Mark Horton
Biographic Data
| ID | 111698 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mark Horton |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mark |
| FAMILY NAME | Horton |
| SIGNATURE | HORTON M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bristol |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2267-8026 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 59 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 730 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 58 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
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…
Assembling Islamic practice in a Swahili urban landscape, 11th-16th centuries
Spanning c. 1050-1500 CE, a burgeoning Swahili community called Chwaka built a sequence of four mortared coral mosques in their town of wattle-and-daub houses on Pemba Island, Tanzania. The mosques' placement, construction, and use played an active role in creating and strengthening an Islamic community and help us define changes in social practice within the town and the larger polity in which it existed. It is argued that the construction of ea…
Coring, profiling, and trenching
Archaeologists have long emphasized the importance of large-scale excavations and multi-year or even decades-long projects at a single site or site complex. Here, we highlight archaeological field strategies, termed coring, profiling, and trenching (CPT), that rely on relatively small-scale excavations or the collection of new samples from intact deposits in previously excavated trenches (aka test units or pits). Examples from multiple sites in A…
The Chronology of Kilwa Kisiwani, AD 800–1500
Coastal landscape changes at Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar
Unguja Ukuu, located on the Zanzibar Archipelago, eastern Africa, was an active Indian Ocean trading settlement from the mid-first millennium until the early second millennium AD. As part of recent archaeological excavations aimed at understanding the site’s transregional trade networks, geoarchaeological analyses were undertaken to document the geomorphic context of the ancient settlement. Here, we outline the results of these field and laborato…
Eastern Africa and the Early Indian Ocean
This paper situates Eastern Africa in the early maritime trade of the Indian Ocean, reviewing evidence for connections from Egypt and Red Sea, the Gulf, and Southeast Asia from prehistory to the Islamic Period. The region played a pivotal role in developing global networks, but we argue that it has become the “forgotten south” in an era of emerging empires. One reason for this is a lack of understanding of maritime mobility around the rim of the …
Laser Scanning Shihrazad’s Baths
This article presents the first archaeological survey of the ornate Kidichi baths on Zanzibar. The baths were built either for or by Shihrazad, a wife of Zanzibar’s nineteenth-century ruler Said bin Sultan (1806–56). Laser scanning the ornate plaster stucco clarified two inscriptions, the precise meaning of which had been lost. By combining archaeological survey results with historical research and a translation of the inscriptions, a new narrati…
Towards a Historical Ecology of Intertidal Foraging in the Mafia Archipelago
Understanding the timing and nature of human influence on coastal and island ecosystems is becoming a central concern in archaeological research, particularly when investigated within a historical ecology framework. Unfortunately, the coast and islands of eastern Africa have not figured significantly within this growing body of literature, but are important given their historically contingent environmental, social, and political contexts, as well…
Precision farming and archaeology
East Africa, the Global Gulf and the New Thalassology of the Indian Ocean
Early agriculture in Sri Lanka
The Swahili Corridor Revisited
Long-term Trends in Terrestrial and Marine Invertebrate Exploitation on the Eastern African Coast
The nature and trajectory of coastal and maritime adaptations, and the complex ways foraging economies have been structured to include both marine and terrestrial resources, are becoming key topics of interest in African archaeological research. There is, therefore, an increasing need to understand the longer-term context for more recent shifts in coastal economies, and for greater attention to be paid to the role of a broader spectrum of resourc…
A Buddhist monastery revealed by UAV survey and ground-penetrating radar in eastern Mongolia
The site of the Dzuun Khuree monastery in the Upper Kherlen Valley of eastern Mongolia was recently investigated by UAV and ground-penetrating radar. The monastery's highly unusual circular form and layout suggest a foundation earlier than previously suspected
Shanga
Shanga - 1
Ships of the Desert, Camels of the Ocean
Islamic Architecture of the Swahili coast
Swahili origins
Fiat Lux
THIS PAPER COMPRISES analysis of three Saxo-Norman pottery lamps recovered during archaeological excavations in 2012 in the Edward Jenner Museum garden, Berkeley, Gloucestershire. While such vessels have been known to archaeologists since the earliest days of Saxon and medieval pottery studies, their specific function, other than general ‘lighting’, has never been considered. Similarly, the composition of the fuel in such lamps has not been scien…
The Mosques of Songo Mnara in their Urban Landscape
