Abstract
African archaeology has primarily been concerned with precolonial Africa. Consequently, the archaeology of colonial and postcolonial Africa has been neglected, in spite of the fundamental importance of how Africa's relationships with Eurasia after 1488 shaped its history. Although the slave trade was an important aspect of post-sixteenth century experiences of Africans, current research methodologies make the archaeology of slavery in Africa nearly impossible because evidence of the slave trade or slavery--including slave quarters, cemeteries, holding areas, shackles, and dungeons--can be interpreted in various ways. In this article I argue that the archaeology of slavery and the slave trade in Africa is possible. Like history and economics, archaeology is well placed to investigate slavery in Africa as it already does effectively in the Americas. Using the study of defensive rock shelters in Southeast Kenya as an example, I propose that the systematic archaeology of slavery in Africa is not only possible, but also should break new grounds and develop an innovative methodology for studying slavery. L'archéologie africaine a été principalement concernée par l'Afrique précoloniale. Par conséquent, l'archéologie de l'Afrique coloniale et postcoloniale a été oubliée, malgré l'importance fondamentale de la façon dont les rapports de l'Afrique avec Eurasia après 1488 ont tracé son histoire. Bien que le commerce d'esclaves soit un aspect important des expériences africaines du post-seizième siècle, les méthodologies courantes de recherches rendent l'archéologie de l'esclavage en Afrique presque impossible car l'évidence du commerce ou de l'esclavage - comprenant les quarts, les cimetières, les camps, des cachots, et des donjons des esclaves - peut être interprété de diverses manières. Dans cet article, j'argue du fait que l'archéologie de l'esclavage et le commerce d'esclaves en Afrique est possible. Comme l'histoire et les sciences économiques, l'archéologie est bien placée pour effectuer l'étude de l'esclavage en Afrique comme elle l'est déjà efficacement en Amérique. En utilisant l'étude des abris rocheux défensifs au Kenya du sud-est comme exemple, je propose que la systématique de l'archéologie de l'esclavage en Afrique est non seulement possible, mais devrait également permettre de franchir de nouveaux pas et de développer une méthodologie innovatrice dans l'étude de l'esclavage.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References Cited
Agbaje-Williams, B. (1978). Transect Survey of Old Oyo. Unpublished Report, African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
Agbaje-Williams, B. (1983). A Contribution to the Archaeology of Old Oyo. PhD dissertation, University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
Agbaje-Williams, B. (1991). Archaeology and Yoruba studies. In Falola, T. (ed.), Yoruba Historiography, African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin, Madison, pp. 5-29.
Agorsah, E. K. (1990). Archaeology of maroon heritage in Jamaica. Archaeology Jamaica 2: 14-19.
Agorsah, E. K. (1993). Archaeology and resistance history in the Caribbean. African Archaeological Review 11: 175-195.
Alexander, J. (2001). Islam, archaeology and slavery in Africa. World Archaeology 33: 44-46.
Allen, J. De V. (1976). The Swahilis in Western historiography, Seminar Paper. Institute of African Studies, University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya.
Allen, J. De V. (1993). Swahili Origins: Swahili Culture and the Shungwaya Phenomenon. James Currey, London.
Alpers, E. A. (1969). Trade, state and society among Yao in nineteenth century. Journal of African History 10: 405-420.
Alpers, E. A. (1975). Ivory and Slaves in East and Central Africa, Heinemann, London.
Andah, B. (1995). Studying African societies in cultural context. In Schmidt, P. R., and Patterson, T. C. (eds.), Making Alternative Histories, School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, NM, pp. 149-181.
Andrews, S. C., and Fenton, J. P. (2001). Archaeology and the invincible man: The role of slavery in the production of wealth and social class in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, 1820 to 1870. World Archaeology 33: 115-135.
Atieno-Odhiambo, E. S. (2001). African Historians and African Voices: Essays Presented to Professor Bethwell Allan Ogot. P. Schlettwein Publishing, Basel.
Austen, R. A. (1989). The nineteenth century slave trade from East Africa (Swahili and Red Sea Coasts): A tentative census. Slavery and Abolition 9(3): 21-44.
Bagshawe, F. J. (1925). The Peoples of the Happy Valley (East Africa): The Aboriginal Races of Kondoa Irangi, Part II, The Kangeju. Journal of the African Society 24: 117-130.
