Wynne-Jone
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 18419 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Wynne-Jone |
| APELLIDO | Wynne-Jone |
| FIRMA | WYNNE-JONE |
| AFILIACIONES | University of York |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3005-8647 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 66 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 590 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 66 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2007 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2024 |
| ÍNDICE H | 14 |
Material taxonomies and beads on the East African coast, seventh-fifteenth centuries AD
Beads found in assemblages from the coast of East Africa have received significant archaeological attention. Glass beads were imported in large numbers to coastal sites from Indian Ocean trade networks from at least the seventh century AD; they give an important indication of the volume and direction of trade. Beads produced locally from materials such as shell have normally been understood in the same ways, seen as objects of trade for partners …
Connecting the Dots
High-Resolution Multiproxy Record of Environmental Changes and Anthropogenic Activities at Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar, Tanzania during the Last 5000 Years
A high-resolution multiproxy sedimentary record comprising pollen, charcoal, trace element, stratigraphy and particle size data is used to reveal environmental changes from the mangrove ecosystem at Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar, Tanzania, over the last 5000 years. Historical human–environment interactions over the last millennia are explored by a comparison of the stratigraphic and archaeological data. The area was characterised by a mixture of mangrove…
An archaeometallurgical investigation of iron smithing in Swahili contexts and its wider implications
This paper presents the most extensive archaeometallurgical study of iron-smithing debris excavated in East Africa. It presents an integrated methodology, including morphological, chemical, petrographic, and contextual analysis of iron slag excavated from secondary ironworking contexts. Iron slag from three Swahili sites was analysed-Unguja Ukuu located on the southwestern coast of Zanzibar, and Tumbe and Chwaka situated in the north-east of Pemb…
Colonialism, heritage and conservation
The House of Wonders (or Beit al-Ajaib), one of the iconic buildings of Zanzibar's waterfront, partially collapsed on 25th December 2020. This catastrophic incident, which included the famous clocktower, killed two people who had been inside the building and injured several others. The House of Wonders has prompted fascination and admiration since its construction as part of a redevelopment of Zanzibar's waterfront by Sultan Barghash in 1883. Its…
The Chronology of Kilwa Kisiwani, AD 800–1500
Glass Beads from Songo Mnara, Tanzania
Integrating spatial and legacy data to understand archaeological sites in their landscape. A case study from Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar
Spatial analysis is paramount for understanding, monitoring, and conserving ancient settlements and cultural landscapes. Advancing remote sensing and prospection techniques are expanding the methodological frame of archaeological settlement analysis by enabling remote, landscape‐scale approaches to mapping and investigation. Whilst particularly effective in arid lands and areas with sparse or open ground cover, such as vegetation and buildings, t…
Diet, economy, and culinary practices at the height of precolonial Swahili urbanism
Swahili cuisine is known across Africa and globally as a highly distinctive product of a cosmopolitan, coastal, urban society. Here we present a comprehensive study of precolonial Swahili diet and culinary practices at the coastal town of Songo Mnara, positioning archaeological and ethnographic understandings of cuisine in a long-term coastal tradition. We explore contemporary food cultures and then present the first direct evidence for precoloni…
Rising from the Depths Network
The Rising from the Depths (RftD) network aims to identify the ways in which Marine Cultural Heritage (MCH) can contribute to the sustainable development of coastal communities in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and Madagascar. Although the coastal and marine heritage of eastern Africa is a valuable cultural and environmental resource, it remains largely unstudied and undervalued and is subject to significant threat from natural and anthropogenic pro…
Exploring Swahili urbanism through survey of Songo Mnara Island, Tanzania
This paper offers a mesoscale approach to the study of the urban landscape surrounding the fourteenth–sixteenth century Swahili site of Songo Mnara just off the southern Tanzanian coast. The study is based on a systematic, intensive survey of the town’s immediate island hinterland. Such an approach, we argue, exposes a set of activities that extend out from the urban core and situates the traditional objects of study (urban center, rural villages…
