As a child of North American archaeology born in the 1960s,Footnote 1 although conceived somewhat earlier,Footnote 2 there have been many questions asked about historical archaeology's parentage and doubts voiced about its legitimacy. Ostensibly, and most simply, historical archaeology stands in contrast to its older sibling prehistoric archaeology; the former drawing on textual sources alongside material remains for interpretation of the past, the latter being entirely reliant on material evidence. Yet, this necessarily prompts a host of questions, along the lines of ‘When does history begin?’, ‘What measure is used to determine this?’, and, ‘Whose history, so defined, are we talking about?’Footnote 3 Historical archaeology might also be contrasted with anthropological archaeology so as to emphasise that the latter is concerned with determining universals of human behaviour and identification of the drivers of human evolution, while historical archaeology, in contrast, focuses more on the specifics of historical events and the particularities of their conjuncture.Footnote 4 An alternative and more recent definition, which seeks to circumvent some of the problems associated with both these characterisations, is that historical archaeology is the study of the modern world and its origins through material culture in conjunction with other sources.Footnote 5 There are many advantages to such a definition, not least because it encourages critical comparative analysis of the material manifestations of capitalism, colonialism, nationalism and globalisation, against the context of changing power relations, constructions of gender, race, sexuality and ethnicity, and considerations of slavery, indenture, class and inequality, among other themes.
As Alan Mayne notes, historical archaeology in this guise often resonates more closely with the interests and concerns of historians and ‘by probing the ambiguities in our understandings of past societies’ has the potential to offer other ways of knowing and narrating those pasts.Footnote 6
Yet, as others before have commented, the distinction between modern and premodern worlds can be equally prone to reinforcing a Eurocentric view of history, privileging certain types of sources and forms of historical narrative over other, non-Western ones.Footnote 7 Like all other definitions of historical archaeology, the choice of themes and research questions can be critiqued. Why, for example, should the rise of capitalism be regarded as a signifier of modernity, but not the rise of communism? Were there not instances of colonialism and slavery, whether more benign than or as brutal as anything enacted by Europeans, prior to 1500 ce? And, since gender, race, sexuality, and ethnicity have been important dimensions of personal and group identity for much of human history, what makes these unique aspects of modernity? In other words, this more recent conceptualisation of the disciplinary subfield is no less partial or less at risk of reinforcing rather than removing unwanted dualisms, than any of the others that have been proposed.
Ultimately, and notwithstanding arguments that historical archaeology is more than simply text-aided archaeology,Footnote 8 the integration and triangulation of material and written sources, perhaps also cartographic and pictorial evidence, remains the primary distinguishing characteristic of this disciplinary subfield separating it from its older sibling ‘prehistory’. By drawing on oral and linguistic sources, the boundary between these two subfields can also be pushed further back in time, beyond the start of literacy into the domain conventionally assigned to prehistorians.Footnote 9 However, since there is no universal agreement over what historical archaeology is, or is not, and it is unlikely that there ever will be one, there are certainly those who question the utility of the concept,Footnote 10 just as prehistory's claim to a discrete identity is also now under scrutiny.Footnote 11 On this point, we should also note, if only in passing, that there are other continental and regional traditions of historical archaeology that are defined differently from any of these more dominant modes by virtue of having different scholarly roots and utilising a more diverse range of sources, including oral histories, mythology, historical linguistics, and epigraphy.Footnote 12 These are not debates to be explored further here, although readers need to be aware of such controversies as, to a certain extent, they shape what follows.