Beachey, R. W. (1976). The Slave Trade of Eastern Africa, Barnes and Noble, London.
Benjamin, J. J. (2002). East Africa and the World: The Relationship of Knowledge and Power in the Construction of History, Race, and Identity. Unpublished PhD thesis, State University of New York, Binghamton.
Bisson, M. S., Childs, S. T., De Barros, P., and Holl, A. F. C. (2000). Ancient African Metallurgy: The Sociocultural Context, Altamira, Walnut Creek, CA.
Blaut, J. M. (1993). The Colonizers Model of the World, Guilford Press, New York.
Blaut (1993a). 1924: The Debate on Colonialism, Eurocentrism, and History. Africa World Press, Trenton.
Bravman, B. (1998). Making Ethnic Ways: Communities and Their Transformations in Taita, Kenya, 1800–1950, Heinemann, Portsmouth, UK.
Bulcha, M. (2002). The Making of the Oromo Diaspora, Kirk House, Minneapolis, MN.
Carney, J. A. (2001). Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Cassey, J. (1998). The ecology of food production in West Africa. In Connah, G. (ed.), Transformations in Africa: Essays on Africa's Later Past, Leicester University Press, Leicester, UK, pp. 48-70.
Casson, L. (1989). The Periplus Maris Erythraei, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Césaire, A. (2000). Discourse on Colonialism, New York University Press, New York.
Chau, Ju Kua. (1966). (12th Cent.) Chu Fan Chi: Chinese and Arab Trade in the 12th and 13th Centuries, Wiesbaden, Amsterdam.
Chittick, H. N. (1965). A note on stone-built enclosures in South Nyanza, Kenya. Man 147: 152-153.
Chittick, H. N. (1969). The coast before the arrival of the Portuguese. In Ogot, B. A., and Kieran., J. A. (eds.), Zamani, East African Publishing, Nairobi, Kenya, pp. 100-118.
Cooper, F. (1977). Plantation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Cooper, F. (1980). From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1890–1925, Kenya Literature Bureau, Nairobi.
Cooper, F. (1981). Islam and cultural: The ideology of slave owners on the East African Coast. In Lovejoy, P. (ed.), The Ideology of Slavery in Africa, Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, CA, pp. 247-277.
Coupland, R. (1938). East Africa and Its Invaders, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Coupland, R. (1968). The Exploitation of East Africa, 1856–1890. The Slave Trade and the Scrambl, Faber and Faber, London.
Cox, G., and Sealy, J. (1997). Investigating identity and life histories: Isotopic analysis and historical documentation of slave skeletons from on the Cape Town foreshore, South Africa. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 1: 207-224.
Cox, G., Sealy, J., Schrire, C., and Morris, A. (2001). Stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic analyses of the underclass at the colonial Cape of Good Hope in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. World Archaeology 33: 73-97.
Curtin, P. D. (1984). Cross-Cultural Trade in World History, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Das Gupta, A. (1987). Introduction II: The story. In India and the Indian Das Gupta, A., and Pearson, M. N. (ed.), Ocean, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 25-45.
David, N., Sterner, J., and Gavua, M. K. (1988). Why pots are decorated. Current Anthropology 29: 365-389.
De Barros, P. (2001). The effects of the slave trade on the Bassar iron working society of Togo. In DeCorse, C. R. (ed.), West Africa During the Atlantic Slave Trade: Archaeological Perspectives, Leicester University Press, London, pp. 59-80.
DeCorse, C. R. (1998). The Europeans in West Africa: Culture contact, continuity, and change. In Connah, G. (ed.), Transformations in Africa: Essays on Africa's Later Past, Leicester University Press, Leicester, UK, pp. 219-244.
DeCorse, C. R. (2001). West Africa during the Atlantic Slave Trade: Archaeological Perspectives, Leicester University Press, London.
Depelchin, J. (1999). Braudel and African history: Dismantling or reproducing the colonial/capital paradigm? In Martin, W. O., and West, M. O. (ed.), Out of One, Many Africa's: Reconstructing the Study and the Meaning of Africa, University of Illinois Press, Chicago, pp. 157-174.
Donley, L. (1982). House power: Swahili space and symbolic markers. In Hodder, I. (ed.), Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 63-73.
