The authors in this book argue for a new future for archaeology and a new world in which archaeology is practised. Their goal is to raise the consciousness of their peers through a variety of case studies that speak directly to their own experiences and self-reflection. They have set themselves the task of bringing the field to a new place in its history and growth, collectively making these arguments forcefully yet respectfully, letting their deeply held convictions take voice. Working in postcolonial settings is enlightening and vitalizing, bringing each of us to a crossroads where theory and practice compel us to call for an end to orthodoxy, for an end to prehistory. Common life experiences have resulted in multiple interlocking threads in the arguments made. For Rae Gould and Joseph Aguilar, their views represent how they have chosen to address the issues of prehistory and colonialism from within the academy rather than from within their native communities Their Native American voices share experiences and knowledge that leave no ambiguities about the importance of ending prehistory. Others such as Hantman, Mrozowski, Preucel, Schmidt, and Walz come to their positions as a result of working collaboratively with indigenous populations. For them, the end of prehistory means an end to a barrier that has been both an embarrassment and impediment to their relationships with friends and colleagues with whom they live and work.
Many authors are concerned about the welfare and well-being of communities labelled as prehistoric and thus they are also hopeful that an open dialogue about these issues will result in a better future. This commitment does not compromise the rigour of anyone’s work. Indeed we believe the opposite is true—that the end of prehistory will open new avenues of understanding for history-making in the manner articulated
By Walz about the significance of snake stories in Tanzania. At a different level of engagement, we see that the reflexivity outlined by Joyce and Sheptak emerged from a collaboration redesigned to transcend the prehistory/history divide once it became apparent their research showed that segmentations of the past created a sort of temporal netherworld. Once the problem was exposed, Joyce and Sheptak saw it was related to the way Western intellectuals divide the past into segments that ignore indigenous temporalities and grossly amplify—in myriad ways in the Mesoamerican setting—the artificiality of the dichotomy between history and prehistory.
The issues surrounding time and space prove particularly instructive because in East Africa, India, and North America there is a clear connection between Western perceptions of time that hinge on notions of progress, development, and improvement, something that Sassaman (2010) captures poignantly when he identifies prehistory as the primitive baseline from which we assess our own progress. In many instances concepts such as prehistory were applied to those spaces that were not perceived as having been entangled with European, Asian, or Islamic colonial societies. Those residing outside this sphere found themselves relegated to prehistory despite strong archaeological evidence to the contrary. Another point of commonality was the discussion about the role of history in sites and presencing the past, in particular by Aguilar and Preucel, Hantman, Lane, and Walz. That people actively know their history and seek to both celebrate and maintain it—often at the behest of present ancestors—tells us more about how Western archaeologists need to revise their preconceived notions of the past.
To pull the various threads of this volume together we have chosen what we hope is a novel approach. We first provide a brief overview of key issues—the themes having been discussed in the introduction—that emerge and the future they portend. More challenging perhaps is to find a mechanism that anticipates what we expect will be a defence of prehistory as foundational to archaeology. We think it useful to pose questions that readers might themselves fashion from the reading of this volume and then to answer them using the principles espoused. This approach will provide a concise picture of the reasoning behind the future we see as essential for archaeology’s continued growth and maturation.
We do not believe it is constructive to hold on to a tradition whose genesis lies in a colonial past that continues to haunt the present, that continues to erase and silence histories that are essential parts of people’s identities. As Julius Nyerere, the first President of Tanzania commonly reminded his fellow citizens, a people with no past have no future. He perhaps understood this principle better than most archaeologists, many of whom still wrap themselves in tropes of colonialism that belie deep commitments to the past they study.
Question 1: How does recent writing on ‘deep history’ particularly the popular new book, Deep History by Shryock and Smail, relate to this volume?
The recent attempt by ten historians, primatologists, anthropologists, and archaeologists to write a grand narrative of human history published as Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present (Shryock and Smail 2011; also see Hunt 2008; Smail 2008) is important and in many ways complementary to this volume. An important thesis is that prehistory as a category no longer has a place, that it interrupts the flow of a grand narrative by segmenting the past. We applaud this emphasis and while it complements our mission, the structure and thematic focus of Deep History depart significantly from what we emphasize in this volume. Deep History is more concerned with using a conventional narrative form that has grown into the most popular form of historical writing rather than addressing the liabilities that the prehistory trope has generated among non-Western peoples and those enveloped by the West. Using this approach, the multi-authored volume traces out the development of humankind through material objects, fossil remains, and other artefacts of the past. This is a much-needed corrective to the overwhelming emphasis on the literate period in history writing and teaching today.
For the most part the authors succeed in this attempt, bringing to the fore key issues in global development but overlooking some of the most important benchmarks over the last 10,000 years—the great civilizations and the growth of urbanism (see Renfrew 2012). Perhaps these great leaps forward in human history are ignored because the authors feel that they are well covered elsewhere in the literature or that their thick histories would introduce an unnecessarily complicated addition to the narrative. Whatever the reasons for the omissions, we are left with an incomplete story, a narrative that silences the historical period while drawing almost exclusively on deep time phenomena. This leads to a treatment where deep time is partitioned from history—the inverse of prehistory being partitioned from history. Ironically, the same paradigmatic divisions that we have discussed in this volume are at work in the treatments in Deep History. There is a gratifying focus in Deep History on kinship, with the argument that the web of kinship provides a map of historical relationships that can be traced into deep time history. Curiously this emphasis is divorced from a consideration of ancestors, who are the continuous embodiment of kinship—those who keep social memories alive and active in the lives of those who find themselves now outside of prehistory. Our volume proffers an alternative perspective on these issues, one that links these forms of practice to the material record.
Another distinct difference between the two approaches is the failure in Deep History to grapple with the relationship of oral and literary histories. As anthropologists we readily acknowledge that this is difficult territory to negotiate. Nonetheless, it constitutes one of the most prominent dichotomous treatments of history in modernity. The relationship is fraught with misunderstandings and poorly informed scholarship, all of which serve to remind us that we fail to remember the lessons handed down through generations about the history of Gilgamesh, the ancient king of the Sumerian capital of Uruk. For centuries the history of this king was held in oral epic poetry until it was transcribed into literary form, obviating any further need to maintain the oral testimonies and launching the validation of the written word over expert oral testimonies, a liability that remains with us until today.
