Archaeological Approaches to East Africa's Changing Seascapes (1)

World Archaeology

Vol. 35(3): 469–489

Seascapes

© 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd ISSN 0043-8243 print/1470-1375 onlineDOI: 10.1080/0043824042000185838

Archaeological approaches to East Africa’s changing seascapes

Colin Breen and Paul J. Lane

Abstract

The East African coast has a relatively uniform topography and environment but has been witnessto a complex mosaic of human and cultural influences. This paper examines these influences from achronological and theoretical perspective over the last 2500 years and argues that increased atten-tion should be paid to the sea and its influence on and role in past cultural activity. Such an approachwould build on and complement the existing ‘Swahili’ or coastal archaeology research traditionswhich are vibrant along this littoral. A selected case study on the historic port town of Mombasaexamines the relationship of its varied temporal settlements with the sea and looks at the integratedapproaches to maritime research which have recently been undertaken there.

Keywords

East Africa; maritime; coastal; Swahili; Mombasa.

Introduction

Maritime archaeological research has been traditionally dominated by architectural/structural approaches to the study of boats and shipwrecks with a passing regard forsupporting port and harbour features and associated settlement (e.g. Muckelroy 1978;Gould 2000; Ruppé and Barstad 2002). In addition, emphasis has been placed on estab-lishing an evolutionary chronology for the development of boats and detailed structuralanalysis has taken place on the minutiae of nautical construction (e.g. McGrail 1987). Thestudy of traditional boats has also been a significant part of this latter element, but againthe emphasis has been on physical structure rather than any attempt to see the boats asartefacts of broader society. Moreover, maritime archaeology in general has been guidedby technological developments, which have facilitated underwater exploration, ratherthan by a theoretically informed landscape approach aimed at establishing a more inte-grated understanding of past coastal landscapes or seascapes. Increasingly, however, anumber of practitioners of the subject are redefining this ship-centric view and are

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beginning to re-evaluate their approaches to coastal landscapes (e.g. Westerdahl 1992;Parker 2001; McErlean et al. 2002).

Traditional nautical archaeological approaches can only have a limiting effect on thefuture development of the subject area. An area as culturally complex and dynamic as theEast African coast requires far more flexible and rounded research strategies than onesexclusively concerned with the long-term investigation of single shipwreck sites,especially given the well-established tradition of ‘coastal’ or ‘Swahili’ archaeologythroughout the region. This is not to diminish the potential contributions in knowledgethat the discovery of a well-preserved wreck and cargo off the East African littoral couldfurnish. Neither is it to suggest that efforts should not be made to locate such sites off theEast African coast. Precisely because of the nature of the events that create shipwrecks,analysis of their assemblages can provide finer chronological resolution about artefactstyles, typologies and the particularities of long-distance trade than can be obtained oneven single-phase settlement sites. They can also provide vivid insights into the way of lifeand material culture of fishing and seafaring communities. Nevertheless, archaeologicalinvestigation of shipwrecks, even in relatively prosperous countries, can be an expensiveexercise, especially given the added cost of post-excavation conservation of artefacts andstructural remains. Given the current economic climate in East Africa, no national or localinstitutional body is likely to have the independent resources to finance such investiga-tions. Consequently, if ‘maritime archaeology’ is presented purely in these terms thenthere is a high probability that the underwater archaeological resources in the region willbe either ignored or left to commercial salvage companies to exploit, as is happening offsections of the southern part of this littoral – neither of which is a satisfactory outcome. Amajor challenge facing archaeologists, therefore, is to develop an intellectual frameworkin which targeted investigation of the sub-tidal and inter-tidal zones is married with theexisting strategies of East African coastal archaeology so as to provide longer-term, andmore holistic, understanding of the development of maritime traditions in the region. Thispaper then does not aspire to be a definitive study of East Africa’s maritime cultural past.Instead, it offers itself as a preliminary model of changing seascapes in the region.Although largely based on the results of previous work, supplemented by the results ofour own pilot investigations around Mombasa Island, Kenya, our core objective is to offera fresh paradigm for the way in which the study of maritime land- and seascapes cancontribute to cultural narratives about the past, so as to facilitate discursive dialoguesabout contemporary and future society in the broader Indian Ocean littoral.