Donley-Reid, L. (1984). The Social Uses of Swahili Spaces and Objects. PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
Donley-Reid, L. (1986). Life in the Swahili town reveals the symbolic meanings of spaces and artifact assemblages. African Archaeological Review 5: 181-192.
DuBois, W. E. B. (1978). The World and Africa, Rev. edn., International Publishers Company, New York.
DuBois (1965). The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part Which Africa has Played in World History, (enlarged edition), International Publishers, New York.
Dunn, R. E. (1986). The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim traveler of the 14th Century, Encyclopedia of Islam 1954, Brill, Leiden, Netherlands.
Fadiman, J. (1982). An Oral History of Tribal Warfare: The Meru of Mt. Kenya, Ohio University Press, Athens, OH.
Falola, T., and Ajayi, J. F. A. (1993). African Historiography: Essays in Honour of Jacob Ade Ajayi, Longman, Lagos, Nigeria.
Farrant, L. (1975). Tippu Tip and the East African Slave Trade, St. Martins, New York.
Ferguson, L. (1992). Uncommon Ground: Archaeology and Early African America, 1650–1800, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.
Forsbrooke, H. A. (1960). The ‘Masai walls’ of Moa: Walled towns of the Segeju. Tanganyika Notes and Records 41: 30-37.
Fowler, I. (1990). Babungo: A Study of Iron Production, Trade, and Power in Nineteenth Century Ndop Plain Chiefdom (Cameroons). PhD disseertation, University of London, London.
Freeman-Grenville, G. S. P. (1962). The East African Coast: Select Documents From the First to the Earlier Nineteenth Century, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Freeman-Grenville, G. S. P. (1965). The French at Kilwa Island: An Episode in Eighteenth Century East African History, Clarendon, Oxford.
French-Sheldon, M. (1892). Customs among the natives of East Africa, from Teita to Kilimengilia, with special reference to their women and children. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 21: 358-390.
Funari, F. P. A. (1999). Maroon, race, and gender: Palmares material culture and social relations in a runaway settlement. In Funari, P. P. A., Hall, M., and Jones, S. (eds.), Historical Archaeology: Back From the Edge, Routledge, London, pp. 308-327.
Gates, H. L., Jr. (1998). Wonders of the African World, Knopf, New York.
Gillman, C. (1944). Annotated list of ancient and modern indigenous structures in Eastern Africa. Tanganyika Notes and Records 17: 44-55.
Glassman, J. P. (1983). The Runaway Slave in Coastal Resistance to Zanzibar: The Case of the Witu Sultanate. MA thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Giles, L. (1989). Spirit Possession on the Swahili Coast: Peripheral Cults of Primary Texts. PhD Thesis. University of Texas at Austin, Austin.
Glassman, J. P. (1991). The bondman's new clothes: The contradictory nature of slave resistance on the Swahili Coast. The Journal of African History 32: 277-312.
Glassman, J. P. (1995). Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856–1888, Heinemann, Portsmouth, UK.
Goucher, C. (1981). Iron is iron ‘til it is rust: trade and ecology in the decline of West African iron-smelting. Journal of African History 22: 179-189.
Gray, J. (1956). The French at Kilwa, 1776–1784. Tanganyika Notes and Records 44: 28-49.
Hall, M. (1993). Annual Review of Anthropology, 22: 177-200.
Harris, J. E. (1971). The African Presence in Asia: Consequences of the East African Slave Trade, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL.
Harris, J. E. (1985). Malik Ambar: African Regent--Minister in India. Journal of African Civilizations 7(1): 2-29.
Harris, J. E. (1992). The African Diaspora in the Old and the New Worlds. In Ogot, B. A. (ed.), General History of Africa V: African From the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century, UNESCO, Heinemann, London.
Henige, D. P. (1974). The Chronology of Oral Tradition; Quest for a Chimera, Oxford Studies in African Affairs, Clarendon, Oxford.
Herbert, E. W. (1993). Iron, Gender, and Power: Rituals of Transformation in African Societies, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
Herlehy, T. J. (1984). Ties that bind. International Journal of African Historical Studies 17: 285-308.
Herlehy, T. J., and Morton, R. F. (1988). A coastal ex-slave community in the regional and colonial economy of Kenya: The Wamisheni of Rabai, 1880–1963. In Miers, S., and Roberts, R. (eds.), The End of Slavery in Africa, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, pp. 254-271.
