Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: The Relationship between Agriculture and Population Distribution

加州大学伯克利分校的Wolfgang Alders将进行一项研究，研究公元1500年至1850年桑给巴尔种植园经济发展之前和期间斯瓦希里社区的定居模式。19世纪中叶，桑给巴尔的种植园系统被描述为一种外来的社会景观，主要由阿曼地主经营，并由来自东非许多地方的奴隶劳动。然而，同样清楚的是，种植园系统是建立在桑给巴尔岛斯瓦希里沿海土著居民至少一千年的定居点之上的，在19世纪之前，这些定居点在沿海地区以外基本上没有记录。因此，该项目为非洲殖民早期现代时期的考古学做出了贡献，并通过调查对桑给巴尔19世纪种植园社会的理解与斯瓦希里社区的长期考古学之间的交叉点，开辟了新的领域。这项研究将建立在东非沿海考古工作的基础上，以考虑西印度洋地区斯瓦希里农村人民在当地和全球社会政治进程中的纠缠方式。这项研究将促进研究生的学术和智力发展。它还将有助于从世界范围的角度了解传统社区如何融入更广泛的国际网络。该项目将调查坦桑尼亚桑给巴尔（Unguja）岛中北部的西部和东部景观。桑给巴尔岛的西部是阐释与种植园经济发展有关的定居过程的理想地点，因为这些地区位于岛上最肥沃的农业地区。东部地区对比较调查数据具有重要作用，因为它们岩石较多，不适合农业，并且可能是被剥夺了主要种植土地的人的避难所。从地上的19世纪种植园遗址开始的判断性调查将用于在更大的地区进行概率铲试坑调查。这一证据将用于绘制从公元1500年至1850年斯瓦希里人在农村的长期定居图，并阐明不同尺度下的定居与社会和生态历史的关系。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Wolfgang Alders, of the University of California, Berkeley, will undertake research to study settlement patterns among Swahili communities prior to and during the development of the plantation economy in Zanzibar, from AD 1500-1850. The mid-19th-century plantation system in Zanzibar is described as an imported social landscape run predominately by Omani landowners, and worked by enslaved people drawn from many parts of East Africa. However, it is also clear that the plantation system was built on top of at least a millennium of settlement by indigenous Swahili coastal people on Zanzibar, which is largely undocumented outside the coastal rim prior to the 19th century. As such, the project contributes to the archaeology of the colonial early modern period in an African context, and breaks new ground by investigating the junctures between understandings of Zanzibar's 19th-century plantation societies and the long-term archaeology of Swahili communities. The research will build on work in coastal East African archaeology to consider the ways that rural Swahili people were entangled in both local and global social and political processes in the western Indian Ocean. The research will advance the academic and intellectual development of a graduate student. It will also contribute to understanding from a worldwide perspective of how traditional communities are integrated into broader international networks.The project will survey landscapes across the western and eastern landscapes of north-central Zanzibar (Unguja) Island, Tanzania. The western part of Zanzibar is an ideal place for elucidating the courses of settlement in relation to the development of plantation economies, since these regions lie within the most fertile agricultural parts of the island. The eastern regions play an important role for comparative survey data, since they are rockier, less suitable for agriculture, and were possibly an area of refuge for people dispossessed from the prime plantation land. Judgmental surveys starting from above-ground 19th-century plantation sites will be used to inform probabilistic shovel test-pit surveys across the larger region. This evidence will be used to chart long-term Swahili settlement in the rural countryside from AD 1500-1850, and to elucidate how settlement related to social and ecological histories at different scales.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.