ABSTRACT
Swahili origins are a vexed issue, wrapped up at a fundamental level with questions of identity. Swahili towns and villages themselves have origins, which take us back in places to the earliest permanent occupation of the eastern African coastal zone. Yet questions of origins imply also a consideration of who founded the coastal settlements, when and how; also implicated are questions of when Swahili settlements developed the characteristics of urbanism, trade and Islam that we today hold as definitive (Horton and Middleton 2000). In this chapter we explore these issues in turn, bringing together the sometimes contradictory perspectives of the two authors. Rather than flattening the differences in approach, we have sought to preserve the controversies, believing that this makes for a richer appreciation of the complexity of the coastal past. Nonetheless, there is a great deal of agreement here. We chart the earliest evidence for trade relationships between the eastern African coast, much of which predates the earliest coastal settlement and might provide clues to the first occupants. We then move on to consider the identity of the earliest settlers, drawing on ceramic evidence and continuities with earlier populations. We outline a developmental trajectory that sees the earliest trading settlements in central Tanzania and the Zanzibar Archipelago, previewing similar settlements on the northern and southern coast. Finally, we consider when these coastal settlements adopted Islam, and when they became ‘towns’.