Hirth, F., and Rockhill, W. W. (1911). Chau Ju-kua, Chu-fan-chi [His work on the Chinese and Arab Trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries], Printing Office of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, FL.
Hobley, C. W. (1895). Upon a visit to Tsavo and the Taita highland. Geographical Journal 5: 545-561.
Holl, A. F. C. (1990). West African archaeology: Colonialism and nationalism. In Robertshaw, P. (ed.), A History of African Archaeology, James Currey, London, pp. 296-309.
Holl, A. F. C. (1995). African history: Past, present and future; the unending quest for alternatives. In Schmidt, P. R., and Patterson, T. C. (ed.), Making Alternative Histories, School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, NM, pp. 183-211.
Holl, A. F. C. (2000). The Diwan Revisited, Kegan Paul, London.
Holl, A. F. C. (2003). Ethnoarchaeology of Shuwa-Arab Settlements, Lexington Books, Oxford.
Horton, M. (1996). Shanga: A Muslim Trading Community on the East African Coast, British Institute in Eastern Africa, Nairobi, Kenya.
Horton, M., and Middleton, J. (2000). The Swahili: The Social Landscape of a Mercantile Society, Blackwell, Oxford.
Inikori, J. E. (1997). Slave trade, Western Africa. In Middleton, J. (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Africa South of the Sahara, Vol. 4, Charles Schribner's Sons, New York, pp. 88-94.
Insoll, T. (1990). The Archaeology of Islam, Blackwell, Boston.
Jackson, K. (1972). An Ethnographic Study of the Oral Traditions of the Akamba, University Microfilm, Ann Arbor, MI.
Jackson, T. (1948). Some stone built defenses on Ukerewe Island. Tanganyika Notes and Records 25: 77-78.
Jaubert, P.-A. (1975) (ed. and trans.). La Géographie d'édrisi, Wiesbaden, Amsterdam.
Kelly, K. (1997). Using historically informed archaeology: Seventeenth and eighteenth century Hueda/European interaction on the coast of Benin. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 4: 353-366.
Kelly, K. G. (1996). Slave trade in Africa. In Vogel, J. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa, Altamira, Walnut Creek, CA, pp. 532-535.
Klein, M. (1993). Breaking the Chains: Slavery, Bondage and Emancipation in Africa and Asia, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Klein, M., and Robertson, C. (1983). Women and Slavery in Africa, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison.
Kopytoff, I., and Miers, S. (1977). African 'slavery’ as an institution of marginality. In Miers, S., and Kopytoff, I. (eds.), Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, University of Wisconsin, Madison, pp. 3-81.
Kraph, J. L. (1860). Travels, Researches, and Missionary Labours During an Eighteen Year's Residence in Eastern Africa, Ticknor and Fields, Boston.
Kusimba, C. M. (1999a). The Rise and Fall of Swahili State, Altamira, Walnut Creek, CA.
Kusimba, C. M. (1999b). The rise of Elites among the pre-colonial Swahili of the East African Coast. In Robb, J. (ed.), Material Symbols in Prehistory, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, pp. 318-341.
Kusimba, C. M., and Bronson, B. (in press). Iron and environment in East Africa. Nigeria Notes and Records.
Kusimba, C. M., and Kusimba, S. B. (1998–2002). Tsavo and Kasigau Archaeological Research Program, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.
Kusimba, C. M., and Kusimba, S. B. (2001). Hinterlands of Swahili cities: Archaeological investigations of economy and trade in Tsavo, Kenya. In Kropacek, L., and Skalnik, P. (eds.), Africa 2000: Forty Years of African Studies in Prague, Roman Misek, Prague, Czech Republic, pp. 203-232.
Kusimba, C. M., and Kusimba, S. B. (2004). East Africa. In Stahl, A.B. (ed.), African Archaeology: A Critical Introduction, Blackwell, Cambridge, MA.
Kusimba, S. B. (2003). African Foragers: Environment, Technology, Interactions, Altamira, Walnut Creek, CA.
Kusimba, C. M. (2004). Slavery and Warfare in African Chiefdoms. In Violent Transformations: The Archaeology of Warfare and Long-Term Social Change. Edited by E. Arkush and M. Allen. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City (in Press).