It is not our intention to write a grand narrative. We seek to show how difficult such an undertaking is within archaeological practice that amplifies the segments in history-making, rupturing attempts at deep time narratives. Such segmentation continues to interrupt attempts to write environmental histories, settlement histories, social histories, and a wide variety of other histories—each contained within its own circumscribed intellectual domain. While Deep History opens new vistas, it reaches mostly historians and perhaps general anthropologists sympathetic to the idea of grand developmental narratives. Until such time that archaeologists come to realize how current practices deny other histories and how they prevent deep time histories, then significant contributions to deep histories will be slow to develop.
Question 2: Many archaeologists engaged in prehistoric research do not interact with indigenous or local communities. It is commonly said by prehistorians that ‘we deal with dead people and do not have to worry about the living’. Given this disposition, what advantage does a collaborative approach have for prehistorians?
We acknowledge that our proposals for collaborative approaches are not likely to satisfy all prehistorians. Yet it is equally important to take into consideration how local people use ancient places and the materiality of their past to construct their identities and meaning on the landscapes that they occupy. This does not mean that local households and communities—be they located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a Yorkshire village, or the coast of Kenya—must be descendants of those whose histories are embedded in ancient places. Descendant communities are obviously ideal places to make deep time connections, but so too are communities with no deep historical ties to ancient places. Like the descendant communities, they also assess, incorporate, and rework the histories of places in ways that we need to understand better. They actively use past materialities to fabricate new and different histories that satisfy deeply held beliefs about their relationships to objects, other communities, and landscapes. This is an integral part of building a deep time narrative of place and meaning.
Today archaeologists working in most parts of the world find themselves entangled with indigenous or local populations (what we call native-born peoples to avoid confusion with most people of Africa who do not consider themselves indigenous but certainly local), many of which have long been ignored or imagined no longer to exist. This history of archaeology may say more to challenge the concept of prehistory than any other point made here. The perception that indigenous peoples were heading towards eventual extinction, combined with deeply held beliefs about scientific objectivity, has resulted in an archaeology that has often distanced itself from the very people about whom we so profoundly attest to care. We need to remember Trigger’s (1980) cautions about how detached social science tends to ignore how our research relates to the interests of people whose history we study. Kehoe (this volume) even more poignantly sets out why our genealogy in prehistory puts so little value on indigenous knowledge.
The deep connection between anthropology, archaeology, and colonialism has been scrutinized under the cold hard light of critical theory and exposed as insupportable. In its place has emerged a more collaborative approach in which all forms of knowledge are accessed equally. False dichotomies between written forms of history and those communicated orally or through myth are no longer tenable. Schmidt and Walz describe in each of their contributions encounters that resulted in fundamental changes in the way they went about their work. Gould represents yet another perspective, that of the indigenous scholar, who knows firsthand the feeling of having one’s history misappropriated and distorted by the agents of science and government. In her case the choice was not to heap disdain on the ignorant but rather to engage the academy to build new and pragmatic perspectives. So too must the academy embrace new knowledge and perspectives that come from such engagement. This is the core meaning of collaborative research, respect, and dialogue (see Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2008; Kuwanwisiwma 2008; Nicholas 2010; Schmidt 1983, 2010a; Silliman 2008). With dialogue comes opportunity to expand the horizons of our knowledge and the histories that we craft as the chapters by Aguilar and Preucel, Kehoe,
Hantman, Lane, Lightfoot, Mrozowski, Schmidt, and Walz all attest. Hantman and Walz both describe how collaboration brought them to new understandings. Walz gained a new appreciation of how he was perceived by those with whom he sought to collaborate, profoundly affecting everything he did. These collaborative experiences created new knowledge that overturned long-held orthodoxies.
The negative case for collaborative research has recently been argued (see McGhee 2008, 2010) and response offered (Colwell-Chanthaphonh etal. 2010; Silliman 2010) and we need not engage that debate here. Clearly, we do not accept the argument put forward by McGhee (2008) that a concern for the political struggles of indigenous or disenfranchised groups such as those discussed by Gould, Kehoe, and Rivzi invalidates such research or makes it any less rigorous—a reification of the illusion that scientific rigour must avoid insights from human interaction. Our valorization of care for ancestors and acknowledgement that ancestors play an active and vital role in the maintenance and reconfigurations of history declares our determination to learn from all processes of historymaking. This is good science—taking all standpoints into account when we assess an array of evidence, a perspective that applies to all who practise archaeology including prehistorians. We feel that a critical examination of the connection between past and present political injustices and the production of histories that validate the existence of such injustices is precisely the kind of research archaeologists should engage in, whatever their identities and regardless of beliefs about the dangers of community engagement.
Question 3: Why in an era of postcolonial study is it necessary to dwell on prehistory?
Postcolonial treatments of archaeology are clearly in their infancy, with some notable exceptions that reach back nearly two decades (e. g., Liebmann and Rizvi 2008; Lydon and Rizvi 2010; Schmidt 2009a, 2009b; Schmidt and Patterson 1995b). These contributions address issues pertaining to subalterns, hybridity, essentialized histories, and a host of other topics related to colonialism. One of the complaints aimed at such critiques is that the published scholarship has had relatively little impact on the well-being of collaborating groups—Tanzanians, South Africans, Indians, Navaho, or Pomo—and how they think about and relate to their histories. Studies using material evidence from deep time have shown a significant capacity to overturn essentialized histories and remake histories free from the prehistory trope and its segmenting colonial baggage (see Schmidt 2009a, 2009b). As important as such findings may be, they rarely touch and improve the lives of those who helped keep, write, and narrate these histories. This is an important concern and it isolates a real need in contemporary archaeology—the need to translate such findings so they are comprehensible to local people. Without such efforts we consign our academic studies to a trickle-down effect that sadly resembles Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economics—there is a lot of discourse at the top but very little filters down to the people whose histories we study. This matters a lot to us as archaeologists and anthropologists because it touches directly on issues of respect: How can we pursue our work with respect and dignity and not extend the same to those with whom we work? How is it possible to not give back when people have extended the hand of assistance and hospitality to strangers? We feel that the future of archaeology revolves around a set of principles, explored by the authors in this book, that accord all peoples the right to a past (Schmidt 1996). As long as the use of prehistory continues, we will be confronted with the denial of this right—a matter at the core of postcolonial concerns.
