Abstract
This chapter introduces the volume’s second case study. Through an assessment of the lexical reconstructions from published historical linguistic analyses, this chapter reexamines earlier arguments about the emergence of feasting on the eastern African, Swahili coast after AD 1000. The finding of a collection of word innovations about discussions, disparagement, and power that predate this period, indicates a set of social practices that emerged during the last quarter of the first millennium; these include the establishment of social distinction through competition and verbal jousting. The resonance of these practices with later evidence of feasting forces a reconsideration of ceramic evidence from the first millennium AD. Based on this analysis, a longer biography of practice of feasting is posited, extending from the first to second millennium.
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- 1.
I use an ethnographic model/analogy derived from Dietler’s (2001) overview of feasting modes and draw on nineteenth-century Swahili historiography to help think about earlier periods on the coast. While familiar to archaeologists, this analogic strategy might be problematic for historians who could (rightly) point out that those instances of nineteenth-century feasting described by Glassman were related to a very particular historical moment. Rather than reading back the ethnographic or recent historical record, I tack between models (Wylie 1989), iterations, and the data to construct my arguments.
- 2.
The Coastal Ceramics Project examined primarily rim and body sherds from 8 sites, analyzing over 2000 sherds. The frequencies included here on vessel shape and type are from counts of rim sherds (see Methodology section, Fleisher and Wynne-Jones 2011:257–259). Sherds were mended where possible, to reduce redundancies from a single vessel. There are, however, many limitations to this data, since it was excavated by at least six different researchers, each of whom applied criteria on what material to curate.
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de Luna, K.M., Fleisher, J.B. (2019). When Did Feasting Emerge on the Eastern African Coast? New Perspectives from Historical Linguistics and Archaeology. In: Speaking with Substance. SpringerBriefs in Archaeology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91036-9_4
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