Leakey, L. S. B. (1936). Preliminary report on examination of Engaruka ruins. Tanganyika Notes and Records 1: 57-60.
Leys, C. (1975). Underdevelopment in Kenya: The Political Economy of Neo-Colonialism, 1964–1971, Random House, New, York.
Littlefield, D. C. (1981). Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge.
Livingstone, D. (1880). Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa From 1865 to His Death, John Murray, London.
Lodhi, A. Y. (1974). The Institution of Slavery in Zanzibar and Pemba, Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala, Sweden.
Lofgren, L. (1967). Stone structures of South Nyanza, Kenya. Azania 2: 73-88.
Lovejoy, P. E. (2000). Transformation in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa, 2nd edn., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Lugard, F. J. (1968). Rise of Our East African Empire: Early Efforts in Nyasaland Uganda, International Specialized Book Services Blackwood, Edinburgh.
MacDonald, D. (1882). Africana: Or, the Heart of Heathen Africa, Vol. 1, Simpkin Marshall, London.
Manning, P. (1982). Slavery, Colonialism, and Economic Growth in Dahomey, 1640–1960, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Manning, P. (1990). Slavery and African Life. Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Martin, E. B., and Ryan, T. C. I. (1977). A quantitative assessment of the Arab slave trade of East Africa. Kenya Historical Review 5: 71-91.
Mbotela, J. (1934). Uhuru Wa Watumwa, Sheldon Press, London.
Merritt, H. (1975). A History of the Taita of Kenya to 1900. PhD thesis, Department of History, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
Middleton, J. (1992). The World of the Swahili: An African Mercantile Civilization, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Mirza, S., and Strobel, M. (1989). Three Swahili Women: Life Histories From Mombasa, Kenya, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
Morris, A. (1992). Skeletons of Contact: A Study of Protohistoric Burials From the Lower Orange River Valley, South Africa, Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Morris (1996). Trophy Skull, Museums and the San. In S. Skotness (ed.). Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of the Bushmen, pp. 67-80.
Morton, F. (1978). A reappraisal of the history of Wata hunters of the Kenya Coast in the pre-colonial era. Kenya Historical Review, 23-56.
Morton, F. (1990). Children of Ham, Freed Slaves and Fugitive Slaves on the Kenya Coast, 1873–1907, Westview Press, Boulder, CO.
Mutoro, H. W. (1998). Precolonial trading systems of the East African interior. In Connah, G. (ed.), Transformations in Africa: Essays on Africa's Later Past, Leicester University Press, Leicester, UK, pp. 186-203.
Mutoro, H., and Abungu, G. H. O. (1993). Coast-Interior settlements and social relations in the Kenya Coastal hinterland. In Shaw, T., Sinclair, P., Andah, B., and Okpoko, A. (eds.), The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns, Routledge, London, pp. 694-703.
Nafzinger, E. W. (1988). Inequality in Africa: Political Elites, Proletariat, Peasants and the Poor, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Naqvi, H. K. (1972). Urbanization and Urban Centres Under the Great Mughals: 1556–1707, Vol. 1, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, India.
New, C. (1874). Life Wanderings and Labours in East Africa, Hodder and Stroughton, London.
Newitt, M. D. D. (1972). Angoche, the slave trade, and the Portuguese c. 1844–1910. Journal of African History 13: 659-672.
Newitt, M. D. D. (1987). East Africa and the Indian Ocean Trade. In Das Gupta, A, and Pearson, M. N. (ed.), India and the Indian Ocean, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 201-223.
Newitt, M. D. D., and Garlake, P. S. (1967). The “Aringa” at Massangano. Journal of African History 8: 133-156.
Nicholls, C. H. (1971). The Swahili Coast: Politics, Diplomacy, and Trade on the East African Littoral, 1798–1856, George Allen and Unwin Limited, New York.
Nurse, D., and Spear, T. (1985). The Swahili, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
Nwulia, D. E. (1975). Britain and Slavery in East African, Three Continents Press, Washington, DC.
Obst, E. (1912). Von Mkalama ins Land der Wakindiga. Mitteilungen der Geographischen Gesellschaft in Hamburg 26: 1-45.
Ogot, B. A., Falola, T., and Atieno-Odhiambo, E. S. (2002). The Challenges of History and Leadership in Africa: The Essays of Bethwell Allan Ogot, Classic authors and texts on Africa, Africa World Press, Trenton, NJ.