East African coastal archaeology

The East African littoral or ‘Swahili coast’ is a section of coastline over 3000km longstretching from Mogadishu in Somalia to the north and Mozambique to the south (Fig. 1).It includes a number of offshore islands, of which the Comoros, the Kerimbas, Mafia,Zanzibar and Pemba in Tanzania and the Lamu archipelago in northern Kenya are themost significant. The environment is diverse but is dominated in the interior by a low-levelcoastal plateau. The coast itself is low-lying and ranges in type from sand-dune systemsthrough to coastal mangroves and estuarine areas. Much of the coast is fringed by coral


East Africa’s changing seascapes

471

Figure 1

Map of the East African, ‘Swahili’ coast, showing location of some of the sites mentionedin the text.


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reefs and has warm shallow waters. Consequently there is a wide diversity of fish speciesavailable but access to the shore by boat is often difficult given the complex nature ofseabed and the fringing reef systems. In general, this environmental and ecological diver-sity has led to the availability of a wide range of resources. In the coastal hinterland,agricultural and hunting activity was common while the marine zone includes productivefisheries and shellfish beds. Both mangroves and coral have been used extensively asbuilding materials. A further defining influence of the region is the monsoons. These windsessentially create the conditions for a cyclical seasonal pattern of maritime trade, enablinglong-distance travel throughout the Indian Ocean. During the north-west monsoonbetween November and April, winds blow south-east, allowing vessels to sail to the EastAfrican coast from Arabia and India. Between April and September, during thesouth-east monsoon, winds reverse direction, allowing vessels to sail in the oppositedirection (Datoo 1974).

Compared with many other parts of the African continent, there is a strong tradition ofarchaeological research in this area. Often glossed as either ‘Swahili’ or ‘coastal’ archae-ology, this tradition has its origins in a concern with investigation of the numerous coastalsites with upstanding stone-built architecture found between Mogadishu in the north andSofala in the south. At the most recent count, over four hundred such sites are known toexist, of which maybe as many as two-thirds have been investigated archaeologically.These include the larger, better-known settlements, such as Kilwa (Chittick 1974), Gedi(Kirkman 1954, 1963); Manda (Chittick 1984) and Shanga (Horton 1996), that have beenthe focus of extensive excavation campaigns, as well as a diverse range of other sites thathave been either test-excavated and/or mapped. While the goals of individual researchershave inevitably varied, over the half-century since systematic archaeological investiga-tions were initiated ‘coastal’ archaeology has coalesced around a core set of interrelatedthemes (Kusimba 1999; Spear 2000a, 2000b). In no particular order of importance, theseare the origins and causes of urbanism; the nature, extent and direction of trans-oceanictrade; the inception and spread of Islam; and the origins and material expression of‘Swahili’ identity (cf. Horton and Middleton 2000).

During the initial years of research between the 1950s and 1970s, the available docu-mentary sources tended to drive most archaeological agendas to such an extent that itencouraged one leading player to characterize his work as ‘historical archaeology’(Kirkman 1957) – the first such use of the term with reference to African contexts. Since1980, verification of the different historical sources has become less significant, althoughit has by no means been abandoned entirely. In its place, greater emphasis has been placedon utilizing archaeological strategies to provide independent evidence for the timing ofparticular events and historical processes (Abungu 1989; Kusimba 1999), the nature oflocal subsistence and economic practices (e.g. Horton and Mudida 1993; Kusimba 1993),transformations in religious beliefs and social organization (e.g. Horton 1996) and impactson the local and regional physical and cultural environments. At the same time, a parallelconcern with the immediate precursors to the stone-walled coastal trading settlements hasalso emerged (e.g. LaViolette et al. 1989, 1999; Kessy 1997; Chami 1998; Helm 2000). Thishas encouraged a lively debate over the precise origin of a distinct Swahili identity and therelative contributions of ‘Bantu’, ‘Cushitic’ and ‘Arab’ populations and cultural traditions(for recent summaries of this, see Horton and Middleton 2000; Spear 2000a). In particular,



473

whereas initially overarching emphasis was given to the Arab contributions to the emer-gence of Swahili identity, in recent years it has become widely accepted on both archaeo-logical and linguistic grounds that Swahili, as both a language and a ‘people’, is ultimatelyof African origin (e.g. Nurse and Hinnebusch 1993; Chami 1998).