The Archaeology of Emptiness? Understanding Open Urban Spaces in the Medieval World
Using examples from medieval Europe and Africa, an approach to understanding urban open spaces is proposed. We argue that new digital and high-resolution methodologies, combined with interpretive frameworks which stress the affective capacities of the material world, call for a reappraisal of open spaces as places of disruption, creativity, and emergent urbanity. We advance an intensive approach to create a methodological basis on which to reimag…
Eastern African Coast
This chapter offers an overview of historical and archaeological research on Islam and Islamic practice on the pre-colonial eastern African coast during the late first and early second millennium ce. Due to the visible remains of mosques, tombs, and other stylistic elements influenced by the Islamic heartlands, researchers have always regarded Islam as important to the emergence of Swahili coastal towns. In this way, the archaeology of the Swahil…
The Golden Rhinoceros
The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages, by François-Xavier Fauvelle The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages, by François-Xavier Fauvelle, tr. T. Trice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton U.P., 2018; pp. 264. $29.95). Stephanie Wynne-Jones Stephanie Wynne-Jones University of York [email protected] https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3005-8647 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Sch…
Urban Chronology at a Human Scale on the Coast of East Africa in the 1st Millennium a.d
This paper presents a new high-resolution excavation sequence of a house at the 1st millennium a.d. site of Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar, with implications for a new and detailed understanding of the period between the 7th and 9th centuries a.d. on the East African coast. This is an important period associated with a broad and distinctive cultural tradition, often seen as a pre- or proto-urban phase. Household excavations at Unguja Ukuu revealed two occ…
Archaeological approaches to slavery and unfree labour in Africa
The practice of capturing, exploiting and trading enslaved people has been an integral part of the development of many societies worldwide and throughout history. Although this is by no means uniqu
No such thing as invisible people
This paper seeks to challenge the notion of the invisible slave in the archaeological record and investigates the way in which material culture may reflect the movements and practices of enslaved labourers on the East African Swahili coast. Archaeological approaches to enslavement have revealed the nuanced and complex experiences of a group of people often under-represented or absent in historical records, while also grappling with the challenges…
S wahili Coast
The Swahili coast of Eastern Africa has been home to an urban tradition for over a thousand years. Since the seventh century ce , sites along this coast have been trading across the Indian Ocean with partners in the Islamic world. These sites developed into stonetowns, characterized by a vernacular architectural tradition that used coral and lime and flourished from Somalia to Mozambique, from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries. The successo…
Soil geochemistry, phytoliths and artefacts from an early Swahili daub house, Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar
On Inclusions and Exclusions
Against the Grain is an approachable book that explores the world of the earliest states, found in Mesopotamia. It is framed by the rationale that a study of the state's deep history might give us insight into contemporary concerns via an understanding of the deep causal links between sedentism, agriculture and state control
Thinking Houses through Time
Settlement, Landscape and Narrative
And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch. Genesis 4:15–17 Some seventy years ago, in his What Happened in History, the archaeologist Gordon Childe proposed a model for th…
The social composition of Swahili society
Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara
Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara - 1
The social composition of Swahili society
When Did the Swahili Become Maritime
In this article, we examine an assumption about the historic Swahili of the eastern African coast: that they were a maritime society from their beginnings in the first millennium C.E. Based on historical and archaeological data, we suggest that, despite their proximity to and use of the sea, the level of maritimity of Swahili society increased greatly over time and was only fully realized in the early second millennium C.E. Drawing on recent theo…
Ceramics and the Early Swahili
Creating urban communities at Kilwa Kisiwani, Tanzania, AD 800-1300
Urban communities on the medieval East African coast have been previously discussed in terms of ethnicity and migration. Here assemblages from coastal towns and from surface survey in the interior are used to paint a different picture of urban (Swahili) origins. The author shows that coast and interior shared a common culture, but that coastal sites grew into 'stonetowns' thanks to the social impact of imports: the material culture structured the…