CURRENT HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY IN EASTERN AFRICA
Definitional uncertainties and disagreements over what constitutes ‘historical archaeology’ have certainly had a bearing on the direction of research in different parts of the African continent.Footnote 13 In both West and Southern Africa, there has been a long tradition of historical archaeology, commencing first with investigation of the material traces of European contact, settlement, and colonialism,Footnote 14 and, especially in West Africa, the material and landscape manifestations of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.Footnote 15 More recently, in both regions, research has expanded to include consideration of wider categories of African sites and monuments. Some of this research has explored the consequences of contact and European colonisation for these African communities, whereas others have been more concerned with the internal dynamics of African societies and their material records over the last 500 years or so, irrespective of whether or not they were in contact with European settlers and societies.Footnote 16
In contrast, the concept of historical archaeology continues to have rather limited traction in Eastern Africa.Footnote 17 One consequence of this has been a de facto division of labour between historians and archaeologists, which allocates study of the last circa 500 years to the former and earlier periods to the latter. This division emerged in the 1960s, as both African historical studies of the precolonial past and Iron Age archaeology were being established. It has remained more or less in place ever since, despite repeated attempts to draw attention to the importance of investigating the archaeological traces of initial European penetration of the region, from Fort Dufile (Albert Nile, Uganda)Footnote 18 in the west to Fort Jesus and the wreck of the São Antonio de Tanna (both Mombasa, Kenya) on the East African coast.Footnote 19 It has also remained despite periodic attempts made at least since the 1930s to relate certain classes of archaeological monuments and material culture to the oral traditions of specific ethnic groups,Footnote 20 and more critically, despite periodic, regionally specific definitions and uses of the term ‘historical archaeology’.
Significantly, these tended to diverge from the Atlantic world ‘norm’ that determined the initial directions of historical archaeology in Southern Africa, and to some degree also West Africa. Thus, for instance, possibly the first use of the term in East Africa was by James Kirkman to describe what is now more usually termed ‘Swahili’ or ‘coastal’ archaeology. This drew on textual sources from the Classical and Arab worlds, and conceived ‘historical archaeology’ as beginning in the late first millennium ce with the rise of Swahili urbanism and trans-oceanic trade, rather than beginning with sixteenth-century European exploration and colonialism.Footnote 21 An even more radical conceptualisation, which drew extensively on the structural analysis of local oral traditions to assist interpretation of the adoption of iron smelting technologies west of Lake Victoria during ‘prehistory’ was first proposed by Peter Schmidt almost four decades ago;Footnote 22 the ramifications of which are explored elsewhere in this Forum.
Recent studies have sought to expand on this earlier work, while also taking the subfield in new directions and giving analytical priority to different topics. Thus, for instance, one important trend on the coast, from Suakin (Red Sea coast, Sudan) in the north to Kilwa Kivinje (Indian Ocean coast, Tanzania) in the south, has been the development of research on the material transformations of port structures and their associated maritime landscapes as a consequence of the imposition of European colonial rule.Footnote 23 These studies have been conducted partly to raise the profile of maritime and underwater archaeology in the region and to build local capacities in these fields.Footnote 24 Aside from the demonstrating the historical significance of the surviving substantive remains from different European encounters, they have also focused on the role of the built environment as a tool and ideological expression of colonial control. As Daniel Rhodes' comparative study of the Europeanisation of port towns and facilities on the Tanzania mainland illustrates, widespread restructuring of the social zoning of settlements resulted in greater conformity in spatial layouts accompanied by proliferation of shared architectural forms. Key developments included formalisation of waterfront areas, the expansion of military infrastructure and the construction of new administrative centres, all aimed at centralising political control, economic extraction, and surveillance.Footnote 25 As this research expands, interesting contrasts and similarities may also emerge between European uses of the built environment in the exercise of colonial authority and Omani strategies in the immediately preceding centuries.Footnote 26