Nevertheless, like most other maritime societies (cf. Braudel 1966; Chaudhuri 1985),today’s inhabitants of the ‘Swahili Coast’ have a long tradition as cultural brokers andmiddlemen, such that, over the centuries, their identities have been forged and re-forgedmany times. This has resulted in the creation of a rich cultural, linguistic and material

maritime

heritage. Curiously, however, most recent attempts to define the particularcharacteristics of early East African coastal towns, or the ethnic, linguistic and culturalprogenitors of Swahili identity, have tended to overlook the changing significance of thesea to local populations in favour of other variables. In an effort to redress this, we offerhere an alternative perspective on the culture history of this coastal zone and sketch out atheoretical and methodological model for the reconstruction of the region’s past‘seascapes’ and associated activities and technologies (Fig. 2). Although based primarilyon previously published material, this seeks to highlight some of the main changes inhuman relationships with the sea and maritime resources over the last

c

. 2500 years. Wethen develop these ideas with particular reference to the seascapes and landscapes ofMombasa Island, Kenya, utilizing both published material and the results of recent pilotmaritime archaeological investigations (Breen et al. 2001).

Changing seascapes

In broad terms, the existing chrono-stratigraphic sequence for much of the East Africancoast suggests that prior to c. 2300

BP

, the entire littoral zone was occupied exclusively bygroups of hunter-gatherer-fishers, with a microlithic stone-tool technology made from awide variety of raw materials. Typologically, this material can be assigned to a coastal variantof the classic ‘Wilton’ complex that characterizes the Later Stone Age (LSA) of the Rift andother parts of the interior (Phillipson 1977: 36–45; Robbins 1997). Compared with theselatter areas, coastal LSA sites have received only minimal archaeological investigation,although the results of recent systematic fieldwork around Mombasa (Helm 2000) andsouth of Dar es Salaam (Kessy 1997) provide some indication of the relative density of sitesand preferred settlement locations. Additionally, the reported find of LSA horizons dated tobetween

c

. 4120 and 1955

BP

at Machaga Cave on Zanzibar

c

. 40 km from the mainland(Chami 2001a), implies a seafaring ability possibly beyond the use of simple dug-out canoes.To date, these are the earliest dated archaeological horizons from any of the major offshoreislands in the region. Even so, at present, the evidence available suggests only limitedexploitation of marine resources during this phase. This may have more to do with surveyand excavation strategies than any actual cultural preferences or abilities, not least becausethe screening of deposits for the recovery of fish bones has been a matter of routine onexcavations only for little more than a decade. Also, although it is known from marineterraces and fossil shorelines that the mid-Holocene sea level along the Indian Oceanlittoral was between 3–11m higher (Alexander 1969; Åse 1987; Kajita 1984; Ramsay 1995)these terraces have yet to be systematically examined for traces of LSA activity.


Figure 2

Schematic activity zones and associated technologies of different seascapes on the East African coast.

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The period between c. 2300 and 1500

BP

witnessed the gradual emergence of the firstfarming and iron-using communities along the littoral. One early cluster of such EarlyIron Age (EIA) sites seems to have been on the central Tanzania coast between Dar esSalaam and the Rufiji Delta (Chami 2001b, and references therein). Others include thelow coastal plain north of Mombasa (Helm 2000) and the highland zone immediatelyinland from the southern Kenya/northern Tanzania coast (Soper 1967a; Schmidt 1988).Since the 1960s, the southward expansion of farming and iron-using communities hasbeen associated with the spread of the ancestral forms of the numerous Bantu languageswhich today form the dominant linguistic grouping across virtually all of eastern, centraland southern Africa. However, whereas initial interpretations of the archaeologicalevidence tended to be driven by this linguistic paradigm, more recent revisionist interpre-tations of the linguistic model and its archaeological manifestations (e.g. Vansina 1995;Schoenbrun 1999; Robertson and Bradley 2000) and refined understanding of the archae-ological sequences have encouraged recognition of a degree of continuity between LSAand EIA communities.

Furthermore, it is evident that, although fish, marine mammals, crustaceans andmolluscs frequently occur in the faunal assemblages of early farming sites, with a fewexceptions such as the shell middens with EIA pottery at Xai-Xai on the southernMozambique coast (Morais 1988), terrestrial resources (whether wild or domestic) seemto have been more important than marine ones at least until the seventh century

AD

. Onthe other hand, other marine resources begin to assume significance during this period.The extraction of sea-salt, for instance, may well have begun during the EIA (e.g. Chittick1975), albeit, given the absence of briquetage at the site (Horton and Middleton 2000: 44),as did, perhaps, the utilization of marine shells for the production of beads and other bodyornaments. Significantly, as well as occurring on coastal sites, shell beads, bead grindersand the use of marine shells for decorating pottery have been reported from sites inland,including in the Usambara Hills (Soper 1967b) and the Pangani/Ruvu Valley (JonathanWaltz, pers. comm.). Despite such trends, however, prior to the late first millennium

AD

the available evidence points to opportunistic harvesting of marine resources rather thanextensive exploitation.