The 15th century Swahili town of Songo Mnara (Tanzania) had six mosques—an unusual quantity for a town of only 7 hectares and a population of 500–1000 people. Largescale archaeological investigations of two previously unstudied mosques, and detailed survey of the remaining four structures has suggested a complex pattern of Islamic practice in the town, including a dynamic relationship between mosques and burials, an emerging sense of social diffe…
Characterising marine mollusc exploitation in the eastern African Iron Age
Zanzibar and Indian Ocean trade in the first millennium CE
Recent archaeological excavations at the seventh- to tenth-century CE sites of Unguja Ukuu and Fukuchani on Zanzibar Island have produced large numbers of glass beads that shed new light on the island’s early interactions with the wider Indian Ocean world. A selected sample of the beads recovered was analyzed by laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) to determine the origins of the glass used to make the beads and…
Dietary Diversity on the Swahili Coast
Occupants of coastal and island eastern Africa-now known as the 'Swahili coast'-were involved in long-distance trade with the Indian Ocean world during the later first millennium CE. Such exchanges may be traced via the appearance of non-native animals in the archaeofaunal record; additionally, this record reveals daily culinary practises of the members of trading communities and can thus shed light on subsistence technologies and social organisa…
Coastal Subsistence, Maritime Trade, and the Colonization of Small Offshore Islands in Eastern African Prehistory
Recent archaeological research has firmly established eastern Africa's offshore islands as important localities for understanding the region's pre-Swahili maritime adaptations and early Indian Ocean trade connections. While the importance of the sea and small offshore islands to the development of urbanized and mercantile Swahili societies has long been recognized, the formative stages of island colonization—and in particular the processes by whi…
Reinvestigation of Kuumbi Cave, Zanzibar, reveals Later Stone Age coastal habitation, early Holocene abandonment and Iron Age reoccupation
The late Pleistocene and Holocene history of eastern Africa is complex and major gaps remain in our understanding of human occupation during this period. Questions concerning the identities, geographical distributions and chronologies of foraging, herding and agricultural populations — often problematically equated with the chronological labels ‘Later Stone Age (LSA)’, ‘Neolithic’ and ‘Iron Age’ — are still unresolved. Previous studies at the sit…
Shanga
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…
The Swahili
Coastal Subsistence, Maritime Trade, and the Colonization of Small Offshore Islands in Eastern African Prehistory
Recent archaeological research has firmly established eastern Africa's offshore islands as important localities for understanding the region's pre-Swahili maritime adaptations and early Indian Ocean trade connections. While the importance of the sea and small offshore islands to the development of urbanized and mercantile Swahili societies has long been recognized, the formative stages of island colonization—and in particular the processes by whi…
Zanzibar and Indian Ocean trade in the first millennium CE
Recent archaeological excavations at the seventh- to tenth-century CE sites of Unguja Ukuu and Fukuchani on Zanzibar Island have produced large numbers of glass beads that shed new light on the island’s early interactions with the wider Indian Ocean world. A selected sample of the beads recovered was analyzed by laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) to determine the origins of the glass used to make the beads and…
A novel marine dietary indicator utilising compound-specific bone collagen amino acid δ13C values of ancient humans
Archaeological Survey of Zanzibar
Dr Mark Horton, junior research fellow at St. Hugh's College, Oxford, and his wife, Kate Clark, a research fellow at the Institute of Industrial Archaeology at Ironbridge, have prepared a detailed report on their archaeological survey of Zanzibar and Pemba islands in 1984. They intended to follow up this year. Meanwhile, this note draws attention to some of the more important findings so far
Reinvestigation of Kuumbi Cave, Zanzibar, reveals Later Stone Age coastal habitation, early Holocene abandonment and Iron Age reoccupation
The late Pleistocene and Holocene history of eastern Africa is complex and major gaps remain in our understanding of human occupation during this period. Questions concerning the identities, geographical distributions and chronologies of foraging, herding and agricultural populations — often problematically equated with the chronological labels ‘Later Stone Age (LSA)’, ‘Neolithic’ and ‘Iron Age’ — are still unresolved. Previous studies at the sit…
Use of Zanzibar copal (Hymenaea verrucosa Gaertn.) as incense at Unguja Ukuu, Tanzania in the 7–8th century CE
Dietary Diversity on the Swahili Coast
Occupants of coastal and island eastern Africa-now known as the 'Swahili coast'-were involved in long-distance trade with the Indian Ocean world during the later first millennium CE. Such exchanges may be traced via the appearance of non-native animals in the archaeofaunal record; additionally, this record reveals daily culinary practises of the members of trading communities and can thus shed light on subsistence technologies and social organisa…
Iron Age agriculture, fishing and trade in the Mafia Archipelago, Tanzania
