Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant: Finding Their Place in the Swahili World: Archaeological Exploration of the Southern Tanzanian Coast

在阿德里亚·拉维奥莱特（Adria LaViolette）的监督下，马修·波洛维茨（Matthew Pawlowicz）将在坦桑尼亚南部海岸的中型港口城市米金达尼（Mikindani）附近进行考古研究。在公元第二个千年或更早的时候，米金达尼的居民促进了非洲内陆、中东和印度次大陆之间的商品和思想交流，这是当时东非海岸和印度洋世界体系更广泛模式的一部分。通过参与这种大规模的交换系统，米金达尼的居民和城镇腹地的村民开始接受某些社会习俗，最明显的是对伊斯兰教的信仰，但也有对某些食物、奢侈品和陶瓷风格的偏好，这些与其他东非沿海城市共享，考古学家称之为斯瓦希里文化。然而，依赖贸易的经济体系和斯瓦希里文化都没有统一的运作方式。这个项目将调查米金达尼的人们如何在这些系统中找到他们独特的位置，以及这个位置如何随着时间的推移而变化。具体来说，该项目将测试来自外部地区的经济和文化需求与当地关切、目标和规范的相对重要性。此次调查将通过三个阶段的考古研究和对回收数据的仔细分析来完成。目前正在进行的第一阶段研究包括在Mikindani镇进行考古测试，以确定其占领的阶段和强度，并为城镇生活建立物质文化基线。这项工作之后，将对周围地区进行系统的考古调查，以发现该地区的其他遗址，并确定在每个阶段该地区发生了何种活动，以及这些活动是否表明当地或外部的关注占主导地位。将注意调查根据地貌数据确定的该区域存在的各种环境地带。研究的最后阶段将包括对调查期间恢复的六个地点进行更密集的挖掘，以调整该地区在不同时刻的活动范围。在最基本的一级，该项目将对沿海社会进程的现有知识作出重大贡献，描述广泛的斯瓦希里文化和经济网络如何在地方一级发挥作用。这样一来，它将作为一个考古案例研究，描述当地社区如何适应过去更大规模的经济和文化系统，并有可能应用于过去和现在的其他“全球化”背景。此外，该项目的区域重点将使其能够更广泛地参与考古学中涉及文化景观和景观理论的重要理论讨论。该项目的一个重要组成部分涉及公共考古，并将从该项目中获得的知识和利益扩展到学术界之外。在坦桑尼亚，这将包括公开演讲和在米金达尼创建博物馆展览。在美国，该项目将通过教学和公开演讲，帮助对非洲文化遗产知之甚少的公众宣传非洲文化遗产。

Under the supervision of Adria LaViolette, Matthew Pawlowicz will conduct archaeological research in the vicinity of the mid-size port town of Mikindani on the southern Tanzanian coast. Throughout the second millennium AD and perhaps earlier, Mikindani's residents facilitated the exchange of goods and ideas between the African interior, the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent, part of a broader pattern which characterized the Eastern African coast and Indian Ocean world system at that time. Through their participation in such large-scale systems of exchange, Mikindani's residents and villagers in the town's hinterland came to adopt certain social practices, most notably belief in Islam but also preferences for certain foods, luxury items and ceramic styles, which they shared with other East African coastal cities, and which archaeologists refer to as the Swahili culture. However, neither the trade-reliant economic systems nor the Swahili culture operated in a uniform fashion. This project will investigate how Mikindani's people found their unique place within those systems and how that place changed over time. Specifically, the project will test the relative importance of economic and cultural demands from outside the region against local concerns, goals and norms. This investigation will be accomplished through three phases of archaeological research and careful analysis of recovered data. The first phase of research, currently underway, involves archaeological testing in the town of Mikindani, in order to determine the phases and intensities of its occupation and to establish a material culture baseline for town life. This work will be followed by a systematic archaeological survey of the surrounding region, to uncover other sites in the area and determine what sorts of activities were taking place in that region during each phase, and whether those activities suggest the predominance of local or external concerns. Care will be taken to survey the full range of environmental zones which exist in the region, as determined by geomorphological data. The final phase of research will consist of more intensive excavation of six sites recovered during the survey to fine-tune the picture of the range of activities in the region at different moments in time. At the most basic level, the project will make a substantial contribution to existing knowledge of coastal social processes, describing how the broad Swahili cultural and economic networks functioned at the local level. In so doing it will serve as an archaeological case study describing how local communities fit into the larger-scale economies and cultural systems of the past, with potential applications to other "globalizing" contexts past and present. Further, the regional focus of the project will enable it to participate in significant theoretical discussions within archaeology involving cultural landscapes and landscape theory more broadly. An important component of this project involves public archaeology and extending the knowledge and benefits gained from the project beyond academia. In Tanzania this will comprise public presentations and creating museum exhibits in Mikindani. In the U.S. the project will help publicize the cultural heritage of Africa to a largely under-informed public through teaching and public presentations.