Crafting Swahili Beads: Exploring a New Glass Bead Assemblage from Northern Zanzibar, Tanzania

Abstract

This article presents the discovery and analysis of a new glass bead assemblage from the Swahili site of Mkokotoni, an early second millennium AD settlement in northwestern Zanzibar. It explores the possibilities for local production of glass beads using imported glass cullet or glass tubes at this site. Glass beads are ubiquitous at archaeological sites from the second millennium on the East African coast. They are presumed to have been traded via long-distance networks from South and Southeast Asia, and used locally in personal adornment, barter, and ritual practices. However, the data from Mkokotoni offers a new and unique perspective on glass bead-making traditions, which places the East African coast as an area of production and distribution.

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“…New studies are now unveiling glassworking among the Swahili communities of Eastern Africa (Rodland, 2022;Wood et al, 2022). The discovery of a workshop feature with copious glass beads and the new bead series at Mkokotoni raises the possibility of secondary glassworking and beadmaking during the early second millennium AD in the Swahili Archipelago (Rødland, 2022). The Garden roller glass beads are also believed to have been locally made in southern Africa from imported glass or beads from the tenth to the fifteenth century (Davison, 1972;Wood, 2016) and probably continued until the nineteenth century (Prinsloo et al, 2011).…”