives, are rooted in and propped up by settler colonialism, white supremacy, and dispossession.

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