Swahili Synoecism: Rural Settlements and Town Formation on the ...

Swahili Synoecism: Rural Settlements and Town Formation on the Central East African Coast, A.D. 750–1500 Jeffrey B. Fleisher Rice University, Houston, Texas Archaeological survey in 1999–2000 in the northern part of Pemba Island, Tanzania, has revealed the role of rural settlements in the development of Swahili towns from A.D. 750 to 1500. The survey investigated the regions directly surrounding three towns to explore the political, economic, and religious relations between towns and surrounding villages. Results of the survey suggest that the growth of Pemban towns, although economically influenced by their increasing links to overseas trade, were dependent on population movements from rural to urban areas. These shifts may be best described as a ‘‘synoecism,’’ a process in which a town is formed through the union of smaller, rural settlements. The data indicate a dramatic reorganization of the settlement pattern during the 11th century when new towns with monumental mosques made of coral were founded and/or populated by migrants from the countryside, leaving a sparsely populated region with only a few villages that were loosely tied to the center. The construction of Swahili towns on Pemba was as much an effort to construct a cohesive community as it was a practical measure in a burgeoning Indian Ocean economy. Keywords: East Africa, Swahili coast, Settlement patterns, Archaeological survey, Urbanism

Introduction The past 30 years of African archaeology have done much to counter negative images of complex societies on the continent (S. McIntosh 1999; Stahl 1999, 2005) that, at best, denied Africa a place in the narrative of world prehistory and, at worst, portrayed it as a place without a complex past (LaViolette and Fleisher 2005; Stahl 2005: 12). Archaeological research along the East African Swahili coast has been front and center in these recent important investigations, recasting the coast from a place of passive colonization by Arab merchants (Kirkman 1964; Chittick 1974), to a location of dynamic, autochthonous cultural complexity (Horton 1996; Kusimba 1999a; Horton and Middleton 2000). This new vision of Swahili towns as locally-fashioned is one of many efforts to construct a history for early African societies (Stahl 2005: 12). These efforts have, however, led to a uniform image of Swahili urbanism, understood primarily through a few coastal towns and cities, e.g. Kilwa (Chittick 1974) and Shanga (Horton 1996). In an effort to challenge this understanding of Swahili urbanism, the Northern Pemba Island Archaeological Survey (NPAS) investigated the regions directly surrounding three towns on Pemba Island, Tanzania to explore the political, economic,

ß Trustees of Boston University 2010 DOI 10.1179/009346910X12707321358919

and religious relations between towns and surrounding villages during the 8th to 16th centuries A.D. The project aimed to understand the countryside around towns on one part of the coast, and to gauge the sociopolitical and economic processes that accompanied the development of a rural countryside in the context of urbanization (Schwartz and Falconer 1994; Yoffee 1997; Smith 2003: 10). The findings from the survey suggest regional diversity along the Swahili corridor, allowing a better understanding of ancient Swahili society through the inclusion of rural settlements and populations and challenging the common focus on external trade that has characterized Swahili scholarship. This reappraisal was possible through the application of a survey methodology, the findings of which suggest that systematic subsurface testing can dramatically affect how we understand the settlement histories of Swahili regions as well as the nature of early Swahili urbanism. In the literature on the East African coast, few question the idea that Swahili towns were urban centers (Kusimba 1999a; Horton and Middleton 2000; Sinclair and Ha˚kansson 2000), yet few researchers (Fleisher 2003; Wynne-Jones 2007a, 2007b; Pawlowicz 2009) have sought to investigate urban form and function through the application of systematic archaeological surveys. As Connah has

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noted (2001: 221), it is surprising that important contributions made by settlement pattern and landscape approaches in other parts of the world have only rarely been applied to the archaeology of African complex societies. I would argue this is because Swahili towns have been understood largely through their external relations, such that trade and mercantilism have come to define urban function (Horton and Middleton 2000). This emphasis on external relations has had the effect of overshadowing local social relations that were crucial to the development and maintenance of Swahili towns. The evidence presented here suggests that the growth of Pemban towns, although economically influenced by their increasing links to overseas trade were dependent on population movements from rural to urban areas, a process of ‘‘synoecism’’ (Blanton et al. 1999; Demand 1990; Osborne 1987) of rural villages which resulted in a well-defined and densely populated towns. This term originates with descriptions of Greek city-states (Demand 1990; Osborne 1987; Soja 2000; Blanton et al. 1999) and is a process involving the establishment of a political capital, either through the acceptance of domination by a political center (political synoecism) or through the movement of populations into a new political center ‘‘by choice or by force’’ (physical synoecism) (Blanton et al. 1999: 63; Demand 1990). In general, these urban centers were formed through the union of smaller settlements, normally rural in character, into a unified urban capital city. These new political centers may be already-settled and reconfigured towns to meet this need or, just as commonly, new ones built ‘‘to symbolize the new political order’’ (Blanton et al. 1999: 63). The concept of synoecism helps to frame the way towns on Pemba Island were founded as religious communities in the wake of significant conversions to Islam. These findings from Pemba stand in contrast to previous research on coastal towns, which has posited either that towns developed as exclusive trade entrepoˆts (Chittick 1974, 1984) or that, with the development of towns, regional settlement expanded, with towns sitting atop an integrated and expanded settlement hierarchy (Kusimba 1999a; Helm 2000) that facilitated the movement of goods. The Pemban data indicate a dramatic reorganization of the settlement pattern during the 11th century, when new towns with monumental mosques made of coral were founded and/or populated by migrants from the countryside, leaving a sparsely populated area with few villages that were tied only loosely to the center (Fleisher 2010). The construction of Swahili towns on Pemba was as much an effort to construct a cohesive community as it was a practical measure in a burgeoning Indian Ocean economy. This new image

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of Swahili regions is due, in part, to an examination of the areas immediately surrounding towns, and the application of survey strategies that revealed oftenoverlooked sites.

