Stephanie Wynne-Jones (University of Bristol, UK)

Archaeological approaches to cultural encounters in prehistory tend to rely on the notion of pre-existing societal entities united by a common tradition; these entities are then seen to have been shaped by interactions with others. This notion of prehistory is contrasted with modern globalised encounters, and a line is often drawn between ‘historical’ archaeologies of the global world and ‘prehistoric’ encounters between traditional societies. This has been a particular theme in the archaeology of the East African coast, where global networks are seen to have intersected with traditional societies, with those societies only being drawn into global networks during the nineteenth-century expansion of the world system.

This paper explores the notion of tradition employed by archaeology, demonstrating how for the East African coast ‘tradition’ has always been a dynamic phenomenon, shaped by – and itself shaping – encounters with a wider world. It compares the Swahili coast of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries with that of the nineteenth century under Omani commercial control. Critique of a single region then feeds back into a broader engagement with our ideas about what constitutes tradition and how it is built from a series of encounters within and between social actors and groups.