Oka, R. C., Kusimba, C. M., and Thorbahn, P. F. (in press). Gujarati Cotton and East African Ivory: The Coast-Hinterland interactions from the Indian Ocean perspective. In Kusimba, C. M. (ed.), Ecology, Economy and Culture: Human Interactions in the Tsavo Region, Southeastern Kenya, Fieldiana Anthropology Series, Field Museum Press, Chicago.
Oliver, R. A., and Fage, J. D. (1975). The African Iron Age, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Orser, C. E., Jr. (1990). Archaeological approaches to New World plantation slavery. Archaeological Method and Theory 2: 111-154.
Orser, C. E., Jr. (1994). The archaeology of African-American slave religion in the antebellum South. Cambridge Archaeological Journal. 4: 33-45.
Orser, C. E., Jr. (1996). Images of the Recent Past: Readings in Historical Archaeology, Altamira, Walnut Creek, CA.
Orser, C. E., and Funari, P. P. A. (2001). Archaeology and slave resistance and rebellion. World Archaeology 33: 61-72.
Pearson, M. N. (1998). Port Cities and Intruders: The Swahili Coast, India and Portugal in the Early Modern Era. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Perham, M. (1979). East African Journey: Kenya and Tanganyika 1929–30, Faber and Faber, London.
Pouwels, R. L. (2000). The East African Coast, c. 780–1900 C.E. In Levitzion, N., and Pouwels, R. L. (ed.), The History of Islam in Africa, Ohio University Press, Athens, pp. 251-272.
Prakash, O. (1998). European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-Colonial India, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Price, R. (1979). Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Ringrose, D. R. (2001). Expansion and Global Interaction, 1200–1700, Longman, New York.
Robertson, C. (1997). Gender and trade relations in central Kenya in the late Nineteenth century. International Journal of African Historical Studies 30: 23-47.
Robertson, C., and Klein, M. A. (1983). Women and Slavery in Africa, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison.
Rodney, W. (1969). Upper Guinea and the significance of the origins of Africans enslaved in the New World. The Journal of Negro History 54(4): 220-244.
Rodney, W. (1971). How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Tanzania Publishing House, Dar es Salaam.
Ross, R. (1983). Cape of Torments Slavery and Resistance in South Africa, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
Schmidt, P. (1978). Historical Archaeology: A Structural Approach in an African Culture, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT.
Schmidt, P. (1983). Cultural meaning and myth in African history. International Journal of Oral History 4: 165-183.
Schmidt, P. (1990). Oral traditions, archaeology and history: A short reflective history. In Robertshaw, P. (ed.), A History of African Archaeology, James Currey, London, pp 252-270.
Schmidt, P. R. (1995). Using archaeology to remake history in Africa. In Schmidt, P. R., and Patterson, T. C. (eds.), Making Alternative Histories: The Practice of Archaeology and History in Nonwestern Settings, School for American Research Press, Santa Fe, NM, pp. 119-147.
Schrire, C. (1995). Digging Through Darkness, University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville.
Schweinfurth, G. (1874). The Heart of Africa: Three Year's Travels and Adventures in the Unexplored Region of Central Africa From 1868 to 1871, 2 vols, Harper and Collins, New York.
Scully, R. T. (1969). Fort Sites of East Bukusu, Kenya. Azania 4: 105-114.
Scully, R. T. (1979). Nineteenth century settlement sites and related oral traditions from the Bungoma area, western Kenya. Azania 14: 81-95.
Sealy, J. C., Armstrong, R., and Schrire, C. (1995). Beyond lifetime averages: Tracing life histories through isotopic analysis of different calcified tissues from archaeological human skeletons. Antiquity 69: 290-300.
Sealy, J. C., Morris, A., Armstrong, R., Markell, A., and Schrire, C. (1993). An historic skeleton from the slave lodge at Vergelegen. South African Archaeological Society Goodwin Series 7: 84-91.
Shell, R. C. H. (1994). Children of Bondage: A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652–1838, Wesleyan University Press, Hanover, NH.
Sheriff, A. M. H. (1987). Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar: Integration of an East African Commercial Empire into the World Economy, 1770–1873, Ohio University Press, Athens.
