ABSTRACT
Ceramics represent both one of the most widely recognised and earliest identified sources of evidence for long-distance exchange contacts between eastern Africa and the wider Indian Ocean world. As such, ceramics hold a crucial place within the discussion surrounding the emergence of Swahili culture during the later first millennium ce. One aspect of the ceramic evidence that has received limited attention is the overall volume of ceramic exchange and how this may have varied between sites or developed through time. These considerations are likely to have a significant bearing on the interpretation of the Swahili origins debate. The recent adoption of ceramic quantification methods makes it possible to compare datasets from multiple sites along the eastern African littoral for the first time, and to set the information from these sites within the broader context of the western Indian Ocean as a whole.