Question 4: Why do time and space issues arise in this discussion and why are they important? How does place relate to space?
The relationship between time and space vis-a-vis prehistory requires an explicit recognition that the production of history is a subjective, fundamentally political exercise that requires a better understanding of temporality and historical entanglements. The French social theorist Henri Lefebvre (1993) noted that while most social science focuses on history, few lavish such attention on space. As several of the chapters in this volume attest, it is impossible to separate time from space. In the instances discussed by Pawlowicz and LaViolette, and Walz, time and space are united in one trope—primitive, prehistoric landscapes (e. g., the nyika, the Kalahari, and other remote spaces such as the Gobi, the Amazon), a conflation of time and space that employs colonial perceptions of particular groups living in prehistory, the timeless past (also see Schmidt and Walz 2007a). This is a critical point because it brings our focus to bear on one of the most significant issues we have with the notion of prehistory. It is so entangled with colonialism that it continues to prejudice behaviour today. Witness how the Swahili fishermen of the remote northern coast of Kenya are pejorative objects of derision among their fellow Kenyans today—a colonial legacy that refuses to go away.
The connection made between colonialist tropes of backwardness, timelessness, and the political disenfranchisement discussed by Gould, Rivzi, Schmidt, and Walz serve as a reminder that prehistory is a potent political concept, not the apolitical concept that academics may wish. Rivzi highlights the trials of indigenous groups in India that remain the subject of governmental injustice in large measure because of their association with a colonialist notion of a prehistoric past— backward, primitive people living in spatially remote regions. Gould and Mrozowski both discuss how notions of timelessness have been linked to the Massachusetts and Connecticut Nipmuc, denied federal recognition in part because of long-standing assumptions concerning the extinction of an otherwise vibrant people (see also Den Ouden 2005). Seeking the timeless authentic past as a criterion for federal recognition affirms the legitimacy of prehistory as an ideal, enduring type that, when found not to be present, denies recognition of many different pasts, with their varied irruptions in the present. The spatial implications play out as a consistent loss of property (space) because of the assumption that Native American land was seen as prehistoric and therefore in need of improvement.
The collapse of time and space distinctions has other important lessons for archaeologists interested in understanding the importance often attached to place, which takes on an altogether different sense of meaning from space because of the lives lived, rituals performed, and ancestors venerated in a place (Basso 1996; Casey 1996; Feld and Basso 1996). Aguilar and Preucel, Hantman, Walz, and Lane all present studies in which the history and meanings embedded in specific places result in their being held in special regard by indigenous groups, sometimes over centuries if not millennia (see Schmidt 2006). For Hantman this is the importance of history in sites, a consistent theme throughout many of the chapters in this book—what Aguilar and Preucel identify as a place-based approach to archaeology rather than one that is strictly chronological.
Two points warrant further comment. First is the notion that history and place, time and space are so entangled that it is imperative that archaeologists incorporate when appropriate a place-based approach into their research. The case study shared by Aguilar and Preucel illustrates how places gain importance by virtue of the potency of the events and ancestors associated with them, sometimes over centuries. Archaeologists risk setting themselves apart from both ancient and contemporary groups whose pasts they pursue by dividing those pasts into histories and prehistories. We do not want to miss an opportunity to better understand how history is fabricated and remade within places of meaning, how histories are embedded and reworked within places such as households; for example, at Qatalhoyuk, Hodder (2012) assesses the diminishment of history production by how houses were no longer built on top of each other and how fewer bull’s heads were installed—illustrations of fewer irruptions of the past occurring over time within place.
Question 5: The concept of entanglement with different temporalities is used throughout the volume. Why is this pertinent to contemporary archaeology?
Many of the chapters refer to the notion of entanglement, yet they do so in different ways. The classic discussion of entanglement comes from Thomas (1991) who deals primarily with colonial encounters. Some authors explore different dimensions of these encounters and their ramifications. This is certainly true of the chapters by Aguilar and Preucel, Gould, Hantman, Mrozowski, Rivzi, Schmidt, and Walz, but other authors extend this idea by viewing entanglement more broadly. Lane’s and Hantman’s points concerning the presencing of the past speak to the entanglement of history and place. Sometimes the entanglements of places and the events that have shaped their histories recall moments of glory, long-standing tradition, or extreme violence and grief, such as the repeated violent ruptures in eastern Tanzania that elicit snake stories (Walz, this volume). The deep histories of such places are related to the long reach of memory linking the contemporary world to its recent and deeper pasts. Lightfoot’s study of the deep entanglement of the indigenous peoples of California with their environments provides an eloquent example of the potential role of indigenous knowledge in confronting the problems of the contemporary world. Lightfoot cautions that there is little chance of learning from these practices if archaeologists interested in the recent past artificially truncate their studies, cutting themselves off from deep time knowledge particularly held as oral traditions. There is yet another important variety of entanglement—the use of material remains from deep time excavations to challenge and overturn the representations that dominate the meta-histories of various peoples and regions (see Schmidt 2006 and Schmidt and Walz 2007a for multiple examples). Such uses of archaeological evidence directly engage deep time materials with historical representations that have grown up about the prehistoric past both in Europe and in colonial settings.
Another issue that informs entanglements of temporality pertains to methods used by archaeologists. The temporal abstractions examined by Joyce and Sheptak in Mesoamerica have traditionally guided the problems researched. Overlapping and fuzzy temporal boundaries serve as an impediment for archaeologists who seek to understand how one period relates to another and how connections between recent and deep time may be recognized beyond the typological classifications that fence off such linkages.
Question 6: Oral traditions are mentioned in many chapters as central to understanding how other, non-Western cultures construct their histories. When oral traditions are widely felt to have limited usefulness, why are they emphasized?
