Innovation and Adaptation in African Bead Production and Use: tracing women’s labour and agency through Swahili bead assemblages

 

SNSF Swiss Postdoctoral Fellowships: TMPFP1_234602

2025-2027: https://data.snf.ch/grants/grant/234602

This project explores the role and agency of local craftspeople in Zanzibar, Tanzania, through a unique collection of glass beads excavated during archaeological fieldwork in Mkokotoni and Tumbatu in 2017 and 2019. These two Swahili settlements were inhabited between 1000 and 1400 CE, a period when the Swahili coast of East Africa became increasingly integrated into the medieval Indian Ocean world of trade networks. While these networks were an integral part of the development of Swahili towns and their wealth, local production and regional trade were equally crucial but less well understood. This project emphasizes local production, innovation, and practice, especially highlighting the role of women as key users—and potentially producers—of glass beads.

The Swahili coast of East Africa was permanently occupied from around the 6th and 7th centuries CE onwards, by people who had migrated from regions in the interior. These coastal settlements relied on agriculture, hunting, fishing, craft production, and trade, and became increasingly integrated into the large trade networks of the Indian Ocean throughout the 1st and 2nd millennia CE. The Swahili culture that developed on the coast is well known for it’s coral stone towns that flourished along the coast from the 11th century CE. Zanzibar, an island archipelago that has been home to many important Swahili settlements, was a hub for regional and long-distance trade during the medieval period. Various goods travelled through its ports, and glass beads were a popular trade item. Beads were used in jewellery and clothing, but also in ritual practice and as prayer beads. Many glass beads were imported from south Asia, where many production sites existed. Excavations in Mkokotoni in 2019 uncovered the remains of a glass bead workshop, along with ca. 25,000 glass beads and glass bead waste. These finds form the core of the current project. A selection of the beads and bead waste will be subjected to chemical and morphological analysis to determine whether they were locally produced and what technologies were used, where they were traded, and how they were used for personal expression in adornment and ritual. Evidence for glass bead production in medieval East Africa is rare, therefore the finds from Mkokotoni and Tumbatu provide a unique opportunity to study local craft practices and innovation, highlighting how Swahili producers adapted foreign technologies and local innovation to meet the desires and needs of their communities.

The original field work was carried out beween 2017 and 2019 in collaboration with the Zanzibar Department of Museum and Antiquities, including Abdallah Khamis Ali, Faki Othman Haji, and Ali Juma Ameir.

Innovation and Adaptation in African Bead Production and Use: tracing women’s labour and agency through Swahili bead assemblages.