Authorisation and the Process of Power
Finding Meaning in Ancient Swahili Spatial Practices
A Material Culture
A Material Culture focuses on objects in Swahili society through the elaboration of an approach that sees both people and things as caught up in webs of mutual interaction. It therefore provides both a new theoretical intervention in some of the key themes in material culture studies, including the agency of objects and the ways they were linked to social identities, through the development of the notion of a biography of practice. These theoreti…
Soil geochemistry, phytoliths and artefacts from an early Swahili daub house, Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar
It's what you do with it that counts
Archaeologies of the East African coast have often referred to identity, cast in terms of ethnicity or class. This article argues that these categories, created by a particular approach to the data, are not sufficient to an understanding of the multiple processes of identification among coastal residents. It is argued that by focusing on human interaction with material culture, rather than assessing object distributions, we can move closer to suc…
Geophysical Survey in Sub‐Saharan Africa
Magnetometry and Slingram electromagnetic surveys were conducted at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Songo Mnara, Tanzania, as part of a multinational programme of investigation to examine the uses of space within and outside of this stonetown. The town was a major Islamic trading port during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The surveys detected significant evidence for the containment of activities within the town walls, and previously u…
Beyond the Stone Town
Coins in Context
Coinage occupies an unusual position in archaeological research. Thriving scholarship on numismatics and monetary history ensures that the objects themselves are well-studied, often seen as an indication of chronology and of stylistic and commercial links. Yet coins might also be analysed as artefacts, and explored as part of the symbolic world of material culture through which archaeologists understand meaning and value in past societies. Using …
Understanding the layout of early coastal settlement at Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar
Lines of Desire
The multiple territories of Swahili urban landscapes
Houses are linked to the urban landscape in multiple ways. They provide urban form, and shape movement and interaction. This article analyses these connections through the concept of territories, defined as areas linked to particular activities and/or groups, at the fourteenth–sixteenth-century Swahili town of Songo Mnara. Detailed excavation and survey at the site has provided information on ritual and economic activity within and between househ…
Geoarchaeology of urban space in tropical island environments
Geophysical Survey at Kilwa Kisiwani, Tanzania
Geophysical survey at Kilwa Kisiwani, southern Tanzania, has recovered evidence for several aspects of town layout and the use of space within the town that enhance our understandings of this important Swahili site. Although excavations in the 1960s recovered substantial monuments at this stonetown and traced a chronology for the development of the site from the eighth to the sixteenth centuries AD, the overall site layout has remained poorly und…
Exploring the use of geophysical survey on the Swahili coast
The application of geophysical survey in sub-Saharan Africa has been limited compared to other parts of the world. Geophysical techniques offer the possibility of conducting broad-scale survey relatively quickly, and of providing information on the layout of structures within a previously defined site. In a context in which ephemeral architecture is in the majority, the latter approach is an invaluable complement to surface survey and guide to ex…
This is what pots look like here
The Mafia archipelago, off the southern coast of Tanzania, is home to a thriving tradition of ceramic manufacture and use, as part of a more general repertoire of small-scale craft activity on the islands. As such, the archipelago is unusual for the Swahili coast, where cheap imported vessels have mostly replaced locally-produced ceramics for cooking and serving food. Recent ethnoarchaeological fieldwork carried out in the archipelago has examine…
Diet, economy, and culinary practices at the height of precolonial Swahili urbanism
Swahili cuisine is known across Africa and globally as a highly distinctive product of a cosmopolitan, coastal, urban society. Here we present a comprehensive study of precolonial Swahili diet and culinary practices at the coastal town of Songo Mnara, positioning archaeological and ethnographic understandings of cuisine in a long-term coastal tradition. We explore contemporary food cultures and then present the first direct evidence for precoloni…