There is a deep-seated suspicion in the Western mind over histories that are not held in literate form (see Finnegan 1970 and Vansina 1985 for overviews). This reflects the history of our Western experience, not the history of other peoples. Many careful studies of oral traditions have been conducted in Africa (see Pawlowicz and LaViolette, Schmidt, Walz, this volume) and increasingly in North America (see Aguilar and Preucel, Gould, Hantman, Lightfoot, this volume), with many Native American archaeologists (Echo-Hawk 2000; Googoo et al. 2008; Watkins 2000, 2005) contributing to their growing vitality in deep time studies. Many successful studies, particularly from Africa (see Schmidt 1983 and 2006 for overview of Africa), are not referenced by the negative broadsides mounted by Mason (2000, 2008) and McGhee (2010); they remain marginalized in a literature dominated by North American examples precisely because they provide evidence of how useful and important oral traditions are for understanding the irruptions that arise from the past to interpenetrate daily lives. Whether the oral traditions are highly metaphorical, such as the snake stories ofnortheast Tanzania that identify moments of traumatic change and disaster, or are more faithful to knowledge about technology or environmental management, they make significant contributions to how archaeologists transcend the divide between history and prehistory imposed by archaeological tradition.
Question 7: How does the concept of liminality contribute to a different approach in making histories?
Liminality is a concept introduced by van Gennep (1977 [1909]) and later refined by Victor Turner (1967) to understand the middle passage through which ritual actors pass. A liminal state refers to a condition of being betwixt and between—neither here nor there. In ritual settings of transformation, liminality reduces polar opposites and collapses dichotomies such as male and female, senior and junior, powerful and powerless—leading to the inversion of hierarchies and the disturbance of taken-for-granted structures and ways of thinking (see Schmidt 1997 for examples of liminal states during iron smelting in Tanzania). Conditions of liminality also carry—because they are transitional—notions of danger, fluidity, and transformation. Increasingly social scientists are applying the idea as a methodology that overcomes disciplinary boundaries to evaluate comparisons across temporal divisions such as history and prehistory (see Horvath 2009; Thomassen 2009).
We use liminality as a bridge, a means of moving to and fro between deep time and the present without concern for divisions but retaining a sensitivity to chronological arrangements when they are pertinent to tracing change. Engaging pasts as human actors is a different dimension of human entanglement than Hodder (2012) means when he discusses human-thing relationships in the past. The human-thing relationships of our liminal method consist of our lived experience and our historymaking as archaeologists in the present and things (artefacts, texts, oral testimonies, etc.) that make up the material culture and evidence for past societies. This fluidity of movement and comparison offers us a way to make histories free from the prejudices and constraints that have informed past practices.
Question 8: Is there is a difference in the way the authors of this book approach their work compared to other archaeologists?
Perhaps the first distinction to be drawn is that we accept the idea that all histories are produced to fit the needs of their settings, be they local, professional, institutional, or familial. This is not a value-free endeavour. Making histories—like the ancient clay fabricators of Qatalhoyuk (Hodder 2012) fashioning new clay shrines, figurines, and refashioning the rooms in which remade skulls were venerated and stored—engages us in taking bits and pieces of the distant past and refashioning them with new knowledge from the present. History-making engages the things of the past with the ideas of the present, a phenomenon that we see expressed in how the Nipmuc refashioned their world by using Christian churches as the focal point of ritual cycles. When we fashion history without regard for temporal boundaries but with a keen sense of sociohistorical process, then we must also accept the political characteristics of histories (Schmidt and Patterson 1995b) and the reasons why they are at times purposely forgotten or erased (Connerton 2008; Schmidt 2010a; Trouillot 1995). The process of forgetting may involve institutionalized forgetting in which attempts are actively made to omit or erase historical events, an occurrence Connerton (2008: 60-1) calls ‘repressive erasure’, and that often involves state power to repress the memory of historical ruptures. The next level of silencing histories pertains to histories that are horrific, what he calls ‘humiliated silence’ (Connerton 2008: 67-8), such as the bombing of German cities in the Second World War that has been institutionally silenced by historians of that war.
Connerton’s concept of repressive erasure is particularly germane to the arguments made in this book because it applies to attempts by scholars to order their findings in ways that contribute to narratives of Western ascendency (Connerton 2008: 60-1). He argues that scholars of
Western art tend to present it in museums in a manner that supports a narrative of Western superiority, with art of other parts of the world often not as accessible and rarely on display. This editing out of other world art presents some parts of history to be celebrated while others are omitted. This purposeful selectivity is what archaeologists have done by labelling the history of non-Western peoples as prehistory.
We believe the concept of prehistory continues to play a similar role in the production of histories today by denying the pasts of indigenous peoples, among others, and purposely truncating links to modernity. Histories produced from such a perspective within archaeology ultimately result in the making of pasts where cultural practices arising from ethnogenesis are not examined because barriers between history and prehistory prevent the connections required for ethnogenesis to be explored fully. Finally, prehistory carries such heavy colonial baggage that it continues to represent an impediment to collaborations leading to new forms of history production that incorporate a variety of forms of knowledge. If one form of knowledge is systematically and/or institutionally privileged over another, the result may be the erasure of history, either purposeful or inadvertent.
At the outset of our call for an end to prehistory we cautioned that we respect those who identify themselves as prehistorians. The goal of the volume has been to accelerate a process already begun with those who have questioned the viability of the dichotomies between history and prehistory that have been enshrined in the practice of archaeology. We believe these case studies and the measured rhetoric supported by the examples will result in an archaeology better positioned to deal with the economic and political complexities of the world in which we live. Part of this involves leaving past practices behind and coming to new ways of conceiving what we do. The scholarship presented in this volume communicates the highest commitment to our aspirations for archaeology as a field of study—not significantly different in its commitment to an enhanced social well-being than the scholarship of ancestors such as Childe and Gertrude Caton-Thompson. The end of prehistory will not silence the rich and important prehistories written over the past 150 years. Those contributions will remain as critical benchmarks against which we will measure change towards more inclusive histories in the future. Several studies by North American archaeologists (Pauketat 2001, 2010; Sassaman 2010) seeking to historicize what was once prehistory are important departures identifying such change.