Small-scale excavations were recently undertaken at the site of Ukunju Cave in the Mafia Archipelago, Tanzania, to collect new bioarchaeological and material culture data relating to the site's occupation and the nature of early subsistence and long-distance trade in the region. Our findings suggest that occupation of the cave began during the Middle Iron Age (MIA, seventh to tenth centuries AD), as indicated by the presence of local Early Tana T…
Early Muslim Trading Settlements on the East African Coast
Much archaeological and historical research has recently been devoted to the study of the early Swahili communities inhabiting the East African coast during the late first millennium a.d. The practice of Islam can be shown to date back to perhaps the beginning of the ninth century from when the first mosques have been excavated. The economic importance of East Africa for the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean world is apparent from the wealth of impo…
Primitive Islam and Architecture in East Africa
The Mtambwe Hoard
Characterising marine mollusc exploitation in the eastern African Iron Age
Short- and long-term foraging and foddering strategies of domesticated animals from Qasr Ibrim, Egypt
Asiatic colonization of the East African coast
The history of early settlement of the East African coast is currently interpreted in widely differing ways. One view takes as its premise the idea that the coast was first colonized from Asia. This hypothesis, which has its roots in the work of XlXth century historians suggests that there was substantial settlement by non-Africans who established trading and religious communities. These colonies formed the basis of what has come to be known as t…
Fishing and Fish Consumption in the Swahili Communities of East Africa, 700–1400 CE
identified specimens, NMK=National Museum of Kenya, Nairobi
The Periplus and East Africa
(1990). The Periplus and East Africa. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa: Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 95-99
Excavation and Survey at Nohmul, Belize, 1983
The second season of investigations, in 1983, at the Maya ceremonial center and community of Nohmul, northern Belize, included mapping, test excavations in the settlement, and major excavations in the ceremonial precinct. Following developmental maxima in the Late Formative and Late Classic periods, a mosaic pattern of alternating large and small residential groups, with some areas free of mounds but yielding evidence of habitation, reached its e…
Processing palm fruits in the Nile Valley - biomolecular evidence from Qasr Ibrim
While palaeobotanical remains provide clear evidence for the exploitation of the date at various locations in Egypt and Nubia, it is the detection amongst lipid residues in closed form vessels of fatty acid distributions dominated by diagnostic short-chain fatty acids, i.e. C12:0 and C14:0′ that provides the first direct evidence for the processing of palm fruit in pottery vessels
Assembling Islamic practice in a Swahili urban landscape, 11th-16th centuries
Spanning c. 1050-1500 CE, a burgeoning Swahili community called Chwaka built a sequence of four mortared coral mosques in their town of wattle-and-daub houses on Pemba Island, Tanzania. The mosques' placement, construction, and use played an active role in creating and strengthening an Islamic community and help us define changes in social practice within the town and the larger polity in which it existed. It is argued that the construction of ea…
Coastal landscape changes at Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar
Unguja Ukuu, located on the Zanzibar Archipelago, eastern Africa, was an active Indian Ocean trading settlement from the mid-first millennium until the early second millennium AD. As part of recent archaeological excavations aimed at understanding the site’s transregional trade networks, geoarchaeological analyses were undertaken to document the geomorphic context of the ancient settlement. Here, we outline the results of these field and laborato…
Long-term Trends in Terrestrial and Marine Invertebrate Exploitation on the Eastern African Coast
The nature and trajectory of coastal and maritime adaptations, and the complex ways foraging economies have been structured to include both marine and terrestrial resources, are becoming key topics of interest in African archaeological research. There is, therefore, an increasing need to understand the longer-term context for more recent shifts in coastal economies, and for greater attention to be paid to the role of a broader spectrum of resourc…
Fiat Lux
THIS PAPER COMPRISES analysis of three Saxo-Norman pottery lamps recovered during archaeological excavations in 2012 in the Edward Jenner Museum garden, Berkeley, Gloucestershire. While such vessels have been known to archaeologists since the earliest days of Saxon and medieval pottery studies, their specific function, other than general ‘lighting’, has never been considered. Similarly, the composition of the fuel in such lamps has not been scien…
Excavation and Survey at Nohmul, Belize, 1983
The second season of investigations, in 1983, at the Maya ceremonial center and community of Nohmul, northern Belize, included mapping, test excavations in the settlement, and major excavations in the ceremonial precinct. Following developmental maxima in the Late Formative and Late Classic periods, a mosaic pattern of alternating large and small residential groups, with some areas free of mounds but yielding evidence of habitation, reached its e…
Archaeological Survey of Zanzibar
Dr Mark Horton, junior research fellow at St. Hugh's College, Oxford, and his wife, Kate Clark, a research fellow at the Institute of Industrial Archaeology at Ironbridge, have prepared a detailed report on their archaeological survey of Zanzibar and Pemba islands in 1984. They intended to follow up this year. Meanwhile, this note draws attention to some of the more important findings so far
