The multiple territories of Swahili urban landscapes

Stephanie Wynne-Jones,Jeffrey Fleisher

doi:10.1080/00438243.2016.1179128

Stephanie Wynne-Jones, Jeffrey Fleisher

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2016.1179128

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Abstract

ABSTRACTHouses are linked to the urban landscape in multiple ways. They provide urban form, and shape movement and interaction. This article analyses these connections through the concept of territories, defined as areas linked to particular activities and/or groups, at the fourteenth–sixteenth-century Swahili town of Songo Mnara. Detailed excavation and survey at the site has provided information on ritual and economic activity within and between households. Here we use these data to identify inclusive territories, which served to delineate some of the communal spaces of the town and to link these with exterior landscapes and more exclusive territories linked to particular families and houses. Finally, we discuss a series of economic territories linked to production, which crosscut some of the divisions evident between elite and non-elite activities. We argue that the urban landscape can be defined and understood through the ways these territories combined and overlapped.

Highlights

Urban landscapes are fundamentally shaped by the structures within them; as such they are places where the relationship between house and landscape is most explicit
Townscapes are more than simple agglomerations of housing, and have been defined physically, socially and politically by archaeologists drawing on the diversity and importance of urban life in the past
We suggest that the urban landscape can be thought of as the site of multiple overlapping territories, which link the built environment to the broader landscape in varying ways

Summary

Introduction

Urban landscapes are fundamentally shaped by the structures within them; as such they are places where the relationship between house and landscape is most explicit. At Songo Mnara, these connections are defined via particular sets of activities, sometimes linked to physical places – mosques, tombs, stables – and sometimes defined by natural resources or physical features of the broader landscape – fishing grounds/reefs, forested/brushy/agricultural zones Mapping this connectivity via a series of territories of action provides a useful means of framing differential boundaries of human practices within the material network of the town. Landscapes of production at Songo Mnara produce links between particular houses and spaces that cut across some of the other territorial associations These reflect a form of specialized household production at the site. By exploring these territories of activity and production, we are able to begin seeing the complexity of urban space, in which houses were tied to the townscape in multiple overlapping ways

Discussion

Findings

Notes on contributors