Though many anthropologists have worked hard to reconfigure the goals and purpose of anthropology though a postcolonial critique, we do not imagine that an end to prehistory will reverse the impacts of colonialism that continue to generate misunderstandings and conflict. What we do hope for are new avenues for more productive collaboration with indigenous peoples and communities of native-born peoples by making histories without the divisions that have hindered understandings of the connections between the socio-historical processes of deep time and the recent past and present.
The Chronicles of Mikindani, Sudi, and Lindi
Origin of Mikindani
There was a Makonde man, named Katindi, and it was he who built it. He said this town is Mukinda. But then the Arabs arrived and said: this town’s name is Mikindani, since you are inside.
Then after five years, the Arabs and that Makonde Katindi got into a conflict and they went to Unguja. When they arrived at Sultan Barghash’s place, he reconciled them, and the Makonde people returned.
Then after many days passed, the Makua came making war, and the local people couldn’t fight them off, so they sought help from Sultan Barghash, who sent his soldiers and his Akidas [to defeat the Makua].
Then it was the time of the slave and copal trades. There was a lot of hunger, and the Makonde would sell one another to get food.
The Sultan got news of this and he sent his secretary to sell rice and clothing, and then the Mabanyani [Muslim Indians] went to do business and take taxes. At that time there were no judges apart from Sultan Barghash’s Akida. Then the Akida took control of the town of Mikindani. It was then that everyone lost their ignorance, and learned how to do business. It was slaves (watumwa) and gentlemen (waungwana).
After forty-three years, many white men came in their man-of-war ships. The English came. Then after five years the Germans came to arrange customs duties. The Arabs stayed for a few days and then left. But it hadn’t been two years when they came back and started a war; it has been a German town since then.
And in the past there were no steamships (merikebu), but only the dhows and boats Arabs brought to seize (lit. steal) slaves, and their dhows were called bendeni. They were called men of the Arabian Peninsula (wamanga), those who left their place and brought dates to the shore to trade. And people gave them men to help them at their work for ten days or more. Next they got accustomed to the place, then they stole the slaves of the noble people (waungwana), loaded them on board their dhows, left for home, and made a hefty profit. This is the story as I know it.
1 These chronicles are translated by Matthew Pawlowicz with editorial assistance from Michael Wairungu from the Swahili text found in Prosa und Poesie der Suaheli (Velten 1907). The chronicle of Mikindani can be found on pages 273-8, the chronicle of Sudi on pages 279-84, and the chronicle of Lindi on pages 265-72. The version of Velten’s text used here has been made available online by Google Books.
And in the present, when the Germans came they built up Mikindani a great deal. They built everything: very nice buildings, and that drew very many people from every tribe: Indians, Arabs, Swahili, and Mabanyani. The Indians and Mabanyani are businessmen. They take many goods upcountry, to buy rubber, sesame, copal, sorghum, millet, and other commodities. They make huge profits from their business. And the people are very happy to sell their goods (lit. possessions) and to live happily alongside their chiefs and rich men. And every day the number of rich men increases as more come. And upcountry people want to come to the coast, intending to observe the customs of the city and to stay with the townspeople.
And during this year Matschemba wanted to make war, but a company of soldiers came, so he ran away and went to settle in Rovuma. And now there is no war at Mikindani, Sudi, and Lindi. Everyone is very content, because Matschemba ran away and people do not have to fear Matschemba and his people again. In the past, Matschemba attacked people and took away their wealth. Every day he caused trouble and very bad news, stole people’s wealth and enslaved them. He did not live well with his neighbours. He was a very bad man. If he had no food, he would say, I have no war, better to make war, and when he got food, he’d create problems. Every time German soldiers went to his place, they could not find him. And now we rest easy, because he ran away, and we pray to God that he be found and killed, like Hasan bin Omar of Kilwa Kivinje. He will be found just the same, because the Germans have more strength than any other government. Whenever a wild man (mshenzi) breaks the law, the soldiers come, arrest him, and take him away with his arms bound behind his back.
And now we are very happy, that there is the government of the Germans, which is powerful. Their kindness goes in front and their bad lasts only one day or one hour, these very fierce Germans. And now we are hopeful, we want to live with them for many years and months, in order to learn many things: how to read and write well, their language and customs, to learn everything about them and not be idiots about their culture. Because if the chief is from another land, then every subject wants to learn his language and customs. The Germans are a good people, they can teach their citizens every word and every aspect of their knowledge. We are taught all of this in their schools and we believe it.
We now feel a great deal of mercy, we harvest many vegetables like never before since the foundation of Mikindani. There are also other developments: beautiful buildings, wide and well-constructed roads. These roads are made of gravel and are decorated with chalk. They are watered and worked on every day.
And people have good manners. And every day people of every type, from many countries, migrate here in search of better opportunities that are found in the town of the Germans, who know how to build the town by the light of the government.
Every day they bring different things to add to their cities, and you will always say that every town that you visit is better than the previous one. That’s who they are! Every town is unique. They didn’t build all towns in the same way but they employed diverse designs. This is their custom; they really know how to build good-looking buildings.
And me, I wrote these words. Still a young man, I was told by my elders that Mikindani was initially owned by the Makonde, then by the Arabs, then now by the white men. And I saw the truth, I asked, I was told, I learned, that originally it was our place—then it wasn’t our place. The Germans came, and it wasn’t our place. So whose place? The whole place belongs to the Kaiser’s government.
The Kaiser is known in Africa, but we have yet to see him or hear him. We only hear people say that he is good and his image is enough for us because of his goodness. And God willing, I will see him with my own two eyes, God willing.
My request, Mr Velten, from your goodness, is that he (the governor) call on me for a very few days. If he desires it, I will come and I will tell him other news, other poems, stories of importance, and things about the Swahili, and the way we lived with the Arabs and the Indians. I will not say what I don’t know but I will tell all of what I know.
The Story of Sudi
To begin, the origins of the town of Sudi, in the Mwanya region: An old man, the elder Makonera Mnuzai, built up the region and settled there. Then came Mwenyi Mwanya (lit. ‘owner of Mwanya’), from Shiraz. He came seeking a place to build on and was given permission by the owner Makonera. Then Mwenyi Mwanya turned around and became the Sultan.
