“Potentially the Pompeii of East Africa”: Histories of Archaeology, Colonialism, and Tourism in Swahili Stone Towns in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
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Authors
Focusing on a quotation by Mortimer Wheeler from the year 1955, when he called the ruined Swahili stone town of Kua on Juani island in the Mafia archipelago in today’s Tanzania “potentially the Pompeii of East Africa,” this article unravels some of the many layers encapsulated in this statement. The article contextualizes the passage by Wheeler with regard to the history of archaeology, colonialism, and tourism in the region. It interrogates ways how the discipline of art history can contribute to studies of the built environment along the East African coast. And it illuminates both the necessity and the potentials of decentralizing studies of the humanities on empirical-historical and methodological levels for future scholarship on the art and architecture along the Swahili coast as well as within the field of transcultural art history more generally.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | History of Humanities |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Pages (from-to) | 427-448 |
| Number of pages | 22 |
| ISSN | 2379-3163 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 01.09.2021 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:
64. For a historiographical study from an archaeological perspective with referents to previous literature and a focus on the past fifty years, see Wynne-Jones and Fleisher, “Fifty Years in the Archaeology of the Eastern African Coast.” See also Nurse and Spear, The Swahili; Horton, Shanga; Kusimba, Rise and Fall of the Swahili States; LaViolette and Fleisher, “Archaeology of Sub-Saharan Urbanism”; Pollard and Kinyera, “Swahili Coast and the Indian Ocean Trade Patterns”; Lane, “Archaeology of Colonial Encounters.” 65. Ichumbaki and Schmidt, “Is There Hope for Heritage”; Ichumbaki and Mjema, “Impact of Small-Scale Development Projects.” 66. See the project “Reversing the Gaze: Towards Post-Comparative Area Studies,” funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and directed by Elísio Macamo, Deval Desai, Benedikt Korf, and Ralph Weber.
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