From

c

. the eighth century

AD

, new forms of settlement with the first traces of stonebuilt architecture begin to appear at points along the coast. Evidence from sites such asShanga and Pate in the Lamu archipelago (Horton and Mudida 1993; Mudida 1996;Wilson and Omar 1997), Kizimkazi Dimbani on Zanzibar (Kleppe 1996; Van Neer 2001)and Dembeni on Maore, Comoro Islands (Wright 1984), suggest an increasing importanceof fish in local diets. At Kizimkazi, dated minimally to the twelfth to fourteenth century

AD

, fish made up 76 per cent of the faunal assemblage and at least thirty-two separate taxacould be identified. Large oceanic species, such as marlin or sailfish, were completelylacking, and pelagic (open-water) species, such as mackerel and tuna, were extremely rare(Van Neer 2001: 387). This would indicate that most fishing was conducted around thereefs which lie about one kilometre from the shore, and in the intervening sandy lagoons.Of the reef fish, lethrinids (emperor fish), serranids (rock cod, sea bass) and scarids(parrotfish) were particularly common. These data further imply that hook and linefishing, and perhaps the use of traps (as is common around Kizimkazi today), were themain techniques employed, as net fishing, for obvious reasons, is rarely used around reefs.


476


The scarcity of pelagic species might also imply that only small craft, such as dug-out andoutrigger canoes were available. At Shanga, occupied

c

. 760–1425

AD

, the exploitation offish was rare before

c

.

AD

1000, although two other marine resources – sea turtle andshellfish – were clearly important sources of protein in these early phases. In later levels,fish made up a substantial proportion of the faunal evidence from the site peaking aroundPhase 9 (

c

. 1100

AD

), with fifty-seven species from twenty-nine families represented(Horton and Mudida 1993; Mudida 1996). By and large, rather similar fishing techniquesare implied, at least up until the later phases. Compared with Kizimkazi, however, thereis firmer evidence for the use of nets and also fish-traps as indicated by the relatively highrepresentation of small, shoal-dwelling fish and the presence of shell-middens of

Pota-mides

spp., which today are widely used for baiting fish-traps (Horton 1996: 34; Mudida1996: 380). Deeper-water species such as barracuda and shark were also being exploitedon a more regular basis during the later phases, which might have entailed the use of luresas is common today. More intriguingly, there is also good evidence to suggest over-fishing,and the exploitation of several taxa show distinct patterns of decline over time, such thatat least one (

Siganidae

) remains locally scarce to this day.In addition to this intensification of fishing, new kinds of relationships with the sea and

its resources began to emerge as a result of the expansion of the trans-oceanic trade incommodities. Historical sources, such as the

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea

(Huntingford1980; Casson 1989), and finds of Egypto-Roman and other Mediterranean imports onsites from the Horn (Chittick 1976; Smith and Wright 1988) southwards as far as Zanzibar,Mafia and the Rufiji delta (Chami 1999, 2001b) indicate that East African coastalcommunities had already been drawn into an international trade network by the last fewcenturies

BC

if not earlier (see Mbida et al. 2000; Chami 2001a). However, the scale of thistrade seems to have been limited and there is a marked hiatus in trading activity at mostsites from the fourth to the eighth/ninth century

AD

. Thus, it is at this later date that thecommercialization of the Western Indian Ocean truly begins.

The most obvious signs of this commercialization are the wide range of importedceramics, beads, glassware and metal artefacts from, in particular, the Persian Gulf, the RedSea, India and China. The increased wealth of local communities, as evidenced by thenumerous elite buildings in stone, and the monetarization of the economy (albeit on alimited scale) provide further indications of this trend. Detailed analyses of the importedgoods in conjunction with the stratigraphic phasing of deposits imply at least three phases.During the first of these from

c

. 800 to 1100

AD

, most of the trade was with the Persian Gulf.This period saw the genesis of the Swahili as a distinct socio-cultural entity. This wasfollowed, from

c

. 1100–1300, by a shift in trade towards the Red Sea and the steadyIslamization of most areas along the coast. During the final period from

c

. 1300 to 1500, theIndian Ocean trade and the associated florescence of the coastal Swahili towns reachedtheir climax (for overviews, see Horton 1996: 407–28; Horton and Middleton 2000: 87–114;Kusimba 1999; La Violette 1996; La Violette in press; Spear 2000a; Sutton 1997).