History of Swahili Coast Archaeology Archaeological research along the East African Swahili coast (FIG. 1) has focused primarily on moderately-sized urban centers that emerged during the 8th-13th centuries A.D. (Chittick 1974, 1984; Horton 1996; Kirkman 1964). These towns, often called ‘‘stonetowns,’’ contain ruins of stone-built houses, mosques, and tombs (FIG. 2), as well as artifact scatters of local pottery punctuated with imported wares from China, South Asia, Persia, and Southern Arabia. Towns were located along the coastal corridor in a variety of locations: on the coast itself, on small creeks just inland, on islands nestled against the coast, and on the more distant islands of Pemba, Zanzibar, and Mafia. The towns’ resemblance to each other led Wright to suggest that Swahili towns were the result of peer-polity interaction (Wright 1993), a process in which ‘‘change is seen to emerge from the assemblage of interacting polities…at the regional level’’ (Renfrew 1986: 6). Alongside oral historical data and descriptions by medieval Arab geographers, the ancient Swahili have been regarded as merchant entrepreneurs. As such, they are seen as having lived in entrepoˆts that they built, brokering trade between communities in the African interior and Muslim merchants based in ports along the northern rim of the Indian Ocean (Pearson 1998; Fleisher 2010). In short, the Swahili seemed to have controlled the southwestern part of an extensive Indian Ocean trade system that flourished in the late 1st and early 2nd millennium A.D. (Abu-Lughod 1989; Chaudhuri 1985; Connah 2001; Pearson 1998; Wright 1993). The archaeology of many regions has been turning to interregional and world-systems perspectives (Algaze 1993; Beaujard 2005; Chase-Dunn and Hall 1991; Schortman and Urban 1992; Stein 2002) in an effort to balance decades of ‘‘regional’’ or site-based research. Most explanatory models concerning Swahili towns cast them primarily as parts of larger ‘‘global’’ systems too: of the Indian Ocean, and more recently, those connected to the Mediterranean (Beaujard 2005; Chami 1999; Horton 1987; Killick 2009; Pearson 1998; Prestholdt 2008; Sinclair 1995). Archaeology on the Swahili coast has produced a vision of the Swahili as cosmopolitan, interregional traders (LaViolette 2008); it has also produced an image of the Swahili as facing only eastward toward the Indian Ocean for wealth, prestige, and inspiration, pulled by a force Penrad (1994) calls the ‘‘ressac,’’ or the undertow that pounds the eastern

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Figure 1 The East African coast.


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Figure 2 The 15th century Great Mosque, Chwaka, Pemba Island.

African coastline. But Swahili coastal archaeology now requires a more ‘‘local’’ perspective, a regional culture history that can balance this interregional focus (Connah 2001: 221–222).

Study Area: Northern Pemba Island Pemba is a lush agricultural island of just under 1000 sq km, 60 km off the northern Tanzanian or Mrima coast (FIGS. 3, 4). Pemba measures approximately 22 km E–W and 67 km N–S. It is characterized by a jagged coastline, producing some narrow sections measuring less than 10 km coast to coast. A coral reef system enclosing the entire island restricts boat access to a few breaks in the reef. In a number of places, the reefs open to well-protected harbor areas, where many of the towns were sited. The reefs are rich in marine resources. Pemba contains three main topographic zones including areas of steep wooded hills to the west, low open valleys and ridge tops to the north and east, and scrubby flatlands with exposed limestone outcrops called uwanda, to the east and south. A base of sedimentary rock underlies all these areas, resembling that of the mainland coast. In the southeastern uwanda areas, soil development is thin and poor. In the northeast, deep yellowish-grey sandy loams predominate. The hilly western half of the island contains reddish sandy clays. These soil types are correlated positively with contemporary agricultural strategies, dominated by clove tree plantations in the west, and

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palm groves, rice, and root crops in the east (Middleton 1961). Such agricultural distinctions are not absolute: rice valleys are present in the west and root crops are grown between and among tree plantations. However, soils in the east preclude tree plantations—except for palm—and are therefore devoted more intensively to cassava and millet fields, often multi-cropped with potatoes or beans (FIG. 5). Pemba’s agricultural system is influenced heavily by shifting monsoon winds creating variable rainy seasons. In April and May winds begin from the southeast, bringing long, heavy rains. These slowly decrease in intensity from June to September, as the winds shift to the northeast. Northeast monsoon winds bring shorter rains, and last from October to December. By January the rains end completely, and until the southeast winds begin again in March, there is little rainfall on the island. It is these consistent monsoon winds that have long enabled yearly trade voyages from ports on the northern Indian Ocean rim to the eastern African coast and back. According to the archaeology Pemba seems to have been a particularly wealthy and integrated region of the coast over the 12 known centuries of the island’s occupation. Garlake (1966: 7) wrote that site densities on Pemba are higher than any part of the coast, and he then meant only stone-built sites still visible on the surface. Our survey region (FIG. 6) covers roughly the northern quarter of the island, comprising an area of 164 sq km, an area that includes a 10 km radius from each town. This area includes the region between known town sites on either coast: in the east, Tumbe/ Chwaka, a 7th to 15th century town (LaViolette 2000; Horton and Clark 1985, Pearce 1920; Buchanan 1932); and in the west, Mkia wa Ngombe and Mduuni, 11th to 14th century towns (Horton and Clark 1985). Chwaka and Mkia wa Ngombe are two of five larger towns on Pemba, containing large congregational mosques, ruins of elite stone houses, and tombs. Mduuni is a smaller town, less than half the size of any of the larger towns; eight other towns on the island are similar to Mduuni in terms of size and extent of their ruins. Chwaka’s settlement history includes Tumbe, the earliest and largest settlement on Pemba to date (LaViolette and Fleisher 1995, 2009; LaViolette 2000). This site dates largely to the 8th– 10th centuries A.D., with some evidence of 7th century occupation (Walshaw 2005), and can be compared with the similarly early and large site of Unguja Ukuu on Zanzibar (Juma 2004). Like Unguja Ukuu, Tumbe was apparently abandoned at the end of the 10th century, after which Chwaka, just 200 m further south along the peninsula, was founded during the early 11th century A.D. Mkia wa Ngombe and Mduuni face each other across an inlet, and comprise the only example on Pemba where two larger settlements lie in such proximity. Mkia wa Ngombe

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Figure 3 A) Central Swahili coast; B) Pemba Island, Tanzania.

contains one of the most extensive set of ruins on Pemba, including a large stone mosque, multiple tombs, and rubble indicating stone houses (Buchanan 1932: 18; Horton and Clark 1985: 23–25). One small stone mosque and an extensive surface ceramic scatter mark the site of Mduuni, dating it to at least the 14th century (Horton and Clark 1985: 23).