Asiatic colonization of the East African coast
The history of early settlement of the East African coast is currently interpreted in widely differing ways. One view takes as its premise the idea that the coast was first colonized from Asia. This hypothesis, which has its roots in the work of XlXth century historians suggests that there was substantial settlement by non-Africans who established trading and religious communities. These colonies formed the basis of what has come to be known as t…
The Mtambwe Hoard
Early Muslim Trading Settlements on the East African Coast
Much archaeological and historical research has recently been devoted to the study of the early Swahili communities inhabiting the East African coast during the late first millennium a.d. The practice of Islam can be shown to date back to perhaps the beginning of the ninth century from when the first mosques have been excavated. The economic importance of East Africa for the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean world is apparent from the wealth of impo…
African Ironworking—Ancient and Traditional
Journal Article African Ironworking—Ancient and Traditional Get access African Ironworking—Ancient and Traditional, edited by Randi Haaland and Peter Shinnie. Norwegian University Press, Oslo, 1985. 209 pp. £22.50 hardback. ISBN 82 00 07292 4. MARK HORTON MARK HORTON St Hugh's College, University of Oxford Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 86, Issue 345, October 1987, Pages 599–600, h…
Books reviewed
Peter Duignan and L.H. Gann, The United States and Africa. A History (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Pp. xiv+450. William Minter, King Solomon's Mines Revisited. Western Interests and the Burdened History of Southern Africa (New York: Basic Books, 1986). Pp. xiii+401. $21.95. Megan Vaughan, The Story of an African Famine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Pp. ix+181. £22.50. Andrew Ross, John Philip (1775–1…
Indian' metalwork in East Africa
There are few frontiers from later periods whose archaeology is more beguiling than the east African coast. To the east are the sea-routes of the Indian Ocean, to the Islamic world, to India, to Indonesia, to China. To the west are the distinctive cultures of medieval Africa. And on the coast are the settlements where the east and the west touch. This paper works towards the wider issue of circum-maritime cultures from a single find from the new …
Ceramic Industries of Medieval Nubia
The Periplus and East Africa
(1990). The Periplus and East Africa. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa: Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 95-99
Short Reviews
Primitive Islam and Architecture in East Africa
Short Reviews
Short Reviews
Shanga
Mare Nostrum - a new archaeology in the Indian Ocean
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Kibiro
Kibiro: The salt of Bunyoro, past and present Get access Kibiro: The salt of Bunyoro, past and present, by Graham Connah. Memoirs of the British Institute in Eastern Africa, number 13. Oxbow Books, 1996. xv+224 pp. £37.50 hardback. ISBN 1-872566-08-1 MARK HORTON MARK HORTON University of Bristol Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 97, Issue 387, April 1998, Pages 278–279, https://doi.or…
Shanga
The Swahili
The Swahili
Processing palm fruits in the Nile Valley - biomolecular evidence from Qasr Ibrim
While palaeobotanical remains provide clear evidence for the exploitation of the date at various locations in Egypt and Nubia, it is the detection amongst lipid residues in closed form vessels of fatty acid distributions dominated by diagnostic short-chain fatty acids, i.e. C12:0 and C14:0′ that provides the first direct evidence for the processing of palm fruit in pottery vessels
Swahili Architecture, Space and Social Structure
Swahili stone houses have been the subject of particular attention in recent years. Found in traditional settlements on the East African coast, where mud and thatch houses are normal, these have been used to explain the method by which particular groups asserted their identity and role within the community. By using ‘house power’ (Donley 1982), with complex symbolic and social associations, patrician groups who claimed Arab as opposed to African …
Short- and long-term foraging and foddering strategies of domesticated animals from Qasr Ibrim, Egypt
Gas chromatographic, mass spectrometric and stable carbon isotopic investigations of organic residues of plant oils and animal fats employed as illuminants in archaeological lamps from Egypt
Man's use of illuminants in lamps or as torches to extend the working day and range of environments accessible to him would have been a major technological advance in human civilisation. The most obvious evidence for this in the archaeological record comes from pottery and stone vessels showing sooting due to the use of a wick in conjunction with a lipid-based fuel or illuminant. A wide range of potential fuels would have been exploited depending…
A novel marine dietary indicator utilising compound-specific bone collagen amino acid δ13C values of ancient humans
Geography (39 works) · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories (38 works) · Archaeology (37 works) · History (33 works) · History (27 works) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade (16 works) · Ancient history (15 works) · Geology (14 works) · Swahili (14 works) · Philosophy (11 works)