A deposit of Kilwa-type coins from Songo Mnara, Tanzania
A deposit of coins was recovered during excavations at Songo Mnara, Tanzania, containing over 300 copper Kilwa-type coins. This is the first deposit or hoard of these coins found in a well defined archaeological context and it therefore offers a unique glimpse into both the typology of these coins and their contemporary uses. The ramifications of the Songo Mnara deposit are discussed. In particular, the deposit is firmly attributable to the end o…
Fifty years in the archaeology of the eastern African coast
Research on the archaeology of the coast of eastern Africa is closely associated with the earliest days of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and in many ways quickly became synonymous with the Institute's journal — Azania. This is not surprising given that Neville Chittick, the first Director of the Institute and initial editor of Azania, was most actively engaged with research on the eastern African Swahili coast. Since those early years, …
Glass Beads from Songo Mnara, Tanzania
No such thing as invisible people
This paper seeks to challenge the notion of the invisible slave in the archaeological record and investigates the way in which material culture may reflect the movements and practices of enslaved labourers on the East African Swahili coast. Archaeological approaches to enslavement have revealed the nuanced and complex experiences of a group of people often under-represented or absent in historical records, while also grappling with the challenges…
India in Africa
Archaeological approaches to the study of Indian Ocean connections tend to focus on “foreign” objects that appear in different contexts. In East Africa, these objects are found at settlements on what would become the Swahili coast, and they show that these settlements were linked to Indian Ocean networks from as early as the 7th century AD. The limited quantities of these remains mean that these earliest connections are difficult to see; they bec…
Exploring Swahili urbanism through survey of Songo Mnara Island, Tanzania
This paper offers a mesoscale approach to the study of the urban landscape surrounding the fourteenth–sixteenth century Swahili site of Songo Mnara just off the southern Tanzanian coast. The study is based on a systematic, intensive survey of the town’s immediate island hinterland. Such an approach, we argue, exposes a set of activities that extend out from the urban core and situates the traditional objects of study (urban center, rural villages…
The Indian Ocean as a cultural community
(2007). The Indian Ocean as a cultural community. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa: Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. v-vi
Creating urban communities at Kilwa Kisiwani, Tanzania, AD 800-1300
Urban communities on the medieval East African coast have been previously discussed in terms of ethnicity and migration. Here assemblages from coastal towns and from surface survey in the interior are used to paint a different picture of urban (Swahili) origins. The author shows that coast and interior shared a common culture, but that coastal sites grew into 'stonetowns' thanks to the social impact of imports: the material culture structured the…
It's what you do with it that counts
Archaeologies of the East African coast have often referred to identity, cast in terms of ethnicity or class. This article argues that these categories, created by a particular approach to the data, are not sufficient to an understanding of the multiple processes of identification among coastal residents. It is argued that by focusing on human interaction with material culture, rather than assessing object distributions, we can move closer to suc…
Theorizing identity in African archaeology
This is what pots look like here
The Mafia archipelago, off the southern coast of Tanzania, is home to a thriving tradition of ceramic manufacture and use, as part of a more general repertoire of small-scale craft activity on the islands. As such, the archipelago is unusual for the Swahili coast, where cheap imported vessels have mostly replaced locally-produced ceramics for cooking and serving food. Recent ethnoarchaeological fieldwork carried out in the archipelago has examine…
Heritage, Tourism, and Slavery at Shimoni
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 do…
Lines of Desire
Authorisation and the Process of Power
Africa’s Fragile Heritages
Ceramics and the Early Swahili
Mike Parker Pearson with Karen Godden, Ramilisonina , Retsihisatse , Jean-Luc Schwenninger, Georges Heurtebize, Chantal Radimilahy & Helen Smith. Pastoralists, warriors and colonists
Mike Parker Pearson with Karen Godden, Ramilisonina, Retsihisatse, Jean-Luc Schwenninger, Georges Heurtebize, Chantal Radimilahy & Helen Smith. Pastoralists, warriors and colonists: the archaeology of southern Madagascar (British Archaeological Reports International Series 2139). xxxvi+726 pages, 509 figures, 70 tables. 2010. Oxford: Archaeopress; 978-1-4073-0680-3 paperback £ 95. - Volume 86 Issue 331
Geophysical Survey at Kilwa Kisiwani, Tanzania