Whereas the imported goods have received greatest scholarly attention, the commer-cialization of the sea also had obvious impacts on the utilization of local marine resources.This not only encouraged changes in the social relations of production, but also hadrecursive consequences for how different marine resources were managed and harvested.Thus, for instance, one of the main exports, as attested by the documentary sources, was



477

mangrove poles. These were used in house-roof construction in cities around the Gulf,such as Siraf and Sohar, where one single-storey house required

c

. 300 poles. Conse-quently, an entire city covering

c

. 110ha. and occupied for more than 200 years would haverequired millions of poles (Whitehouse 2001: 416). Given this demand, it is possible thatsome of the major Swahili settlements were centres for logging operations, andmangroves were being actively managed so as to ensure sufficient supplies. This has yet tobe confirmed through palaeoenvironmental work on mainland East Africa, althoughthere is clearly potential for this, as highlighted by a recent pilot study in NW Madagascar(Radimilahy 2001).

There is also far greater evidence from this period concerning the range of vessels inuse. Aside from the written sources, the numerous examples of ‘ship graffiti’ foundengraved on house and mosque walls at sites along the Swahili coast, and probably datedto the thirteenth to sixteenth century, provide especially valuable insights into localseafaring technology (Garlake and Garlake 1964). At least four different types of vesselare depicted, ranging from small boats with a curved bow and stern and triangular sail tolarger flat-bottomed vessels with either a raked or straight stem and/or stern, some ofwhich resemble more recent types of inshore and cargo dhow. There are also severalexamples with a curved, ‘swan-necked’ bow, decorated with oculi and tasselled amulets. Interms of their form, these most closely resemble the

mtepe

, a type of sewn, plank-builtboat with square sails and a spreader yard, first described in the

Periplus

, that possiblyevolved on the Somali or Benadir coast, and variants of which continued to be built andused up to the early twentieth century (Chittick 1980a; Poumailloux 1999). In the absenceof actual wrecks, the only other relevant physical traces of nautical technology from thisera are a few stone anchor-shanks. These consist of a long, flat-sided shaft, slightly thickerat one end, in which two rectangular holes were set at right angles to each other, probablyto hold wooden flukes or grapnel tines with metal-sheathed tips (Chittick 1980b) Morerecently, Kapitan (2001) has suggested that this type of artefact, which is also foundthroughout the Arab-Indian region, may have been used as a mooring-post rather than asan anchor. Whatever the precise function of these objects, all the vessel types depicted inthe graffiti would have been beached for unloading, or utilized purpose-built waterfrontstructures evident in later centuries.

The commercialization of the sea also had major impacts on local tastes (cf. Stahl 2002),and this too had recursive consequences for the harvesting of marine resources. Forinstance, beads made from locally available marine shells are especially common on sitesup to

c

. 1000–1200

AD

. Thereafter, however, with the increased influx of imported glassbeads, they become increasingly scarce, with only a few selected species, such as

Conus

shells, being used only to make ‘special’ high-prestige beads (see, e.g., Chittick 1974: 473;Horton 1996: 323–36). In contrast, whereas commercialization undermined local manu-facture of shell beads, it encouraged for the first time the exploitation of coral as a buildingmaterial in the form of ashlar blocks, undressed rag and a base for mortar, with obviousand highly visible archaeological consequences.

With the arrival of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean, following Vasco de Gama’svoyage in 1498–9, many Swahili settlements went into decline. By wresting control ofIndian Ocean trade away from the Arab, Indian and Swahili states, key commodities,notably gold and spices, were redirected to Western European markets, with devastating


