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

在Adria LaViolette的监督下，Matthew Pawlowicz将在坦桑尼亚南部海岸的中型港口城镇Mikindani附近进行考古研究。在公元二千年甚至更早的时候，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货物和思想交流，这是当时东非海岸和印度洋世界体系的更广泛模式的一部分。通过参与这种大规模的交流系统，米金达尼的居民和该镇腹地的村民开始接受某些社会习俗，最明显的是信仰伊斯兰教，但也喜欢某些食物、奢侈品和陶瓷风格，他们与其他东非沿海城市分享这些文化，考古学家将其称为斯瓦希里文化。然而，依赖贸易的经济体系和斯瓦希里文化都没有以统一的方式运作。这个项目将调查Mikindani的人是如何在这些系统中找到他们独特的位置的，以及这个位置是如何随着时间的推移而变化的。具体地说，该项目将测试该区域以外的经济和文化需求相对于当地关切、目标和规范的相对重要性。这项调查将通过考古研究和对找回的数据进行仔细分析的三个阶段完成。目前正在进行的第一阶段研究涉及在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。在这项工作之后，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，并确定每个阶段在该地区开展了哪些活动，以及这些活动是否表明当地或外部问题占主导地位。将仔细调查根据地貌数据确定的该区域存在的所有环境地带。研究的最后阶段将包括对在调查期间发现的六个遗址进行更密集的挖掘，以微调该区域在不同时刻的活动范围。在最基本的层面上，该项目将对现有的沿海社会进程知识作出重大贡献，说明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。在这样做的过程中，它将成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，并可能适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大理论讨论。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以外。在坦桑尼亚，这将包括公开展示和在米金达尼创造博物馆展品。在美国，该项目将通过教学和公开演讲，帮助向知之甚少的公众宣传非洲的文化遗产。

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.