The development of plantation economies and the associated growth of slavery on the coast and offshore islands involving Omani and other elites is also attracting archaeological interest. Chapurukha Kusimba's pioneering study of landscape transformations and the socioeconomic impacts of slave raiding on different communities in the Tsavo area of south-east Kenya,Footnote 27 has since been followed by regional overviews of the archaeological recognition of slavery and slave trading over the longue durée.Footnote 28 More place-based studies include Sarah Croucher's research on gender and ethnic identities and their material expressions (or lack thereof) on Omani-owned clove plantations on Pemba.Footnote 29 Informed by an explicitly postcolonial and feminist stance, Croucher examined the spatial layout of clove plantations, the archaeological traces of enslavement and the development of capitalist subjectivities. In particular, she used the material evidence to expand on and critique elements of the documentary sources concerning these issues, and, to investigate how the ethnically diverse plantation slaves sought to forge new identities for themselves. Lydia Wilson Marshall's study of the archaeology of fugitive slave (watoro in KiSwahili) settlements on the central Kenya coast, and their interactions with neighbouring Giriama, Waata and Oromo communities, also explored processes of identity construction and their the material expressions.Footnote 30 However, unlike on Pemba, where plantation slaves seem to have abandoned material expressions of their former ethnicities such that ‘the process of claiming coastal identity went [well] beyond dress and public participation in Muslim society’ and permeated all facets of everyday life,Footnote 31 the inhabitants of the ethnically mixed watoro villages adopted different strategies. At Koromio, situated close to Kilifi Creek and occupied in the 1840s, the inhabitants maintained an ivory and cattle market, so as to facilitate trade with neighbouring pastoral Oromo and traders from Mombasa.Footnote 32 The occupants also cultivated close ties with neighbouring hunter-gatherer Waata. Makoroboi'sFootnote 33 sizeable watoro population likewise developed ties with neighbouring Giriama and with the Church Missionary Society. Despite these strategic alliances, the archaeological evidence from both sites, especially in terms of house forms, settlement layout, and dietary practices indicate that the cultural patterns of their inhabitants remained ‘significantly distinct from those of neighbouring indigenous communities’.Footnote 34 Yet, these localised constructions of identity were sufficiently plastic to allow inhabitants from both villages, following their destruction by coastal slave owners, to integrate with neighbouring Waataa and Giriama, and forge new identities as part of these communities.
The studies by Croucher and Marshall amply demonstrate how archaeological records can provide a fuller picture of the degree to which slaves and fugitives exercised agency to create their own sense of belonging in landscapes infused by differential power relations, access to resources and constructions of ‘civility’, than is available from the documentary sources. Both studies also emphasise the centrality of quotidian, social practice to this process, and in this sense these archaeological studies not only enrich the available historical narratives and fill gaps in the documentary record, they also raise new questions about how new identities could be achieved.Footnote 35
Another, related, cluster of research projects have sought to clarify the social, material, and economic impacts of the nineteenth-century caravan trade, while also attempting to fill gaps in the documentary record and question some of the inferences drawn from these historical sources. Examples include Thomas Biginagwa's comparative analysis of faunal assemblages from three island settlements on the lower Pangani River (northern Tanzania), all known from documentary sources to have served as halts along the northern routes emanating from Pangani.Footnote 36 A particular objective of this research was to assess whether expansion of the coastwise trade in ivory and slaves from the mid-nineteenth century transformed food production strategies, as local inhabitants took advantage of the exchange opportunities offered by passing caravans. Such changes, had they occurred, may well have precipitated other social and economic transformations at the household, village, and regional levels.Footnote 37 In turn, an intensification of food production in villages along the caravan routes may have initiated wider ecological changes such as severe soil erosion, as has been argued for the Kondoa region of north-central Tanzania.Footnote 38 Nonetheless, and perhaps contrary to most scholarly expectations, Biginagwa found no evidence for any major transformation in either culling patterns or herd management strategies. Instead, his data indicate considerable continuity between the pre-nineteenth century and later levels (the sites were eventually abandoned in the early twentieth century), and minimal traces of foreign imports with the notable exception of glass beads. As other scholars have noted, during the nineteenth century, East Africans were fairly discriminant consumers,Footnote 39 and traders often found that preferences for particular bead colours or types changed rapidly from year to year.Footnote 40 Biginagwa's research is among the first to provide archaeological testimony for such changes in stylistic tastes over this time period, from a preference for locally produced bone and shell beads in the eighteenth century (despite availability of glass beads in coeval settlements on the coast)Footnote 41 to increasing desire for imported glass beads from around the middle of the nineteenth century. His and other studies,Footnote 42 also underline the role African consumers played in the globalisation of trade systems during the nineteenth century and their contributions to processes of industrialisation on the other side of the world.
