The Early Iron Age on Mafia island and its relationship with the mainland

Coastal Subsistence, Maritime Trade, and the Colonization of Small Offshore Islands in Eastern African Prehistory

“…This distribution provides few opportunities to examine the early phases of coastal colonization and adaptation by Iron Age groups. One of the main exceptions is the Mafia Archipelago, located some 20 km off the central Tanzanian coast, where a number of EIA sites have been reported since the late 1990s (Chami 1999a(Chami , 2000(Chami , 2004Chami and Msemwa 1997a; see also Chami and Msemwa 1997b). While preliminary archaeological investigations have been conducted on a small number of these sites, none have been subjected to the kinds of systematic study needed to fully assess the role of the sea to early society and economy on the eastern African coast.…”

“…The Juani Primary School site, also known by its local name, Kisima Jumbe, was first investigated in the 1990s by Felix Chami, whose excavations revealed the remains of a large earth-and-thatch village that was rich in EIA Kwale ceramics and evidence for the exploitation of marine resources such as mollusks, fish, and possibly shark (Chami 1999a(Chami , 2000(Chami , 2004). Chami's excavations, however, did not involve any archaeobotanical analysis to document the role of agriculture relative to marine and other food sources, and only a small archaeofaunal assemblage was reported, focusing mainly on mollusks, with largely unidentified fish and no tetrapod fauna.…”

Exploring agriculture, interaction and trade on the eastern African littoral: preliminary results from Kenya

“…In contrast to the settlement pattern now evident from Tanzania (Chami 1999b(Chami , 2006Pollard 2008) and Mozambique (Sinclair et al 2003;Sinclair 2007), no Iron Age settlement earlier than the eighth century AD has yet been identified on the coastal littoral of Kenya. This later occupation appears to correspond with an expansion of MIA settlement from the coastal hinterland to the coastal littoral.…”

“…The region is said to have been subject to a southern Arabian king, and the text describes intermarriage between local communities and Arab traders, who apparently became fluent in the local language. Despite occasional claims for material links to the Classical world in archaeological assemblages in eastern Africa (Chami and Msemwa 1997;Kessy 1997;Chami 1999aChami , 1999bChami , 2005Chami , 2006Juma 2004;Sinclair et al 2006), evidence for Classical period trade is largely lacking on the ground (Horton and Middleton 2000). The inclusion of eastern Africa in the Indian Ocean sphere of interaction only becomes archaeologically visible with the advent of early Swahili urbanised towns in the later first millennium AD.…”

Ceramics and the Early Swahili: Deconstructing the Early Tana Tradition

“…Hatched decoration is between horizontal grooved or dentate lines, with the hatches almost always in a diagonal pattern; grooved bands are generally parallel and horizontal. Kwale ceramics are now known from sites across a broad swath of eastern Africa, including a significant number of sites in Tanzania (Schmidt 1988;Soper 1967a;Thorp 1992;Fawcett and LaViolette 1990;Chami 1992;Chami and Kessy 1995;Chami and Msemwa 1997;Chami and Mapunda 1998) and on its offshore islands (Chami 1999(Chami , 2000. Chami's work with these ceramics has served to isolate a number of individual attributes, deemed characteristic of Kwale Ware, or Early Iron Working, ceramics and to trace their continued existence among assemblages of ETT ceramics.…”