Overall, the northern region of Pemba appeared the most densely settled part of the island throughout the period under study. The survey region is an area within which the resident populations would have interacted on a regular, even daily, basis (Kramer 1994: 208). This zone is what I refer to as the countryside surrounding the towns, a regional


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Figure 4 Coast of Pemba Island, Tanzania.

scale often overlooked in Swahili analyses. Although there is no question that the Swahili were in frequent contact with communities at ever greater distances due to their sailing facility, a focus on the countryside exposes a regional scale important to the understanding of local power, as emergent elites negotiated relationships with surrounding populations (Wright 1993). This scale also is distinct from what other researchers have termed the ‘‘coastal hinterland’’ (Mutoro 1987; Abungu and Mutoro 1993; Helm 2000; Kusimba and Kusimba 2000), which can encompass vast tracts of land lying deep behind the mainland coast.

Fieldwork Survey strategy and subsurface testing The most important archaeological practice that has helped to reshape our ideas about Swahili regions has

Figure 5 Agricultural fields, eastern Pemba Island.

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been the advent of systematic survey in the regions surrounding towns and in the coastal hinterlands. Early surveys by University of Dar es Salaam faculty (Schmidt 1988; LaViolette et al. 1989, 1999), as well as a series of surveys up river basins (Abungu 1989), established the need for more systematic approaches to identifying and recording archaeological sites. This work has continued in the hinterland with important surveys by Helm (2000) and the region surrounding towns by Radimilahy (1998: 65–72) and WynneJones (2005, 2007a). Although work by Wilson (1982), Chittick (1967), and Horton and Clark (1985) were profoundly important in expanding the range of recorded sites, these surveys were essentially projects to record known sites, and were not carried out with sampling strategies that could guarantee a systematic understanding of a region. To this day,

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Figure 6 Northern Pemba Island, survey transects.

Connah’s plea (2001: 221) for surveys in the regions surrounding Swahili towns has gone largely unheeded, with most major works focusing on single archaeological sites with little or no reference to surrounding settlements (e.g. Horton 1996; Juma 2004). Those projects that have reported on regional surveys as part of research at a single site (e.g. Radimilahy 1998: 65–72) often do not provide a full accounting of the sites located, nor enough information to determine the representativeness of the survey techniques (but see Wynne-Jones 2005, 2007a; Pawlowicz 2009). The same care accorded to the intra-site study of coastal sites needs to be applied to the regions that surround them. The survey design on Pemba balanced the goals of the project and the demands of probabilistic sampling techniques to produce a methodology that was efficient, effective, and representative (Plog et al. 1978; Schiffer et al. 1978; Read 1986). The sampling strategy was as follows: the overall survey universe (164 sq km) was divided into 42, 262 km squares. From each square, one transect (10061000 m) was chosen at random and surveyed completely (FIG. 6). I chose a sampling strategy of systematic unaligned transects based on an absence of knowledge of the site population. In such cases, many archaeologists suggest using a simple random sample of units (Read

1986: 485). Since there were no areas that inherently precluded occupation, I chose to sample the entire region systematically, ensuring that all areas were examined, which is important in understanding the dispersal of settlements across the region. Systematic placement of sample units across the region also guaranteed that all topographic areas were included. Five surveyors covered each transect, spaced ca. 20 m apart. One row of three shovel-test pits (STPs) was excavated every 100 m along the transect. STPs were dug at 40 m intervals across each row, two at the outside surveyor positions, and one at the center position. We screened all soil from each STP, recorded the number and type of artifacts, soil horizons, and depth from ground surface to subsoil. When sites were located, STPs were used to establish site boundaries: we excavated STPs every 40 m in the four cardinal directions until we encountered two negative STPs. Then, we reduced the STP interval to 20 m to establish a more precise boundary. If the site contained surface deposits, we examined the area systematically, noting diagnostic materials, plotting artifact concentrations and features on field maps. We collected few artifacts from the surface because diagnostic materials were often located in STPs. This shovel-test strategy was developed in response to evidence in preliminary archaeological investigations


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on Pemba that indicated that surface survey alone was missing many archaeological sites (Fleisher and LaViolette 1999: 103). The procedures to define site boundaries were expedient, given financial constraints on the research. However, other projects along the East African coast have successfully employed more intensive (and expensive) intra-site sampling programs; especially noteworthy are those by Radimilahy (1998) at Mahilaka in Madagascar and Juma (2004) at Unguja Ukuu on Zanzibar. In both of these studies, intensive intra-site coring and resistivity testing were conducted across the sites to determine site boundaries, stratigraphic information, and areas for further investigation through excavation. These approaches represent a significant advance in intra-site investigations. Some researchers have expressed concern about surveys that include STPs, suggesting that they might have the effect of ‘‘reducing a site to something resembling Emmental cheese’’ (Connah 2008: 236). However, most STPs used in northern Pemba were for site discovery rather than site definition, and thus rarely impacted sites themselves. Where STPs were used within a site, their locations, stratigraphy and finds were carefully mapped, akin to coring procedures at other sites. The survey strategy adopted, therefore, was attentive to the specific characteristics of coastal topography, geomorphology, and regional site densities.