And the second land of the [Mwanya] region was Bera. And the elder who built Bera was Tshungubara, with elder Kirungora and elder Mukasika. And the third land of the region, Mto Mkuu (lit. ‘Big River’), [was built] by the elder Shungi. And the fourth land of the region, Shuka, by the elder Makoshi. And the fifth land of the region, Bokhari, by elder Bwana Ponga. And the sixth land of the region, Buu, by elder Mtera, and the seventh land of the region Kisiwa. And the eighth land of the region, Mitashi, by the elder Mtera. After Mitashi— Banakongo, after Banakongo, Wanamombo and another land of the region, Mdumbi. After all these towns, there were towns ruled by Mwenyi Mwanya.
Then the Kuikui came from Mape. Mape is on the wide Jara River approaching to Kisanga. When they came from their home, they found Mwenyi Mwanya ruling these towns. The Kuikui wanted some land to build on. Mwenyi Mwanya gave them a place to build on, called Tandamaru, and they built there.
As fate would have it, the Kuikui fought with Mwenyi Mwanya. So the Kuikui moved to another place, called Sawasawa, and built there. Then they went to another place, called Namgogori, and settled there.
After they built Namgogori, an Arab man came and married a Kuikui woman. She gave birth to Salim bin Abdallah. This Salim bin Abdallah quarrelled with his Kuikui relatives and left [Namgogori]. He went to Mikope, he and his maternal uncles (wajomba). They farmed at Mikope and built a town, which was called Sudi. And the meaning of Sudi is that a man gets many good things or defeats his enemies by good luck (suudi jema; where suudi is a borrowing from Arabic).
And the maternal uncles of Salim bin Abdallah: the first is elder Mfalume Madi, and the second is elder Jusufu bin Mungamadi, and the third the elder Bandari, and the fourth the elder Hamedi, and the fifth the elder Muhunzi. These were the men among the Kuikui who supported Salim bin Abdallah.
Then came Mwenyi Mchewa bin Hasani from his home with the Kuikui, and he built and settled at Sudi. Then Muhamed bin Ahmed came and settled at a place called Namamba in the land of Sudi.
According to their customs at that time, if a man died the heir was the son of his sister. If a man had taken a concubine and had children with her, the children of the concubine became the slaves of the maternal uncles of the one who took the concubine. If a man married a woman, that man paid dowry to the parents of the woman and when she gave birth to children they would be slaves of the maternal uncles of the husband.
The origins of Mdumbi: initially there was an elder named Nababamba, of the Mwera tribe, who built Mdumbi. When he died, he was buried in the cemetery of Mdumbi.
And their Sultan was Mwenyi Mwanya, named Omar bin Mafwera the Shirazi. His minister (wazir) was his younger brother, named Rudumbi bin Mafwera the Shirazi.
They were farmers and they grew rice, maize, vegetables, sesame, sorghum, cowpeas, lentils, millet, bulrush millet, and cassava. After harvesting, they stored some in the granary, which they take and make food with during the year. They also sold a portion of their food for trade goods and silver. Then when they had lots of silver they bought slaves. And they put these slaves in their fields to farm.
Also, their business was the job of hunting elephants. If they obtained the elephants’ tusks, they sold them for silver or trade goods. Then they bought slaves with this silver and put them in their fields to farm.
In their second business, they borrowed money from wealthy merchants, bought trade goods in bulk, and took them to the interior where they traded for elephant tusks and slaves. If they returned from the interior, they repaid the loans to those rich merchants. The owners who get a profit, profit; and the owners who get a loss, lose.
In their third business, they borrowed goods and went to Makonde land in the interior, where they bought gum copal. When they returned, they paid back what they had borrowed to their creditors. For those couldn’t repay, they made losses and switched to other businesses.
When hunger entered the land, people left the towns and went to the coast, where they gathered cowries to use to buy sorghum and millet from rich merchants. Other people went into the bush, climbed up into the bush to overcome their hunger.
According to the customs of their land, if a man committed adultery with another man’s wife and his companions knew about it, the elders of the country called him who had committed adultery and told him: ‘Now this is not permissible until you pay forty reals.’ And when he agrees to pay the forty reals, the woman becomes his property.
Also, their judgement required that if a man killed another man, the murderer was arrested and imprisoned by the Sultan. Then the elders were called and told: ‘Your child has killed another, pay fifty reals blood-debt because your son has shed blood in the land of the Sultan.’ So they took out fifty reals and paid them to the Sultan. Finally they were told: ‘Pay the ransom, give it to him whose child was killed.’ They settle the affair by paying a ransom of at least ten slaves, and the murderer is freed and they agree to make peace.
Also, if a rich merchant came into the land, he at first did not have permission to do business until he paid a customs duty to the Sultan, about forty reals, which he gave to the town elders. This has been the custom from ancient times. However, if the merchant was a native of the town, he didn’t pay anything.
Also, if there was a thief who stole something from another man, he and his relatives lost their freedom and became the slaves of the owner of the stolen thing.
Also, if there was another man who came to the country and acquired a great fortune, and then wanted to leave and return to his home, the Sultan told him: ‘You are not permitted to leave unless we share these riches, because you got them from my land.’
Also, their neighbours were the Makonde. The women of the Makonde put plugs in their upper lips, which they carve from a tree. For example [a plug the size of] a Maria Theresa coin the women put in their upper lip. That was their beauty.
Then those Makonde turned around and made war on us coastal folk. After the Makonde came one man named Matschemba bin Mshakame, a Yao, and he made war on us and the Makonde. The two peoples did not go out on the roads [for fear of him].
Then Said bin Sultan ruled all of the towns of this region. In his goodness Said bin Sultan did not remove Mwenyi Mwanya or the elders of the land.
Then the rubber business emerged. Then the great German Bwana came to rule as our Sultan and a great deal of business came. For instance, there is trade in ebony and other trees whose names I don’t know; I just see men cutting and selling trees.
And the whole land is now at peace and we, as subjects, give thanks for the beautiful deeds of our Sultan the great German Bwana. Praise be to God, the Lord of the whole world. The End.
