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The Archaeology of Social Transformation in Rural Zanzibar, Tanzania, from the Eleventh Through Nineteenth Centuries CE

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Abstract

Archaeological field surveys in Zanzibar, Tanzania point to the role of specific rural agricultural regions in shaping social transformations across the East African coast and the Indian Ocean world. From 1000 to 1400 CE, small rural communities developed within fertile soil zones in response to local social demands for grain and other agricultural products. The abandonment of rural inland villages following the end of occupations at the elite center of Tumbatu to the north likely reflects a return to coastal subsistence in the fourteenth or early fifteenth century, in parallel with other systemic changes across the East African coast during this time. Newcomers to these same rural areas resumed the production of agricultural surpluses in the late colonial period (1830–1964) during the development of the plantation system on the island. Settlement patterns, ceramic analyses, and architectural patterns attest to the significant entrainment of these rural spaces within emergent global economic networks. Though power accumulated in towns and urban centers, rural agricultural landscapes on the island were places where elites mobilized and converted social dependency and slavery into both social prestige and commodified, economic wealth multiple times over the last millennium. As venues for agricultural production, specific rural landscapes helped produce the transformations that altered social dynamics in East Africa, the Indian Ocean, and beyond.

Résumé

Les prospections archéologiques à Zanzibar, en Tanzanie, soulignent le rôle de régions agricoles rurales spécifiques dans la formation des transformations sociales sur la côte est-africaine et dans le monde de l’océan Indien. De 1000 à 1400 CE, de petites communautés rurales se sont développées dans des zones de sols fertiles en réponse aux demandes sociales locales de céréales et d’autres produits agricoles. L’abandon des villages ruraux de l’intérieur après la fin des occupations du centre d’élite de Tumbatu au nord reflète probablement un retour à la subsistance côtière au XIVe ou au début du XVe siècle, parallèlement à d’autres changements systémiques sur la côte est-africaine à cette époque. Les nouveaux venus dans ces mêmes zones rurales ont repris la production des excédents agricoles à la fin de la période coloniale (1830–1964) lors du développement du système de plantation sur l’île. Les modèles de peuplement, les analyses de céramiques et les modèles architecturaux témoignent de l’entraînement significatif de ces espaces ruraux dans les réseaux économiques mondiaux émergents. Bien que le pouvoir se soit accumulé dans les villes et les centres urbains, les paysages agricoles ruraux de l’île ont été des lieux où les élites se sont mobilisées et ont transformé la dépendance sociale et l’esclavage à la fois en prestige social et en richesse économique marchandisée à plusieurs reprises au cours du dernier millénaire. En tant que lieux de production agricole, des paysages ruraux spécifiques ont contribué à produire les transformations qui ont modifié la dynamique sociale en Afrique de l’Est, dans l’océan Indien et au-delà.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Archaeological Research Facility, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and the Center for African Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, for funding this research. My gratitude to the Department of Museums and Antiquities in Zanzibar, especially to Abdallah Khamis Ali and Ali Vuai, for enabling this research. Thanks also to the field team—Kombo Othman Juma, Zaynab Makame Manzi, Hafidh Salum Muhammed, Mikidadi Hassan Mussa, Asia Haji Ubwa, Hamad Suleiman, and Neema Othman Suwaka. Thanks to my dissertation committee of Lisa Maher, Ben Porter, Jun Sunseri, and Adria LaViolette for their support of this research; and to Jeff Fleisher, Mark Horton, and Hannah Parsons-Morgan for support and help identifying ceramics. I am grateful to Stephen Filippone and Logan Brunner for their help with the preparation of the graphs. Thanks also to Ema Baužytė, Sarah Croucher, Ioana Dumitru, Tom Fitton, Julia Jong Haines, Neil Norman, Matthew Pawlowicz, Henriette Rødland, Federica Sulas, Sarah Walshaw, and Stephanie Wynne-Jones for general support and advice. Many thanks to Carla Klehm for editing and giving feedback on the manuscript. Finally, thanks are due to the two anonymous reviewers.

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Alders, W. The Archaeology of Social Transformation in Rural Zanzibar, Tanzania, from the Eleventh Through Nineteenth Centuries CE. Afr Archaeol Rev 40, 741–760 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-023-09523-y

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