by the 15th and 16th centuries, the focus below is on Periods 1–3; Period 4 sites are not discussed further. Site sizes were generally smaller than most sites recorded for these centuries, ranging from less than 0.1 ha to over 6 ha. However, most sites (76%) were 1.5 ha or less, classifiable as hamlets or villages in Wilson’s (1982) settlement typology. Of the remaining seven sites, six were between 1.5 and 2.5 ha, and one was 6 ha. Sites were located across the survey area, but were found most commonly within a few kilometers of the coastlines (76% were within 2 km of the coast). More than 20% of the sites were located in the center of the island, up to 5 km from any coastline. These sites are the ones most frequently overlooked by archaeologists since sites of these periods are often equated with coastal locations (but see Chami and Mapunda 1998; Ha˚land 1994/1995; Helm 2000; Wynne-Jones 2007a). More sites were located in the eastern half of the survey region than in the western; this is likely a function of the topography of Pemba, where the hilly western portions are not easily inhabited. Site types were based primarily on site size, as defined by the number and extent of artifacts located. Field houses, a site type overlooked previously in coastal contexts, were the smallest sites, less than 0.1 ha in size, comprising a tightly-defined collection of artifacts, most commonly local sherds. Due to the way the survey regime was constructed, it is probable that this is not a representative sample of such sites but their presence in the sample suggests they may have been a common site type. Mapping the changing distribution of such sites may be crucial to understanding changes in farming practices and the control over land in the countryside surrounding towns. Hamlets were permanent settlements, 0.1-1.0 ha in size. These were probably small farmsteads, occupied by individual households with a single midden area. They may have contained up to three or four houses, evident through finds of daub in the STPs. Villages, the most common site type located, ranged in size from 1.0 ha to close to 3 ha. These were moderatelysized settlements, likely having many earth and thatch houses and multiple large midden areas. Small towns, greater than 5 ha in size, were significantly larger than villages. Because of the limited intra-site information from these sites, it is difficult to determine how sites may have grown or

Survey results Overall, 42 transects were visited and evaluated, and 39 were surveyed completely. Within these transects, we excavated and recorded over 1600 STPs, averaging approximately 30 per transect for site discovery, with additional STPs dug at each new site to define site boundaries (15–30 per site). In total 34 new archaeological sites spanning the 8th–18th centuries were located and recorded. On the basis of diagnostic artifacts, including local and imported ceramics and radiocarbon dates, I have grouped these sites into four periods (TABLE 1): Period 1 (A.D. 750– 1050); Period 2 (A.D. 1050–1300); Period 3 (A.D. 1300– 1500); Period 4 (A.D. 1500–1700). Five sites were of unknown date and three sites contained multiple components. The discussion presented here also includes the four larger town and small town sites previously discussed, each of which spans Periods 2 and 3. Because these town sites were all abandoned Table 1 Site types by period, Northern Pemba Island Survey. Period Period Period Period Period Total

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Centuries 1 2 3 4

A.D.

Field house

Hamlet

Village

Small town

Town

3 0 1 0 6

4 4 2 3 16

7 5 2 1 15

1 2 1 0 4

1 0 2 0 3

750–1050 1050–1300 1300–1500 1500–1700


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expanded after their initial settlement. In short, site sizes were defined by the greatest extent of artifact scatters (using STPs). In defining sites, I consistently compared material within sites, in order to determine if there were multiple components, which proved challenging given a somewhat poor resolution of local artifact changes in anything other than 100– 200 year periods.

Methodological considerations Methodologically, the archaeological survey in northern Pemba has raised serious questions about the way East African coastal archaeologists define and search for archaeological sites. The mixed strategy of shovel-testing and surface survey produced results that suggest that a significant number of Swahili settlements have been overlooked, especially rural settlements and settlements or portions of settlements lacking stone architecture. Deposits were often deeply buried at the sites located on the survey, sometimes beginning up to 1.0 m below the present ground surface. These sites tend to be the earliest settlements in the region, specifically those villages and small towns in the hinterlands of the larger towns. Close to 50% of the sites located had no visible surface indications at all—no mounds, architecture, or ceramic scatters (TABLE 2). The earlier sites tended to be more deeply buried, while the more recent ones were more likely to obtrude and be noticeable on the surface. Approximately 80% of the sites from Period 1 (8th–11th centuries A.D.) were noticeable only in subsurface probes, while only 45% of sites from the later 11th–14th centuries were buried completely. Additionally, almost all sites from the 15th–18th centuries had surface indications. These data suggest Table 2 Number of sites with surface indications by period, Northern Pemba Island Survey. Surface indications? Period

Centuries

Period 1 Period 2 Period 3 Period 4 Unknown Total

750–1050 1050–1300 1300–1500 1500–1700

A.D.

No

Yes

Total

13 4 0 0 1 18

3 7 8 4 4 26

16 11 8 4 5 44

that archaeologists seeking regional settlement data need to construct data collection methodologies that will provide representative samples of site sizes and time periods. On Pemba, this has translated into a profound reorientation of how we understand the early settlement of the island and the sociopolitical processes involved in the establishment of towns there. The fact that the survey methodology adopted during the NPAS not only expanded the range of site types located (to include smaller, rural settlements) but it also captured sites from the 8th–10th centuries A.D., not thought to be present or well-represented on the island (Horton and Clark 1985), has allowed the project to reconstruct more complete settlement patterns for these early centuries which had previously been understood solely through spot finds or from lower layers of excavated sites. These survey finds thus serve as a warning for East African archaeologists who are interested in regional settlement patterns: a reliance on visible surface finds may provide a grossly underestimated picture of the regional landscape. Clearly, STPs or other subsurface testing procedures are essential in regional survey work, in spite of misgivings by some researchers. Comparing site types found on Pemba to those of other coastal surveys shows that, based on size, previous surveys have located a representative range of site types, but have likely underestimated smaller and earlier settlements. For instance, Wilson’s (1982) classification scheme, and the overall percentages of his sites, are similar in distribution to the sites found on Pemba (TABLE 3). Although the NPAS survey results correspond generally to Wilson’s data on site sizes, other researchers have relied more heavily on stone architecture to define sites. This is a problem in using settlement data like Wilson’s (which is from sites on the northern coast) as representative of the coast in general. Only the largest sites on Pemba have stone architecture, whereas almost all of Wilson’s settlement classes include stone architecture. Thus there are real distinctions between site definitions from different parts of the coast, and not all Swahili polities can be characterized by a single classification scheme (cf., Kusimba 1999a).