478


effects on local economies. Perhaps more critically, Portuguese incursion also stimulateda level of maritime militarization that had not been witnessed before. This is partlyattested by numerous historical accounts of sea battles and sieges (Strandes 1961 [1899]).However, the archaeological evidence also bears testament to this: most noticeably, thevarious forts built by the Portuguese between Sofala in the south and Pate in the north(Pradines 2001: 89–12) and the wrecks of at least two Portuguese warships (Blake andGreen 1985; Lynch 1991). By the end of the seventeenth century, the Portuguese had lostcontrol of the Western Indian Ocean, however, and power now shifted to Oman andsubsequently Zanzibar (Risso 1986; Sheriff 1987). The following two decades seem tohave been especially turbulent, as different factions both within the Omani elite and alsoon the East African coast competed with one another for overall control of the coast. Afurther central component of this period was the expansion of trade, particularly in slavesand ivory, with groups in the interior. Both factors contributed to increased militarization,with the consequence that new forts were built on the coast, including those at Siyu, Lamu(Kenya), Chake Chake (Pemba) and in Zanzibar town (Pradines 2001: 113–48), and onroutes to the interior (e.g. Lane 1993). Elsewhere, as at Kilwa (Chittick 1974: 213–23) andFort Jesus, Mombasa (Kirkman 1974), former Portuguese forts were taken over andmodified, and caravanserai with slave markets were established, such as at Bagamoyo onthe Tanzania coast (Lane in press).

The First World War probably marks the culmination of this era of militarization, withthe result that several vessels were sunk during naval enagements, including the Britishfrigate HMS

Pegasus

off Zanzibar, and the German cruiser SMS

Königsberg

near theentrance to the Rufiji Delta (Hatchell 1954). In the next few decades, as British, Italianand Portuguese colonial authority was consolidated, the East African coast and its inhabi-tants were drawn into a new, global economy, the early traces of which still survive in avariety of forms that range from wrecked steamers and abandoned warehouses to formeradministration buildings and harbour facilities that are still in use today. The process ofglobalization continues, such that, where once the main visitors to the coast were drawnfrom the Arab world and the Indian Ocean rim, now Western tourists brought on cruiseships and international flights predominate. This has not meant that older seascapes havebeen lost. Rather, all three coexist alongside this most recent form, each comprising asemi-translucent lens through which aspects of the region’s complex and multiple pastscan be viewed .

In summary, over the last 2500 years there have been at least four major shifts in thenature of human interactions with the sea and coastal resources, beginning with a perioddominated by harvesting of resources, through phases of increased commercialization andmilitarization and culminating in a still-ongoing era of globalization. Of course, otherrelationships may have pertained in the past, just as they do now. Not all of these,however, are as accessible archaeologically as those we have identified.

Selected case study: Mombasa, Kenya

Mombasa is a small coralline island on the south coast of Kenya. Its coastline is irregularand dominated by low coral cliffs up to 20m in height and indented with a number of small



479

creeks and bays. One of its prime attractions from a maritime perspective is the presence oftwo sheltered deep-water anchorages directly adjacent to the island which allow easy accessfor vessels of all sizes. It also enjoys good access to hinterland communication networks. Theforeshore is largely composed of narrow coral platforms with some sandy beaches at theheads of the creeks. The interior of the island is generally flat and physically featurelesswhile the adjoining hinterland is part of a narrow coastal plain beyond which the land rises.

In January 2001, researchers drawn from the University of Ulster, the British Institute inEastern Africa and the National Museums of Kenya, undertook collaborative archaeologicalinvestigations of the maritime landscape of Mombasa Island (Breen et al.

2001). This wasdesigned as an integrated maritime landscape project utilizing a suite of marine geophysicalsurvey equipment to map the seabed comprehensively in a 3D manner. Any potentialcultural anomalies on the seabed located during this survey were then ‘ground-truthed’ bydiver survey. A comprehensive foreshore survey was conducted in tandem with the marinesurvey using established inter-tidal survey techniques supported by dGPS. Terrestrial survey,test excavation and desk-based historical research utilizing local resources represented thefinal element of the overall survey. Mombasa Island has a long history of settlement andcoastal activity with well-recognized medieval ‘Swahili’ levels (Sassoon 1980, 1982; Kirkman1982), dominant Portuguese fortified architecture (Kirkman 1974) and a range of colonialand mainland settlement influences (Berg and Walter 1968; Willis 1993). The project wastherefore partly about assessing the nature and extent of surviving maritime cultural remains.However, it also sought to assess the potential for developing maritime landscapeapproaches in East Africa. Given its varied maritime past, where the sea as a facilitator oftrade, communications and resources has been an underlying constant in a period ofcontinual cultural flux, Mombasa was ideally suited to this objective.

From previous research, it was known that Ras Kiberamni overlooking Tudor Creekwas one of a number of settlement concentrations on the island prior to the arrival of thePortuguese (Fig. 3). Specifically, excavation at the Coast General Hospital site in this thenorth-eastern part of the island uncovered evidence of an extensive urban settlementdating from

c.