Story of the Ancient Past of Lindi
Now, the story of the origins and settlement of Lindi and the reason why it is called that name: there was a big hole on the southern side—it was here that the great Bwana Ewerbeck has built a bridge—and that is why this land was called Lindi.
Also, the people who came here to settle at Lindi were Makonde, and their tribe was Ndurera. Their Sultan was named Kitenga. Their occupations were farming millet and rice and hunting wild animals in the forest.
After the [Makonde] came another Sultan, named Mtukura, of the Makua tribe. He originally came from the interior at Ngoji. He came with very many soldiers. In that land (Ngoji), he lived in a town called Moma. In that land there was another Sultan, named Munyangura, who was senior to Mtukura. Then Munyangura and Mtukura quarrelled and Mtukura moved away and came to Lori. Then he moved again, and came to Mazizi. Then he moved again and came to Mampi. Then he moved again and came to the opposite shore at Makama Haji.52
When he arrived here, he lived harmoniously with the inhabitants (lit., owners) of the land. And these natives were of three tribes: first the Matwani, second the Shihimbwa, third the Miliza.
About Sultan Mtukura: his occupation was hunting wild animals in the forest. Then he crossed to leave Makama Haji and came to Lindi where he befriended Sultan Kitenga. When he saw that their friendship had become very strong, Sultan Kitenga revealed his secrets to his friend Sultan Mtukura. When Sultan Mtukura heard his friend’s words he said: ‘There is a great deal of scheming between you and your relatives, nor will it end. Is it not better, my friend, that you sell me your land, and so be able to leave the intrigue behind, you and your relatives?’ Sultan Kitenga agreed and sold his land as Sultan Mtukura asked him to. [Mtukura] brought out his entire fortune and gave it to Sultan Kitenga. The fortune included a female maid-servant, a mortar for grinding snuff one hand-breadth long, eight arm-lengths of unbleached cotton cloth, and the head and liver of a warthog. This was his price. In the past these things could not be obtained here in our land except by Sultans.
Then Sultan Kitenga left, took Sultan Mtukura, and went to hand over his lands. They began by going up the Mtima River. They went to Muhimbure, crawled along to Namdemba, and went until they disembarked at Mutangi. After that Mtukura enjoyed his kingdom until he died.
After him (Mtukura), his nephew, named Sultan Mnara, inherited his throne. He was courageous and capable and very cunning. He fathered thirty-two children. He ruled the coast and the interior of Lindi, and stayed on the throne for a very long time. Then he died and was buried at Mtima.
When he died his nephew inherited. His name was Sultan Mkayahama and he ruled for a very long time. Then the Sultan of the Mwanya region, named Shawaya, came. He passed through Lindi and went into the interior to Ruaha, which was ruled by Sultan Gadu. He married a woman there named Mwana Mkuru binti Gopi. His marriage to this woman was the reason for the disintegration of the people of the Lindi coastline and their falling into the hands of the Arabs.
After Mwana Mkuru was married, she was taken away to the Mwanya region. She conceived by Sultan Shawaya and gave birth to two children, a girl and a boy. The boy was named Sahabu bin Sultan Shawaya and the girl was named Fatuma binti Sultani Shawaya. The girl was married to an Arab man, named Nasiri bin
Salehe, and gave birth to a daughter, named Saida binti Nasiri bin Salehe. This girl was again married to an Arab man, named Isa bin Salim Elbarwani. Then Nasoro bin Isa and Mohamed bin Isa were born [to the couple].
Also, the aforementioned Sahabu bin Sultani Shawaya returned to the Mwanya region. He came to Lindi, which was ruled by Sultan Mkayahama, married, and fathered five children, two boys and three girls.
Later, Nasoro bin Isa and his younger brother Mohamed bin Isa came, having left Zanzibar to come home. They married two daughters of Sahabu bin Sultani Shawaya. One daughter remained, she was married to a coastal man named Mwenyi Alawi bin Mrumu, and gave birth to the mother of Sultan Rashid bin Shababa.
Before Sultan Rashid bin Shababa was born, differences arose between the barbarians (washenzi) of the interior and the barbarians (again, washenzi) of the Lindi coast. Then Nasoro bin Isa consulted his elders and they built a large fort in the Lindi territory. Its traces remain up until the present day.
After building the fort, they left immediately and went to Zanzibar, which was their home. They told Said bin Sultan that, ‘We have built a fort there at Lindi, now we want you to give us authority over the washenzi and all the taxes we collect will be yours.’ He gave them command and they came and entered their fort. They did very bad things: they killed their relatives, they enslaved their relatives, and did whatever else they wanted. Said bin Sultan didn’t know that his subjects bore these offences for five years.
Then God sent hunger to the land, a very great hunger which lasted for seven whole years. And [the famine’s] cause: locusts infested the land and ate the millet, rice, and maize in the fields for those seven years. Not a thing was spared. They left bare ground.
After the famine ended, Nasoro bin Isa died. Mohamed bin Isa survived him, and stayed in power for a long time. Then Mohamed bin Isa died and his nephew Hemedi bin Nasoro bin Isa inherited. At this time Said bin Sultan ruled at Zanzibar.
When Said bin Sultan died, his son Sayyid Majid bin Sultan inherited. He sent soldiers to Lindi and they seized the fort. But the washenzi of the interior would not agree to follow the orders of the government. Instead, there was a war between the interior washenzi and the washenzi of the coast.
After Majid bin Said died, Barghash bin Said ruled for a long time. He seized the towns of the whole coast, then gave them to the Germans. When Sultan Rashid bin Shababa saw these towns given to the Germans, he rose up to reclaim his past sovereignty. In our coastal custom, if there is not a child to serve as heir, the younger brother will inherit, or his son, or a maternal female relative. Because they say that the woman conceives and gives birth, so they say that the child is the woman herself. This is the reason that nephews inherit among coastal people.
Also, the washenzi of the interior and the washenzi of the coast never settled their differences until the Germans came. Now there are very many people here at Lindi. There are Arabs, Swahili from Lamu and Mombasa, Indians, Mabanyani, and coastal people. And each man has his work that he does.