Table 3 Site frequencies by settlement type from the Northern Pemba Island Survey and Kenyan coastal sites (from Wilson 1982). Kenyan coastal sites

Pemba survey

Settlement type

Number of settlements

Frequency

Fieldhouse Hamlet Village Small town Town

n/a 34 39 19 9

n/a .34 .39 .19 .09

Number of settlements

Frequency

6 16 15 4 3

.14 .36 .34 .09 .07


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Table 4 shows estimates of site areas for our survey region. These figures indicate the extraordinary numbers of sites that are likely present in at least some coastal locations. Both Horton (1996: 407–9) and Kusimba (1999a) have suggested the presence of 40–50 settlements along the coast during the 8th–9th centuries; yet the estimates from our survey suggest that there may have been hundreds of sites on Pemba alone during this period. Although Pemba may have been particularly well settled during these and subsequent periods, it is more likely that the extent of coastal settlement has been substantially underestimated.

Emerging Urbanism on Pemba Island: Implications for Swahili Urbanism By the end of Period 1 (A.D. 750–1050) in northern Pemba, regional settlement was relatively dense, with larger and smaller villages extending from the coastline to the interior of the island (FIG. 7). After A.D. 1050, the settlement system underwent a dramatic transformation, resulting in the establishment of three towns in the region under study, and at least 11 others on the rest of the island by the 15th century (Horton and Clark 1985) (FIG. 7, TABLE 1). The major settlement changes after A.D. 1050 on Pemba were the foundation of new villages that quickly became dominant towns, and a decrease in hinterland settlement. All three towns in northern Pemba (Chwaka, Mkia wa Ngombe, and Mduuni) were established by ca. A.D. 1000–1100, with Chwaka being the first at ca. 1000–1050. It is difficult to determine the growth of these settlements through time based on the limited testing that has been accomplished. Recent research at Chwaka, however, has shown that the site began as a small 1.0–2 ha village ca. A.D. 1000–1050 and by 1100–1150 grew to approximately 8 ha. By A.D. 1300, the site covered close to 12 ha, with much denser settlement than in previous centuries (LaViolette and Fleisher 2009). It is possible that other town settlements grew in a similar fashion. While these towns were developing, the surrounding countryside became less densely populated. Settlement figures from Period 1 (A.D. 750–1050) to Period 2 (A.D. 1050–1300) demonstrate a 40%

reduction in the number of hinterland settlements (TABLES 1, 4; FIG. 7). Additionally, the mean site size from Period 1 to Period 2 increased, suggesting the presence of larger settlements, while the mean number of sites per sampling unit (transects) decreased, indicating smaller numbers of settlements in the region (TABLE 4). These figures suggest that populations were moving from the countryside into towns during these periods. This process continued into Period 3 (A.D. 1300–1500), a time when towns in northern Pemba reached their largest size (FIG. 7). There was a further 45% drop in coutryside settlements from Period 2 to Period 3, representing a more than 66% decrease from Period 1. Mean site sizes continued to rise in this period and, like in the preceding period, the mean number of sites per sampling unit decreased an additional 30%. In sum, the settlement figures suggest that towns were getting larger, and the countryside surrounding them was becoming less populated.

Characterizing regional settlement: rank-size distributions Another metric for characterizing the nature of regional settlement is the rank-size rule (Johnson 1980; Savage 1997; Drennan and Peterson 2004). Recent attention to rank-size analysis has challenged the traditional use of this graphical representation of regional settlement sizes, arguing that early efforts to gauge deviations from log normality (a regular relationship between the logarithm of a settlement’s rank and size which is presumed to indicate an integrated settlement system) are less meaningful because of the highly variable nature of the settlement patterns of complex societies. Therefore, comparisons of rank-size patterns within a single region (or within a single culture area) provide a more contextually sound way of demonstrating regional settlement changes (Drennan and Peterson 2004: 542). Stein (1994) has demonstrated that rank-size can also be used to explore variation in urban settlement distributions. Rank-size plots were constructed for Periods 1–3 (FIG. 8). The Period 1 rank-size plot can be described as a ‘‘primate’’ pattern, while the Period 2 and 3 plots are ‘‘convex;’’ primate patterns are often associated

Table 4 Site population descriptive statistics, by period. Unless otherwise noted, numbers in parentheses are estimates of areas for entire survey region, based on the 2.5% sample survey. Population parameters

Period 1

Period 2

Period 3

Period 4

Total number of sites Total site area (ha) Site area, hinterland (ha) Site area, towns (ha)* Mean site size (std dev.) Mean sites/transect

16 39.89 (815.6) 19.89 (795.6) 20? (20) 2.49 (4.90) .29 (.67)

11 31.75 11.75 20 2.61 .17

8 35.94 (153.6) 2.94 (117.6) 40 (40) 5.62 (7.11) .12 (.33)

4 1.70 (68) 1.70 (68) 0

(494) (470) (20) (2.94) (.44)

* Period 1, Tumbe 5 20 ha; Period 2, Chwaka 5 8 ha, Mkia wa Ngombe 5 8 ha, Mduuni 5 4 ha; Period 3, Chwaka 5 15 ha, Mkia 5 18 ha, Mduuni 5 7 ha.

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Figure 7 Northern Pemba Island Survey sites by period. A) Period 1 (A.D. 750–1050); B) Period 2 (A.D. 1050–1300); C) Period 3 (A.D. 1300–1500).


