ABSTRACT
The archaeology of the Swahili coast south of Kilwa has not been studied as extensively or as long as have other Swahili regions. Important work at the margins of the southern Swahili coast at Chibuene, on Madagascar, and in the Comoros Islands is well-known (see Ekblom and Sinclair; Wright; Radimilahy, this volume), but research on the southern coast proper has been later in coming. Pioneering work in northern Mozambique (Adamowicz 1985, 1987; Duarte 1993) was slowed by political conflict and resumed only recently (for example, Madiquida 2005). The Tanzanian coast between Kilwa and the Rovuma River saw little archaeological work owing to logistical difficulties, assumptions that settlements came relatively late and followed patterns known from elsewhere, and the shadow cast by Kilwa itself – both in actual historical terms and in imagined historiographical ones. This gap was filled first by Amandus Kwekason of the National Museums of Tanzania (Chami and Kwekason 2003; Kwekason 2007, 2011) and shortly thereafter by myself (Pawlowicz 2009, 2011, 2012). Each of these efforts drew attention to the area around Mikindani (Figure 25.1), a historic port town that attained its greatest prominence in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but had a longer history of settlement. These initial works stimulated subsequent projects tackling different sites and questions, from environmental reconstruction to cultural heritage (for example, Stoetzel 2015; Ichumbaki and Pollard 2015).
