Swahili Town Planning: The Songo Mnara Urban Landscape

We request funding for field research on ancient urban planning on the East African Swahili coast. This funding will support three seven-week field seasons of archaeological research at Songo Mnara, a Swahili stonetown on the southern coast of Tanzania, along with subsequent analysis of data recovered and dissemination of research results. Stonetowns, the quintessential expression of Swahili culture, are known along the eastern coast of Africa, and represent an important form of autochthonous urbanism that linked Africa with the Indian Ocean world system. A World Heritage Site, Songo 1vlnara is recognized as the most impressive of all Swahili townscapes and considered to be the quintessential expression of the coral-built tradition for which the coastal towns became famous. The town has a full range of domestic and non-domestic structures, with more than 40 coral-built houses and room-blocks, 5 mosques and multiple cemeteries. Occupation of the site was brieC li'otn the 14'" to 16'" centuries AD, coinciding with the golden age of Swahili stonctowns along the coast. Research at Songa .Mnara adopts a spatially-integrated approach to Swahili economic and ritual/religious practice that will allow us to isolate both deliberately-planned elements of the town (central cemeteries and open spaces) and elements that might have been created through exigency, particularly in the realm of domestic architecture.
The proposed fieldwork will explore the urban space of Songo Mnara at four interlinked scales:
(l) Household activities will be sought through systematic excavations within and around buildings at the site;
(2) Public and communal practices will be recovered through geo archaeology, geophysical survey, and excavations across the open areas and monuments of the site;
(3) The site plan will be accurately plotted; and
(4) The site will be positioned within its broader landscape through off-site survey and geophysics. Analysis of recovered materials will take place first in the field, and then in the USA and UK over the periods between field seasons and in the year all the final field season.
The project will be conducted in collaboration with local authorities and UNESCO partners, and accompanied by conservation efforts on the important coral architecture at the site; funding for this aspect is being sought separately.

Intellectual Merit
Research at Songo will contribute to discussions of urban planning in Swahili and other urban contexts. The exceptional preservation at Songo Mnara will allow for the construction of a robust dataset to explore the way that Swahili towns were both planned and unplanned, with their components altering an insight into the priorities and social negotiations of their inhabitants.
This work will contribute substantially to discussions of organizational principles and levels of meaning in ancient town plans more generally, and especially to research on aspects of town layouts that were recursively linked to movement and activity. In this way, Swahili town plans offer a dramatic case study in which to break down the 'false dichotomy' between planned and organic, and explore the importance of spatial practice in the negotiation of global and local economic and religious practice.

Broader Impacts
This project will offer important training for American, British, and Tanzanian students, both graduate and undergraduate. The training of students from the University of Dares Salaam is significant, as it provides these students with hands on experience with up-to-date equipment and techniques.
The preservation and conservation of Songo Mnara-which remains an "endangered" World Heritage Site-is a priority for the Tanzanian Department of Antiquities, who have invested in the site as a tourist destination. Archaeological research at the site also aligns with the interests of the local residents, who have an active village 'Ruins Committee' with which we will closely work. A long term commitment to archaeological research at the site will provide important educational opportunities to demonstrate the unique role that archaeology can play in its preservation and documentation.