While it would be premature to infer from this localised study that communities situated along the routes further into the interior were similarly only minimally impacted by the nineteenth-century caravan trade, at least in terms of their food production systems, it is clear from the regional surveys undertaken by Jonathan Walz that many points along the Pangani corridor have been linked directly with the coast via trade for centuries, and certainly well before the arrival of the Portuguese in 1498.Footnote 43 Walz's findings, in particular, call into question the common assumption that the East African interior, or at least this section of it, was disconnected from the Indian Ocean system until the expansion of nineteenth-century ivory trade. In particular, it seems highly likely that local economic and subsistence systems had been geared toward a degree of surplus production for the purposes of exchange, for centuries. Consequently, while the intensification of the caravan trade in the nineteenth century undoubtedly had several consequences, not least ecological ones owing to the scale of elephant hunting,Footnote 44 it may have had less impact on food production systems than has sometimes been inferred from the historical sources alone.
In summary, the past two decades have seen an increase in historical archaeology in Eastern Africa, although the full potential of such studies has yet to be realised. The absence of a sufficiently distinctive historical process, such as the expansion of the trans-Atlantic slave trade or extensive colonial settlement, may be one reason for this. Yet there are other factors. For instance, most recent historical archaeology projects have concerned either coastal settings or the routes connecting these to the interior. With the exception of the Great Lakes region (as discussed elsewhere in this issue by Andrew Reid), other areas and topics have received less attention. There have been some new studies of settlements associated with early phases of Luo ‘migration’ in western Kenya,Footnote 45 and a smattering of research on European forts along the Nile south of Juba.Footnote 46 Besides these, however, the results of archaeological studies of sites, monuments and materials dating from after circa 1500 ce, remain poorly reported, especially in the international literature. There are also far fewer studies of the historical archaeology of East African communities in their own right, either to learn more about their origins and settlement histories as has been the case with recent studies of Luo stone-walled (ohinga) and earthen bank-and-ditch (gunda) enclosures, or to learn more about their material practices and technologies over the last circa 500 years. The absence of such studies makes it difficult to assess the antiquity of a wide range of tangible (and by inference intangible) cultural practices as documented by ethnographers and ethnoarchaeologists, and so, at least implicitly, reinforces timeless views of African societies and cultures. Historical studies of these centuries indicate that they were often periods of considerable social and political dynamism, yet how these changes affected everyday material practice, patterns of exchange, food production strategies, household composition, settlement systems, military organisation, labour relations, landscapes and local ecologies (among others), remains poorly known, although these are all potentially accessible via archaeological research.Footnote 47 Also missing from current research agendas is any systematic consideration of the archaeology of conflict, resistance or dissent. Liberation struggles such as the Maji Maji rebellion, Mau Mau insurgency and even the 25-year war between north and south Sudan, all left tangible traces on the landscapes with potential to offer supplementary and even alternative insights into these and other conflicts.Footnote 48 Likewise, the traces of twentieth-century intra-European conflict, and especially those from the First World War, remain unstudied and largely undocumented. There is scope too for imaginative studies of the ‘archaeology’ of development, their landscape transformations and their successes and failures, as for example has been explored by Alfredo González-Ruibal with reference to the legacies of Ethiopian collectivism under the Derg regime.Footnote 49
Even more critically, studies of all these ‘small things forgotten’, to invoke James Deetz's famous characterisation of historical archaeology,Footnote 50 provide tangible evidence of the degree to which East African societies and cultures were actively part of, rather than passively peripheral to, the creation of the modern world and its antecedents. While this is an argument that has long been made by historians, it is as material heritage that the remains of these entanglements acquire greatest symbolic and cultural resonance, and archaeologists are particularly adept at explaining how ‘stuff’, that is, the material world, works to sustain cultural memory and at exposing the selectivity of such processes.Footnote 51
On a final and more positive note, the practise of historical archaeology in Eastern Africa has become more theoretically informed and has moved well beyond a simple interest in documenting the material traces of European powers, and far more concerned with the agency and voices of African actors and communities, and those of other non-European outsiders.Footnote 52 To extend this work, archaeologists need to develop more multisited (in both the geographical and anthropological senses of this term) approaches, that directly engage with the coeval evidence from other continents and the wider African continent, so as to draw out the different connections and processes that bound these places together. Historians, too, also need to re-engage with archaeologists, and with their data, and in particular to take material evidence more seriously as a distinctive source of information about the past, than has perhaps previously been the case.