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Figure 8 Rank-size graphs with A values and 90% confidence zones, Periods 1-3, Northern Pemba Island Survey. Log Site Rank is the logarithm of the ranking of all sites in a region, starting with the largest. Log Site Size is the logarithm of the size of a site, in hectares. Log-Normal is a representation of the rank-size rule which predicts a regular relationship between the log of a settlement’s rank and size.

with early periods of urbanization, while convex patterns are associated with less integrated political and economic settlement systems (with log normality representing highly integrated systems). The rank-size plot for Period 2 exhibits what is called a ‘‘double convex’’ curve, which suggests that multiple settlement systems are operating (Falconer and Savage 1995). Double convexity in Period 2 demonstrates that the rank-size rule adequately characterizes the growing dominance of both Chwaka and Mkia wa Ngombe in the settlement region, each newly settled during this period. The Period 3 data derives from a small sample size, and thus is not very useful in representing the degree of regional integration. Following Drennan and Peterson (2004: 334), I used RSBOOT, a program that calculates the coefficient of shape, A, which is ‘‘equal to the areas between the observed rank-size pattern and the lognormal line’’ as well as error ranges at the 90% confidence level. This analysis suggests that there is significant change in the rank-size distribution from period to period, represented by changing A values (FIG. 8) (Drennan and Peterson 2004). Instead of highlighting the distance of rank-size patterns from log normality, this analysis allows statistical comparisons to be made between rank-size patterns. These data suggest that the settlement system was becoming more integrated, made evident by the difference in A values from Period 1 to Period 2 (0.737). The swing in A values in Period 3, close to levels seen in Period 1 is suspect, possibly the result of a very small sample. This does not mean that Period 3 data are to be discounted, however, since the small sample likely derives from the fact that there was highly concentrated settlement in the towns and few settlements in the countryside, and fewer settlements in the region as a whole. What the rank-size analysis represents well (especially the change in A values) is the significant alteration in settlement structure from Period 1 to 2, even though the rank-size plots do not seem to deviate that much. Based on these data, it is fair to say that there was a growing degree of integration during these periods, with the emergence of two settlement systems centered on Chwaka and Mkia wa Ngombe. It is interesting to note, however, that the increases in integration suggested by the rank-size A values occurs as the number of settlements in the region were reduced by approximately 40%, suggesting that regional integration was not

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accomplished through extensions into the countryside, but rather through the centripetal pull of populations towards the centers.

Comparisons to Other Coastal Regions Settlement data from Pemba contrast sharply with settlement data that Wilson (1982) and Kusimba (1999a) present for the Kenyan coast. They describe a system where the numbers and types of settlements increase after the 9th century A.D., indicating the development of integrated settlement hierarchies controlled by a town-based political economy. Kusimba has argued that ‘‘as town populations grew, there was a natural tendency to segment and spread into unused countryside’’ (1999a: 101). In this model, Swahili towns managed economic relationships between town and country, bringing agricultural goods, raw materials, and finished products from the countryside to support town dwellers (Kusimba 1999a: 123–4; see also Horton and Middleton 2000). This regional picture, developed from Wilson’s (1978, 1980, 1982) study of settlement patterns along the Kenyan coast, is akin to settlement hierarchies in other urbanized state societies (e.g. Marcus and Feinman 1998; Wright and Johnson 1975) and is used to provide support for what might be called an ‘‘administrative urban region’’ (Fox 1977). The NPAS data question the appropriateness of the administrative urban model for Pemban towns. For Kusimba, towns emerged as central places of management, with elite leaders functioning as a managing body atop a tiered settlement hierarchy (Wright and Johnson 1975). The data from Mahilaka (Radimilahy 1998: 65–72), in northern Madagascar, may represent a nascent form of this pattern, with settlement first based at the urban center during the Mahilaka phase, from the 11th to 15th centuries. There is no regional settlement before these centuries, and most settlements located through survey likely coincide with the growth of the urban polity itself. The data from Pemba also differ from those recorded in the region surrounding Kilwa Kisiwani, on the southern Tanzanian coast. Survey in that region by Wynne-Jones (2005, 2007a) documented 66 sites surrounding Kilwa spanning the centuries of urban growth, A.D. 800–1300. This research found a relatively continuous pattern of settlement across the region during these centuries. Wynne-Jones concludes that ‘‘the numbers of sites across all periods were fairly similar, with no obvious changes accompanying the growth of the town….the process of urbanization in the Kilwa hinterland did not entail a dramatic change in the settlement of the region’’ (2007a: 374). Alternatively, the data from Pemba show a wellpopulated region that became spatially restricted as

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towns developed, with a general reduction in the complexity of the settlement hierarchy. Rather than an increase in population living in a more functionally differentiated countryside, people moved into towns which experienced increasing inequities between elite and non-elite residents. In sum, there are three possible modes of regional settlement along the coastal corridor: a spatially extensive system, increasingly managed by a growing town (Radimilahy 1998; Kusimba 1999a); a spatially extensive system with little evidence of regional integration (Wynne-Jones 2007a); and, as on Pemba, a spatially restricted system with towns emerging in relatively sparsely-settled countryside.

Relating Swahili Towns and Their Countryside: A Critique of Exclusivity Settlement patterns on Pemba Island raise two important and related issues about the way Swahili towns have been depicted by archaeologists. First, the way that a monolithic notion of the Swahili has been constructed through a reliance on ethnographic and ethnohistorical data from a few select places is problematic. The second is the emphasis on Swahili urbanism as displaying the development of exclusive places and relationships. The desire, it seems, to write comprehensive accounts of the ‘‘Swahili Coast’’ (Kusimba 1999a; Horton and Middleton 2000) has ended up obscuring some of the diversity along the coastal corridor, including the variety of urban forms and the type of populations that have been the subject of archaeological study. Pat Caplan’s (2007: 313) critique of coastal ethnographies applies equally to the way historical narratives have been framed: Much of the material on which recent models of coastal society are based comes from the northern part of the coast, not from areas further south…Yet [various researchers] have produced models which are supposed to apply to the whole of the East Coast, from Somalia to Mozambique. Some aspects of what are claimed to be the structures of all Swahili societies simply do not fit the southern part of the coast…

Research on Swahili towns has produced somewhat conflicting images of the relationship of the urban centers to the surrounding region, including models that stress the exclusivity of towns on the one hand (Prins 1971) and regional integration on the other (Fleisher 2003; LaViolette and Fleisher 2005, 2009). These models are each presented as the dominant modus operandi for the majority of coastal towns, and only rarely are Swahili towns discussed as a highly variable phenomenon (but see Allen 1993; Horton and Middleton 2000; LaViolette and Fleisher 2009). The image of an exclusive town is one found most clearly articulated in the ethnographic literature, which has stressed and contrasted the urbanity