AD

1000 to abandonment or destruction in the early sixteenth century(Sassoon 1980). Further artefactual deposits associated with this site were located duringforeshore survey in 2001. Quantities of triangular incised ware (TIW), datable to betweenthe sixth and ninth centuries

AD

, were also recovered from the foreshore immediatelybelow the hospital site. These were found to be eroding out of the soft cliff face at thislocation and provide the earliest date yet for occupation of Mombasa Island.

The construction of a more developed urban settlement on Ras Kiberamni appears tohave commenced in the eleventh to twelfth century and it is here that the Arab travellerIbn Battuta spent a night in 1331:

We came to the island of Mambasa, a large island two days’ journey by sea from theSawahil country. It has no mainland territory, and its trees are the banana, the lemon,and citron. . . . The inhabitants of this island sow no grain, and it has to be transportedto them from the Sawahil. Their food consists mostly of bananas and fish. They areShafi’ites in rite, pious, honourable, and upright, and their mosques are of wood,admirably constructed.

(G1962, ii, 379; Freeman-Grenville 1962)


480


In common with other classic Swahili settlements, the town become a centre of mercantileactivity in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and served as an important entrepôt in thecoastal operations of the Swahili coast with trading contacts throughout the Indian Ocean.

The subsequent arrival of the Portuguese in the sixteenth century and their later displace-ment by Omani forces in 1698 heralded a period of colonial domination and militarizationof the coast. The fluctuation of colonial control is marked by periodic instances of violence,illustrated, for example, in the archaeological record by the presence of seven-teenth-century European shipwreck sites in Mombasa harbour. One such site is the

Figure 3

Map of Mombasa Island, showing location of main archaeological ‘sites’.



481

forty-two gun Portuguese frigate S

anto Antonio de Tanna,

lost during the course of the Arabsiege of Fort Jesus in 1697–8, and excavated by the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA)in the 1970s (Piercy 1977, 1978, 1979, 1981). Six other previously unidentified shipwrecksites were located during the 2001 survey using side-scan sonar and marine magnetometryduring the survey. These included five nineteenth- and twentieth-century mercantile vesselsand an eighteenth-century European vessel. These were among fifty-one anomalies locatedon the seabed, of which twenty-six were investigated by divers (Fig. 4).

The continuity of coastal activity into the colonial period is a dominant landscapetheme, as evidenced by the centricity and physical focus of established and newly devel-oped settlements on and towards the sea. Much of the architectural physicality of colonialand waterfront building can be seen to be exerting a controlling and subjugating influenceon the coast and its peoples. The construction of Fort Jesus, an elaborate Portuguesefortification (Kirkman 1974), at the entrance to Tudor Creek exemplifies this approachand graphically illustrates the European reliance on military force to protect theireconomic interest in the sea. The entrance to Kilindini harbour was similarly guarded bythree Portuguese batteries, Fort Saint Joseph, the Horseshoe Fort and the Round Fort, thelatter designated ‘the Fort of the Anchorage’. The construction of these forts and associ-ated settlements created a differentiated group of spaces devoted to militaristic and socialactivities. Later Omani occupation and control of Mombasa is also visibly expressedthrough the occupation of Fort Jesus. Thus, their sense of ownership and presence ismarked by the distinctively Arabic architectural additions to the battlements of the fort,which illustrates a continuity of the utilization of architecture as an outward expression ofcontrol. This distinctive dominant military architecture is also an overt expression ofEuropean and Arabic colonial identities. The delimitation or enclosure of space in water-front areas is a further expression of separateness and the inherent hierarchical structureof coastal socio-economic activity. Both Portuguese and Arab warehouses and a customshouse building are illustrated in eighteenth-century cartographic sources, while extensivemercantile storage and administrative buildings were constructed in the nineteenthcentury at the Old Port, many of which still stand. These exclusively economic spacescontrast sharply with lower-level coastal subsistence strategies of the lower social strata ofsociety (Fig. 5), which in turn are multi-layered and complex.

