Situating the Swahili house

Bibliographic Data

ID20047583
AuthorsJ Fleisher (0000-0002-6505-9666, corresponding author), Jeffrey B Fleisher
Year2015
Pages72-89
Publication date2015-06-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueTheory in Africa, Africa in Theory (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.4324/9781315716381-6
OpenAlexW2904471605
ISBN9781315716381
LanguageEN
Citations received9

A focus on locating and exploring the temporally deeper roots of the Swahili towns, the search for Swahili origins, became an important research topic, and continues to be so today. Local discourses on identity and meaning, actively engaged in by the Swahili themselves, as well as other local intellectuals, offer a much more nuanced and historical understanding of the Swahili past, and thus a cautionary tale of the way that ethnoarchaeology can serve to perpetuate a static image of African understandings of the world that have always been dynamic. Since the 1980s, the model of the 'Swahili house' has become relatively iconic in literature on household archaeology, the archaeology of gender and studies of the social uses of space; it has served as a go-to example for many general works that are not concerned with historical understandings of the eastern African coast

Linguistics · Swahili · African history and culture studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Philosophy