No such thing as invisible people: toward an archaeology of slavery at the fifteenth-century Swahili site of Songo Mnara

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dc.citation.firstpage439en_US
dc.citation.issueNumber4en_US
dc.citation.journalTitleAzania: Archaeological Research in Africaen_US
dc.citation.lastpage457en_US
dc.citation.volumeNumber55en_US
dc.contributor.authorRødland, Henrietteen_US
dc.contributor.authorWynne-Jones, Stephanieen_US
dc.contributor.authorWood, Marileeen_US
dc.contributor.authorFleisher, Jeffreyen_US
dc.date.accessioned2021-02-10T14:04:14Zen_US
dc.date.available2021-02-10T14:04:14Zen_US
dc.date.issued2020en_US
dc.description.abstractThis paper seeks to challenge the notion of the invisible slave in the archaeological record and investigates the way in which material culture may reflect the movements and practices of enslaved labourers on the East African Swahili coast. Archaeological approaches to enslavement have revealed the nuanced and complex experiences of a group of people often under-represented or absent in historical records, while also grappling with the challenges presented by the ambiguity of the material evidence. This paper presents a case study from the fifteenth-century Swahili site of Songo Mnara in Tanzania, an architecturally and materially wealthy stone town in the Kilwa archipelago. It focuses on the context, use, and spread of beads across the site, and considers the possibility of interpreting some classes — such as locally made terracotta beads — as proxies for the underclass and enslaved in an otherwise wealthy settlement. It presents a key study towards the aim of building a highly necessary methodology for the archaeology of slavery in East Africa and beyond, and suggests that certain types of material culture might be used to explore the activities of enslaved and/or underclass individuals.en_US
dc.identifier.citationRødland, Henriette, Wynne-Jones, Stephanie, Wood, Marilee, et al.. "No such thing as invisible people: toward an archaeology of slavery at the fifteenth-century Swahili site of Songo Mnara." <i>Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa,</i> 55, no. 4 (2020) Taylor & Francis: 439-457. https://doi.org/10.1080/0067270X.2020.1841978.en_US
dc.identifier.digitalNo-such-thing-as-invisible-peopleen_US
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1080/0067270X.2020.1841978en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/109840en_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.publisherTaylor & Francisen_US
dc.rightsThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.en_US
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),en_US
dc.titleNo such thing as invisible people: toward an archaeology of slavery at the fifteenth-century Swahili site of Songo Mnaraen_US
dc.typeJournal articleen_US
dc.type.dcmiTexten_US
dc.type.publicationpublisher versionen_US
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