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and purity of town residents with the rural nature of those who live beyond the towns (Prins 1971; Middleton 1992). This distinction is, in many respects, a cultural model, taken primarily from ethnographic studies of the highly exclusive towns in the Lamu Archipelago of northern Kenya. The patrician residents of these towns have spoken clearly about the differences they perceive between themselves as urban dwellers (waungwana, trans. ‘‘patricians’’) and those of lower status who live in the areas that surround the towns (washenzi, trans. ‘‘uncivilized, savage’’), the descendents of slaves and nonurban ethnic groups (Vernet 2004: 403). This ethnographic distinction is regularly read into the past, where the adoption of Islam and Indian Ocean styles of architecture, dress, and material culture are seen as a means through which Swahili merchants sought to attract foreign trade partners, and to establish their local difference and hegemony. Certain items, such as the side-blown horn (siwa) were markers of authority and power (Allen 1976), while imported goods, such as ceramics, cloth, and precious metals are often understood as prestige goods, crucial to the establishment and maintenance of social inequalities along the coastal corridor (Kusimba 1999a: 96, 133, 1999b; Wright 1993: 671– 672). Elite houses and town walls are imagined to have played a similar role in the past, as restricted spaces used to attract and control exclusive trade relationships (Allen 1979: 2; Donley-Reid 1982, 1990; Horton 1994a: 167; LaViolette 2008). The conversion to Islam has also been cast in terms of exclusivity. Many discussions of the conversion to Islam (which began during the second half of the 1st millennium A.D., with the majority of the coastal population converted to Islam by the early 2nd millennium) suggest that it occurred for reasons of expediency: coastal people converted to Islam as a means to build trade relations with Muslim merchants and to avoid enslavement (Trimingham 1964; Horton 2001; Insoll 2003). In turn, Swahili towns became centers of coastal religious practice, where traveling sharifs, religious specialists believed to be direct descendants of Mohammed (Horton and Middleton 2000: 68–70), would visit and meet with pious town leaders. This vision of Swahili towns as pockets of culture on the edge of wilderness could well have been used by the Swahili themselves to great effect, discouraging overseas traders from bypassing the coastal towns altogether. Swahili towns and their merchants, therefore, may be viewed in expanding scales of exclusivity via the imported objects they controlled, to the houses and towns in which they lived. This is an entrepreneurial model of Swahili sociopolitical development, where local individuals exploited economic opportunities by remaking

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themselves as merchants and viable trade partners. A developmental history might chart the ways that certain individuals were able to assert these exclusive relations as a means to social power. There have been a number of challenges to these models which argue for a more regionally distinct understanding of Swahili towns. Mark Horton’s work at Shanga challenges the notion of exclusivity by suggesting that different groups from hinterland areas settled in distinct quarters in this town during the 8th century A.D., discernable through differences in faunal remains (Horton and Mudida 1993) and through differences in habitation spaces (Horton 1994a). This would suggest a more inclusive process of town foundation, based on the drawing together of diverse populations, rather than the walling off of towns from surrounding areas. In fact, the exclusivity of later towns has been challenged by some historians (Vernet 2004; Willis 1993) who have suggested that even when towns seemed to be their most exclusive— from the 17th to 20th centuries—much movement was taking place between towns and countrysides, as individuals were drawn into towns and were successful in remaking themselves as city dwellers. Both Wynne-Jones (2007a, 2007b) and Horton (1994b) have also directly questioned the notion of a monolithic model for Swahili towns. As Wynne-Jones notes, ‘‘the towns of the coast existed in varied environments and had diverse and distinct social structures and historical trajectories…it seems likely, given their circumstances, that they would have had differing relationships with their hinterlands’’ (Wynne-Jones 2007b: 149) (see also Pawlowicz 2009). Similarly, Horton (1994b) describes a three-location regional system for the Swahili corridor, including the Lamu archipelago in northern Kenya, the offshore islands of Zanzibar/Pemba, and the Comoros Islands just north of Madagascar. He regards these as distinct centers of influence, each with its own means of interacting with the hinterlands and within the Indian Ocean trade system. Yet, as described above, all of these discussions of regional dynamics that suggest exclusive relations between urban and rural populations stand in contrast to the situation on Pemba where town development apparently proceeded through the centripetal pull of rural communities into towns. Such a process is not unlike the way Horton (1996) has modeled the early 8th century A.D. development of Shanga (above), but occurring on Pemba in the late 11th and 12th centuries. This suggests a more inclusive process of town foundation, based on diverse populations, rather than the walling off of towns from surrounding areas.

Swahili Synoecism: Concluding Discussion Pemban town settlement systems thus exhibit an alternative pattern of town foundation and growth.

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The pattern on Pemba conforms nicely with the process of urban formation known as synoecism (Demand 1990; Osborne 1987; Soja 2000; Blanton et al. 1999) whereby new centers are formed through the acceptance of domination by a political center or through the movement of populations into a new political center (Blanton et al. 1999: 63; Demand 1990). These new political centers may be already settled but reconfigured to meet this need or, just as commonly, new ones built ‘‘to symbolize the new political order’’ (Blanton et al. 1999: 63). A number of other African examples of settlement changes may illustrate the process of synoecism. Graham Connah suggests that the complicated system of earthen banks and ditches that both surround Benin City in Nigeria and snake through the near countryside are evidence of a process through which a series of closely-set villages developed into a city. These interlocking earthworks, more than 16,000 km in length, appear to join a number of communities, and are thus illustrative of the ‘‘process of state formation’’ (Connah 2001: 162). A somewhat different example may be found at Jenne-jeno in the Inland Niger Delta in Mali (McIntosh and McIntosh 1993; R. McIntosh 2005). There, researchers have documented the development of a clustered urban landscape of more than 40 mounds representing different settlements that were functionally integrated, with particular sites specializing in productive techniques such as iron-smithing and fishing. This urban cluster appears to have accomplished the functions of an urban center through a corporate organization rather than a hierarchical political authority. Although this example differs from Swahili cases in that there is no clear evidence of individual authority at Jenne-jeno, there are similarities in the way that urbanism is understood to emerge through a process of inclusion rather than exclusion. The reasons for Greek synoecism are not well understood, but are thought to be rooted in part in defensive needs; the development of a unified polity was a strategy to provide a defensive position for increasingly powerful and threatening neighbors. This can be seen clearly in the case of the Peloponnesian city of Mantineia, in which the communities of the countryside ‘‘all gathered together and voted to make Mantineia one city and to fortify that city’’ in response to threats by Sparta (Osborne 1987: 24). In Blanton and his colleagues’ (1999: 62–66) application of synoecism to ancient Oaxaca, they argue less for a military positioning in the development of Monte Alba´n, and more for a process of developing a ‘‘disembedded capital,’’ a neutrally-located capital of a multi-centered regionalscale polity. There may be a case for military or defensive synoecism in the case of Swahili sites on Pemba Island. Most centers that emerged in the 11th–12th