And today here at Lindi there is the German East Africa Company (D. O.A. G = Deutsch Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft). They bring a lot of businessmen. They bring all sorts of goods. Also there is an Arab man named Abedi bin Rashid who takes very many goods into the interior for business. He brings ivory to the German East Africa Company, and rubber, gum copal, and all manner of trade goods to the coast. Again there are other people from Lindi that send goods to Ugoni and receive ivory and rubber. And natives (washenzi) from the interior come to Lindi to do business. The natives (washenzi) of Ugoni bring ivory, the Yao bring ivory, the Makonde bring rubber and gum copal, the Wera bring tobacco and gum copal, the Ngindo bring many goods: sesame, millet, rice, groundnuts, and maize. Each of the members of the community has his job: some grow millet and sesame and rice, others do business, others catch fish, others work on boats, others build dhows, others captain ships and travel about, others are sailors travelling on dhows, others are ironsmiths, others are carpenters, others are labourers building stone buildings, others make charcoal, others quarry stone, others split wood, others cut down trees to build buildings— each man has his job. At present Lindi has a population of thirty thousand people.
Also, there was a Sultan to the interior of Lindi named Matschemba. He was a very bad man. Initially he lived in the interior of Kilwa where he killed very many people. Then he moved and came to the hinterland of Lindi. He brought war to Lindi’s land at a place called Mtere. He killed five people and captured fifty-nine. This war was during the time of Sayyid Barghash.
He also caused a second war. During the time of the Germans, when Bwana Stranzi stayed at Lindi he attacked Ruaha at Abdallah bin Omar’s farm, where he killed two people and captured twelve. Then he caused another war during the time of Bwana Ewerbeck. He came and attacked Mtere a second time, killing four people and capturing forty-seven. And this war was also brought into the [outlying] towns of Lindi, and also the town of Mikindani—a town far away from this region. He wasn’t friendly. He killed, or carried off by force, or enslaved every man whom he saw. And now he has entered into the territory of the Germans where he doesn’t dare kill even his own chickens unless he has permission from the German government.
Also, in the Ugoni interior there was the Sultan Muharore and his captain Songera. He was very powerful. [Matschemba] beat very many people [there] and confiscated their wealth. He once brought war to Msaka, a Sultan of the Yao. He killed him and took all his people.
Then Matschemba brought another war. He killed very many people, and captured very many people. And now a company of German soldiers has gone there, fought him, and defeated him. Now the company changed things around. And there he is, he doesn’t dare slaughter his own chickens unless he gets permission from the German government. He has freed all the captives from Msaka, and Matschemba and the whole area obeys the orders of the German government.
Abdi, K. 2001. Nationalism, Politics, and the Development of Archaeology in Iran. American Journal of Archaeology 105: 51-76.
Abungu, G. and H. Mutoro. 1993. Coast-Interior Settlements and Social Relations in the Kenya Coastal Hinterland. In The Archaeology of Africa: Foods, Metals and Towns, ed. T. Shaw, P. Sinclair, B. Andah, and A. Okpoko, pp. 694-704. New York: Routledge.
Achebe, C. 2007. Dead Man’s Path. In Literature: A Pocket Anthology, ed. R. S. Gwynn, pp. 247-50. New York: Pearson Education.
Adams, J. 2004. Nipmuc Say BIA Got the Facts Wrong, Indian Country. <http://www. indiancountrytoday. com/archive/28175229.html> (accessed 6 October 2008).
Adkins, W. 2009. Comments on the Chickahominy River Survey. Journal of Middle Atlantic Archaeology 25: 141-5.
Adler, M. A. and H. W. Dick, eds. 1999. Picuris Pueblo Through Time: Eight Centuries ofChange at a Northern Rio Grande Pueblo. Dallas: W. P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University.
Agamben, G. 1998. Homo-Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Agoyo, H. 2002. The Holy War. In Archaeologies of the Pueblo Revolt: Identity, Meaning and Renewal in the Pueblo World, ed. R. W. Preucel, pp. xi-xiv. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
-2005. The Tricentennial Year in Pueblo Consciousness. In Po’pay:
Leader of the First American Revolution, ed. J. S. Sando and H. Agoyo, pp. 93-106. Santa Fe: Clear Light.
Agrawal, D. P. 1994. Archaeology and the Concept of Time. In South Asian Archaeology, Vol. 1, ed. A. Parpola and P. Koskikallio, pp. 35-42. Helsinki: Soumalainen Tideakatemia.
Allard, A. 2010. Foodways, Commensality, and Nipmuc Identity: An Analysis of Faunal Remains from Sarah Boston’s Farmstead, Grafton, Massachusetts 1790-1840. MA Thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Boston.
Allen, J. de V. 1979. The Swahili House: Cultural and Ritual Concepts Underlying Its Plan and Structure. In Swahili Houses and Tombs of the Coast ofKenya, ed. J. de V. Allen and T. H. Wilson, pp. 1-32. London: Art and Archaeology Research Papers.
-1982. The ‘Shirazi’ Problem in East African Coastal History. Paideuma
28: 9-28.
Allen, J. de V. 1993. Swahili Origins: Swahili Culture and the Shungwaya Phenomenon. London: James Currey.
Alpers, E. 1975. Ivory and Slaves: Changing Pattern of International Trade in East Central Africa to the Later 19th Century. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Andah, B. 1990. Prologue. In Cultural Resource Management: An African Dimension, ed. B. W. Andah, pp. 2-8. Ibadan: Wisdom Publishers for the West African Journal of Archaeology.
-1995. Studying African Societies in Cultural Context. In Making Alternative Histories: The Practice of Archaeology and History in Non-Western Settings, ed. P. R. Schmidt and T. C. Patterson, pp. 149-82. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.
Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
Anderson, M. K. 2005. Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Apess, W. 1835. Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts Relative to the Marshpee Tribe Or, the Pretended Riot Explained. Excerpt from electronic document. <http://www. osv. org/school/lesson_ Plans/ShowLessons. php? PageID=P&LessonID=41&DocID=2058&UnitID> (accessed 5 November 2010).
Appadurai, A. 1981. The Past as a Scarce Resource. Man (ns) 16: 201-9.
Apter, A. 2007. Beyond Words: Discourse and Critical Agency in Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Archibald, R. 1978. Indian Labor at the
World History