Both archaeological and cartographic evidence suggests that colonial and indigenousAfrican settlement was separate and that their respective architectural expressions weresignificantly different. This difference is also reflected in differing technological levels ofmaritime exploitation. Compare, for example, large European mercantile vessels with thesmall dug-out canoes used by local people for fishing and ferrying purposes (Fig. 6). Thisis not to argue that there was a polar hierarchy in evidence. On the contrary, the emer-gence of a culturally mixed mercantile elite and the continual presence of trading dhowstestifies to a complex and multi-cultural human presence, albeit on a widely varying socialand economic scale. The operation of a dhow visiting Mombasa harbour was just oneelement in a broad human socio-economic mosaic with elaborate systems of vessel owner-ship and operation. Similarly, foreshore fish traps, of which seven working traps wererecorded in 2001, could be seen as low-status, low-technology fishing engines, but thesetoo have complex systems of ownership and operation associated with them which arereflective of broader social hierarchies and modes of production in the area.


482


Figure 4

Point distribution of anomalies interpreted from the side-scan sonar survey, Mombasa.These data are plotted with reference to results from the bathymetric survey (Dr Rory Quinn,Centre for Maritime Archaeology, University of Ulster).



483

Future priorities

The East African coast has a rich maritime heritage spanning many centuries. While mostresearch has focused on the ‘Swahili’ elements of this, traces attributable to other groups,including Omani Arabs, the main European colonial powers and various pre-Swahilipeoples also survive. The evidence discussed above suggests that there is considerablepotential for further research on the maritime aspects of all these varied cultures. Whilesome of this will require the use of sophisticated marine geophysical equipment and under-water surveys by divers and/or submersibles, and so will necessarily be expensive, a consid-erable component of the surviving maritime heritage can be researched using standard,inexpensive methods widely used in archaeology, history and anthropology. An importantfirst step will be the initiation of work on the compilation of a maritime archaeologicaldatabase including coastal, foreshore and submerged archaeological sites for the region (seeBreen and Forsythe 2001). The primary stage of this process should be the initiation of acomprehensive desk-based assessment of the nature and extent of the region’s maritimecultural resource. Dedicated programmes of field survey are then required.

This should not present itself as a daunting exercise but rather as a viable andlogistically feasible enterprise. It may be useful to select a number of initial targetsurvey areas where integrated foreshore and coastal survey could be employed in ainexpensive manner. The addition of survey technology should not necessarily be seen

Figure 5

Fish trap in Mombasa Bay, c. 1885 (source: A. Le Roy,

Au Kilma-Ndjaro (AfriqueOrientale)

, Paris,

n.d.).


484


as a prerequisite but rather as a potential contribution and useful addition. It is impor-tant in this context to make provision also for the recording of the later archaeology (i.e.post-1500

AD

) of the coast, including that associated with various European colonialpowers, up to and including the remains associated with both world wars. Concertedefforts should also be made to integrate disparate marine-related disciplines andtrained individuals into this research. The objective of such surveys should be toreconstruct the maritime landscapes, changing environmental conditions and patternsof human exploitation and utilization of the maritime zone over the millennia as well asdeveloping programmes and systems of cultural resource management.

As mentioned above, some of these measures will require significantly more fundingthan that which is currently available, and will no doubt require technical and logisticalsupport from institutions and organizations based outside East Africa. Likewise, trainingof professional staff and capacity building will be required as more attention is given tothe region’s maritime heritage and its protection. Both of these may take time, as well asfunds, to implement fully. Some measures, however, can be effected immediately simplyby introducing small changes to existing survey methodologies and research strategies.Once implemented, the cumulative effects may well be sufficient to generate the level offunding and international support for the larger, more ambitious projects. At the veryleast, such small adjustments would go a long way to generating a much higher level ofacademic and popular regard for the region’s maritime heritage than exists at present, butwhich it justly deserves.

Figure 6

Entrance to Mombasa Harbour in the 1840s (source J. L. Krapf,

Travels, Researches andMissionary Labour

, 2nd edn, London 1968).



485

Acknowledgements

The research at Mombasa was conducted with permission from the Office of the Presi-dent, Republic of Kenya, with financial and logistical support from the School of Environ-mental Studies, University of Ulster, the British Institute in Eastern Africa and theNational Museums of Kenya. We should like to thank all the Kenyan, Irish and Britishparticipants on the project for their contributions, and acknowledge here the efforts madeby Dr George Abungu and Athman Lali Omar for facilitating the project, and Dr RoryQuinn, Tom McErlean, Rosemary McConkey and Wes Forsythe for their valuable input.We should also like to thank the editor and an anonymous reviewer for their helpfulsuggestions on an earlier version of this paper. Any remaining deficiencies are of our ownmaking.

Colin P. BreenCentre for Maritime Archaeology, University of Ulster

Paul J. LaneThe British Institute in Eastern Africa

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