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centuries were situated on what might be regarded as defensive locations: either islands nestled along the coast of Pemba (Mtambwe Mkuu), or on peninsulas that would have had limited access by land, and excellent (and defensive) views to harbors and the sea (Chwaka, Ras Mkumbuu, Mkia wa Ngombe, Mduuni, and Bandarikuu) (FIG. 3). However, all of these sites are also located in protected bays and inlets, and in proximity to places that trade vessels could easily access. If these are taken as defensive locations, it is not clear against whom they were defending. For example, it has always been assumed that the impressive settlement walls at Pujini, a small 15th–16th century fortified site in southeastern Pemba, were protection from a local threat. However, LaViolette (2004: 153) is skeptical of this interpretation, arguing that ‘‘in the archaeological record at Pujini, and from elsewhere on the island, there is no evidence for a comparable need to defend, or for any conflict…no signs of violence or weaponry have survived at Pujini.’’ This may be said of other sites on Pemba as well. A more likely possibility, I would argue, is that the towns on Pemba were a result of a religious synoecism, the coming together under the rubric of a new and transformative religious culture centered prominently on the town itself (LaViolette and Fleisher 2009). As we demonstrate, there was an enormous investment in religious architecture at Chwaka, with the construction of four mosques at different periods in the town’s development. Although mosques at Swahili towns are not exceptional, at Chwaka they are made remarkable in that there were few other structures made of coral at the site. They also drew on some of the most elaborate architectural forms found in coastal religious architecture. The first mosque constructed at the site, during the 11th century A.D. near Chwaka’s epicenter, was made of coral, similar in construction to other contemporary mosques. Thus the initial construction of a monumental mosque dates roughly to the foundation of the site. The Chwaka case (and perhaps that of Mkia wa Ngombe, although that site is less understood archaeologically) may be one where looking at Swahili towns through a commercial or administrative lens may be blinding us to the important religious nature of the town and town formation. A useful model, therefore, may be what Middle Eastern scholars have discussed as the ‘‘Islamic city’’ (Lapidus 1969; Hourani and Stern 1970; Eickelman 1974, 1981: 261–288; AbuLughod 1987). The Islamic city was an attempt to construct an urban model of population aggregates in the Middle East that, like urban forms in Africa, were systematically excluded from literature on urbanism. In order to escape the trait-lists that described western cities, these models stressed that the urban community


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was coterminous with the religious community. As Wheatley (1972: 622) points out, ‘‘for the traditional Muslim the city was necessary as the only locale in which the life of the Prophet could be lived out to the full, and the features predicated of his city were a Friday mosque, with its adjunct of the public bath, and a permanent market.’’ Thus, the synoecism that occurred on Pemba—with populations shifting from the countryside to found a new center—may have been based partly on the desire of regional populations to form a religious community. Ultimately, what these data from northern Pemba suggest is that the notion of exclusivity so emphasized in traditional treatments of Swahili urbanism may be missing a crucial, historical dynamic. The constitution or ‘‘composition’’ of Swahili towns provides an argument against the idea that Swahili towns were based on exclusivity from their foundation. In many ways, this is similar to the understanding that Horton (1994a, 1996) has developed for the earliest 8th century phases of Shanga, with multiple communities coming together to settle the town, but occurring on Pemba in later centuries in a dramatically changed coastal milieu. Since many of the best known archaeological examples are those that had long stratified sequences (e.g. Shanga, Kilwa), the Pemba data provide an important alternative model of urban formation, one situated historically not in the 7th and 8th centuries A.D., but in the later 11th and 12th centuries. The examples from Pemba show that there is a more complex typology of Swahili towns that requires attention, ranging from the long-occupied, incrementally-built towns on the northern Kenyan coast, to the later and regionally-synoecized towns of Pemba and perhaps other island places, to the regionally-expansive towns on the southern coast. Finally, this example from Pemba suggests that to understand the development and functions of Swahili towns we need to understand the countrysides that surround them, not only to begin constructing more fully-realized developmental histories of towns, but also to begin assessing how a range of coastal peoples participated in the construction of Swahili society.

Acknowledgments The research in this paper was supported by the National Science Foundation (INT-9906345), the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, the WennerGren Foundation, and the University of Virginia. I thank Maalim Hamad Omar, Director, Department of Archives, Museums, and Antiquities, Zanzibar; my colleagues in archaeology in Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, and Pemba; and the communities on Pemba that supported me throughout the years. This essay has benefitted immensely from the comments provided by three anonymous reviewers

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and Stephanie Wynne-Jones. Many of the ideas in this essay are the result of years of conversation with Adria LaViolette, whose guidance and criticism has shaped the way I think about and understand the Swahili past, and I am indebted to her. Jeffrey Fleisher (Ph.D. 2003, University of Virginia) is an Assistant Professor at Rice University. His research interests include the role of rural and non-elite people in the development of complex societies, focused on ancient Swahili sites. Currently, he has begun to examine the social uses of open space in Swahili towns, with research at Songo Mnara, in southern Tanzania. Mailing address: Department of Anthropology, MS 20, Rice University, P. O. Box 1892, Houston, Texas 77251-1892. Email: [email protected]

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