Geophysical survey at Kilwa Kisiwani, southern Tanzania, has recovered evidence for several aspects of town layout and the use of space within the town that enhance our understandings of this important Swahili site. Although excavations in the 1960s recovered substantial monuments at this stonetown and traced a chronology for the development of the site from the eighth to the sixteenth centuries AD, the overall site layout has remained poorly und…
Beyond the Stone Town
Finding Meaning in Ancient Swahili Spatial Practices
Coins in Context
Coinage occupies an unusual position in archaeological research. Thriving scholarship on numismatics and monetary history ensures that the objects themselves are well-studied, often seen as an indication of chronology and of stylistic and commercial links. Yet coins might also be analysed as artefacts, and explored as part of the symbolic world of material culture through which archaeologists understand meaning and value in past societies. Using …
Exploring the use of geophysical survey on the Swahili coast
The application of geophysical survey in sub-Saharan Africa has been limited compared to other parts of the world. Geophysical techniques offer the possibility of conducting broad-scale survey relatively quickly, and of providing information on the layout of structures within a previously defined site. In a context in which ephemeral architecture is in the majority, the latter approach is an invaluable complement to surface survey and guide to ex…
The public life of the Swahili stonehouse, 14th–15th centuries AD
Houses are an important subject of archaeological research, normally explored through the households they contain. This has established a deliberately social agenda for the archaeology of houses, yet has had the unintended consequence of creating bounded worlds for study. Although household archaeologies explore the ways that households contributed to broader social and economic realms, it is rare to think through the public role of houses for no…
Ceramics and Society
The Ceramics and Society dataset (Wynne-Jones and Fleisher 2013) includes a database that documents the analysis of over 2,000 potsherds of the Early Tana Tradition (ETT), a 7th-10th century ceramic tradition found along the eastern African coastline and hinterland. The dataset contains 40 variables for each sherd, including those related to vessel shape, materials, decoration and finishing and production attributes. Referee statement by Paul Lan…
Swahili Urban Spaces of the Eastern African Coast
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Water Management in a Maritime Culture
Geophysical Survey in Sub‐Saharan Africa
Magnetometry and Slingram electromagnetic surveys were conducted at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Songo Mnara, Tanzania, as part of a multinational programme of investigation to examine the uses of space within and outside of this stonetown. The town was a major Islamic trading port during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The surveys detected significant evidence for the containment of activities within the town walls, and previously u…
A deposit of Kilwa-type coins from Songo Mnara, Tanzania
A deposit of coins was recovered during excavations at Songo Mnara, Tanzania, containing over 300 copper Kilwa-type coins. This is the first deposit or hoard of these coins found in a well defined archaeological context and it therefore offers a unique glimpse into both the typology of these coins and their contemporary uses. The ramifications of the Songo Mnara deposit are discussed. In particular, the deposit is firmly attributable to the end o…
Biographies of Practice and the Negotiation of Swahili at Nineteenth-Century Vumba
Conservation, community archaeology, and archaeological mediation at Songo Mnara, Tanzania
During archaeological fieldwork at Songo Mnara, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the southern Tanzanian coast, a storm caused the collapse of a graveyard’s retaining wall. The process initiated by the rebuilding of that wall serves as a case study in addressing the dialogue among researchers, community members, and national and international organizations concerning heritage. During the process of rebuilding the wall, the Village Ruins Committee w…
India in Africa
Archaeological approaches to the study of Indian Ocean connections tend to focus on “foreign” objects that appear in different contexts. In East Africa, these objects are found at settlements on what would become the Swahili coast, and they show that these settlements were linked to Indian Ocean networks from as early as the 7th century AD. The limited quantities of these remains mean that these earliest connections are difficult to see; they bec…
Global Maritime and Colonial Histories (63 obras) · Archaeology (51 obras) · History (51 obras) · Geography (47 obras) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade (38 obras) · Swahili (37 obras) · History (33 obras) · Sociology (29 obras) · African history and culture studies (19 obras) · Art (19 obras)