Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant-The Archaeology of Swahili Social Differentiation: Earth-and-Thatch Neighborhoods at Gede, Kenya, 11th-16th Centuries AD

在Adria LaViolette博士的监督下，Lynn Koplin将在肯尼亚海岸的Gede指导考古挖掘，在那里她正在进行她的博士论文研究。该项目考察了11世纪至16世纪斯瓦希里石镇主要遗址上的土制和茅草型家庭建筑领域的社会分化。由于考古学家主要集中在这些大型、建筑混杂的遗址的石头成分上，目前对大多数土井居民的活动、饮食和物质文化知之甚少，他们通常被认为是未分化的非精英。这项拟议的研究将比较同一城镇的石头和土茅草区的手工艺生产、饮食和财富的频率和空间组织，以期阐明土地和茅草区的社会差异。当人们更好地了解非石器社区的活动和商品的分布时，生产和消费的空间差异可能暗示着社会分化的轴线，用来追踪随着时间的推移而进行的社会重组。当考古学家试图阐明撒哈拉以南非洲社会复杂性的土著形式时，需要关注在考古上不可恢复的生产和消费形式的站内变异是重要的。这一点尤其重要，因为它涉及斯瓦希里社会，直到最近才被归因于外部因素。这项研究是在更大层面上寻找非洲社会构成动态的新动力的一部分，在斯瓦希里语遗址上，这通常需要通过审查被忽视的多数人，那些非石井中的人来瓦解社会的整体观念。除了斯瓦希里语考古学之外，这项研究还借鉴并将促进关于东非铁器、复杂社会的兴起、空间组织和活动区的考古文献。伴随着格德的建立、发展、收缩和废弃而发生的变化，符合非洲大陆铁器时代繁荣的更大历史，非洲考古学家正试图填补伴随着社会扩张的陶器制造、贸易增加、专业生产、农业和其他食物方式等活动的规模。此外，对土制建筑社区组织原则的初步洞察将引发人类学关于空间组织的辩论。

Under the supervision of Dr. Adria LaViolette, Lynn Koplin will direct archaeologicalexcavations at Gede on the Kenyan coast, where she is conducting researchfor her doctoral dissertation. The project examines socialdifferentiation in areas of earth-and-thatch domestic architecture at themajor 11th-16th-century Swahili stonetown site. Because archaeologists haveprimarily concentrated on the stone components of these large,architecturally-mixed sites, currently little is known about activities,diet and material culture among the majority, the inhabitants of earthendwellings, often assumed to have been undifferentiated non-elites. Theproposed research will compare frequency and spatial organization of craftproduction, diet and wealth between stone and earth-and-thatch components ofthe same town, with a view to elucidating social differentiation withinearth-and-thatch areas. When the distribution of activities and goods innon-stone neighborhoods are better understood, spatial variation inproduction and consumption may suggest axes of social differentiation, withwhich to trace social reorganization through time.The need to focus on intrasite variation, expressed inarchaeologically-recoverable forms of production and consumption, isimportant as archaeologists attempt to elucidate indigenous forms of socialcomplexity in sub-Saharan Africa. This is especially important as itrelates to Swahili society, which until recently was attributed to externalfactors. This research is part of a new impetus on a larger level to searchwithin Africa for the constitutive dynamics of African societies, and onSwahili sites in general this requires dismantling monolithic conceptions ofthe society by examining the overlooked majority, those in non-stonedwellings. Beyond the level of Swahili archaeology, this research draws onand will contribute to archaeological literature on the East African IronAge, rise of complex societies, spatial organization and activity areas. The changes that accompanied the foundation, growth, contraction andabandonment of Gede fit into the larger history of the Iron Ageefflorescence on the continent, and Africanist archaeologists are attemptingto fill out the magnitude of activities such as pottery making, increasedtrade, specialized production, farming and other foodways that accompaniedsocial expansion. Additionally, preliminary insights into the principlesorganizing neighborhoods of earthen architecture will engage theanthropological debates on spatial organization.