“Potentially the Pompeii of East Africa”:

Abstract

Focusing on a quotation by Mortimer Wheeler from the year 1955, when he called the ruined Swahili stone town of Kua on Juani island in the Mafia archipelago in today’s Tanzania “potentially the Pompeii of East Africa,” this article unravels some of the many layers encapsulated in this statement. The article contextualizes the passage by Wheeler with regard to the history of archaeology, colonialism, and tourism in the region. It interrogates ways how the discipline of art history can contribute to studies of the built environment along the East African coast. And it illuminates both the necessity and the potentials of decentralizing studies of the humanities on empirical-historical and methodological levels for future scholarship on the art and architecture along the Swahili coast as well as within the field of transcultural art history more generally.