ABSTRACT
The last thirty years have seen a significant change in the conceptualisation of African urbanism. Here I consider and evaluate that trajectory, and explore the ways in which notions of Swahili urbanism have shifted along with research. I well remember the question posed to me in 1989 by two senior and well established colleagues, ‘How is it possible for you to have a project on “Urban Origins in Eastern Africa”, when it is obvious that there are no towns apart from the stone-built centres along the coast?’. This demonstrates not just ignorance about the complexity of the African archaeological record, but also a simplistic equation of stone architecture with urbanism (see critique in Sinclair et al. 1993). In the intervening decades, significant progress has been made in conceptualising African towns in many new and different ways, and this has had numerous effects on the Swahili coast. It has meant seeing the outlying settlements as integral and important components of complex urban systems; more inclusive views of the ethnic constitution of cosmopolitan Swahili societies; a reduction in emphasis upon external stimuli in urban formation; and a corresponding increased knowledge of internal dynamics. Even at the scale of the World System, there has been a recognition of African agency (Beaujard 2012, this volume). Together these changes in approach amount to a paradigm shift, a move away from static definitions and externally derived trait lists, to focus on towns and their characteristics in their own terms (see, for example, Sinclair et al. 1993; LaViolette and Fleisher 2005).