Singleton, T. A. (1985). The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life, Academic Press, New York.
Singleton, T. A. (1995). The archaeology of slavery in North America. Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 119-140.
Singleton, T. A. (1999). “I, Too, Am America”: Archaeological Studies of African American Life, University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville.
Singleton, T. A. (2001). Slavery and spatial dialectics on Cuban coffee plantations. World Archaeology 33: 98-114.
Soper, R. (1965). Notes on a Visit to the Taita Hills. Unpublished Manuscript, British Institute in Eastern Africa, Nairobi, Kenya.
Spear, T. (1978). The Kaya Complex: A History of the Mijikenda Peoples of the Kenya Coast to 1900, Kenya Literature Bureau, Nairobi.
Spear, T. (1981). Kenya's Past, Kenya Literature Bureau, Nairobi.
Stahl, A. B. (1999). The archaeology of global encounters viewed from Banda, Ghana. African Archaeological Review 16: 5-81.
Stahl, A. B. (2001). Making History in Banda: Anthropological Visions of Africa's Past, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Stahl, A. B. (2002). Colonial entanglements and the practice of taste: An alternative to logocentric approaches. American Anthropologist 104(3): 827-845.
Stigand, C. H. (1913). The Land of Zinj: Being an Account of the British East Africa, Its Ancient History and Present Inhabitants, Constable, London.
Stiles, D. (1980). Archaeological and ethnographic studies of pastoral groups of Northern Kenya. Nyame Akuma 17: 20-24.
Stiles, D. (1981). Hunters of the northern East African coast: origins and historical processes. Africa 51: 848-862.
Stiles, D. (1982). A history of hunting peoples on the northern East African coast. Paideuma 28: 165-174.
Stine, L. F., Cabal, M. A., and Grover, M. D. (1996). Blue beads as African-American symbols. Historical Archaeology 30: 49-75.
Strayer, R. (1971). The Church Missionary Society in Eastern and Central Kenya, 1875–1935: A Mission Community in a Colonial Society, PhD dissertation, University Microfilm, Ann Arbor.
Sutton, J. E. G. (1965). Sirikwa holes, stone houses and their makers in the western highlands of Kenya. Man 65: 101.
Sutton, J. E. G. (1998a). Engaruka: An irrigation agricultural community in northern Tanzania before the Maasai. Azania 33: 1-37.
Sutton, J. E. G. (1998b). Hyrax hill and the later archaeology of the Central Rift valley of Kenya. Azania 33: 73-112.
Thomson, J. (1885). Through Masailand, 2 Vols, Sampson, Low and Marston, London.
Thorbahn, P. F. (1979). Precolonial Ivory Trade of East Africa: Reconstruction of a Human-Elephant Ecosystem, PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Thornton, J. (1992). Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic world, 1400–1680,. University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Vansina, J. (1965). Oral Tradition: A Study of Historical Methodology, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
Vansina, J. (1990). Oral Tradition as History, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison.
Wakefield, T. (1870). Routes of native caravans from the coast to the interior of East Africa. Journal of the Royal Geographical Society. 40: 303-338.
Wandibba, B. J. S. (1972). The Bukusu forts. Unpublished BA thesis, University of Nairobi, Kenya.
Watts, S. (1997). Epidemics and History: Disease, Power, and Imperialism, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Weatherby, J. M. (1967). Nineteenth century wars in Western Kenya. Azania 3: 133-144.
Webster, J. (1999). Resisting traditions: Ceramics, identify, and consumer choice in the Outer Hebrides from 1800 to the present. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 3: 53-73.
Wilkie, L. A. (1995). Magic and empowerment on the plantation: An archaeological consideration of African-American world view. Southeastern Archaeology 14: 136-148.
Wilks (1975). Asante in the Nineteenth Century. The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Wray, J. A. (1912). Kenya: Our Newest Colony; Reminiscences, Marshall Brothers, London.
Ylvisaker, M. (1982). The ivory trade in the Lamu area. Paideuma 28: 221-231.
Young, A. L. (1996). Archaeological evidence of African styled ritual and healing practices in the Upland South. Tennessee Archaeologists, 21: 139-155.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kusimba, C.M. Archaeology of Slavery in East Africa. African Archaeological Review 21, 59–88 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:AARR.0000030785.72144.4a
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:AARR.0000030785.72144.4a