Narrating the meaning of town walls: symbolism and social trust on the East African coast

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F49777513%3A23330%2F23%3A43968894" target="_blank" >RIV/49777513:23330/23:43968894 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="http://www.archaeolingua.hu/book/narrating-past-archaeological-epistemology-explanation-and-communication" target="_blank" >http://www.archaeolingua.hu/book/narrating-past-archaeological-epistemology-explanation-and-communication</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

—

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Narrating the meaning of town walls: symbolism and social trust on the East African coast

Original language description

Town walls are an important feature of urbanism around the globe, representing boundaries and demarcating connecting routes that enclose and divide space. This paper presents a case study of town walls from sub-Saharan Africa, which can contribute to global archaeological narratives explaining the meaning of the urban built environment. From pre-colonial times to the colonial era, some of the most prominent Swahili towns on the East coast of Africa featured low town walls, a tradition in the built environment that was maintained for centuries before disappearing with colonialism. Although decidedly non-monumental compared to the rest of the pre-colonial urban space and virtually ignored by the written accounts, the town walls represent an important type of otherwise rare public construction project known from the extensive cultural region of today’s coastal East Africa. So far, the function of the Swahili town walls has been mainly studied using archaeological approaches and interpreted using two types of hypotheses – either defensive or having some kind of “symbolic” meaning. Because the defensive role of these low walls is increasingly viewed as less likely, this paper explores what new interdisciplinary considerations could be brought into the debate. I aim to demonstrate how the archaeological narrative of their symbolic purpose comes short of providing more detailed answers and how the concept can be elaborated further by employing sociological considerations of behaviour, especially in context with trade and urbanism typical for the Swahili coast. Focusing on the concepts of social norms and trust known from sociology, the presented argument highlights how we may improve our understanding of the role of this urban feature, specifically showing how the walls channelled movement and affected the bodily experience of social power and visual understanding of the past Swahili towns.

Czech name

—

Czech description

—

Type

C - Chapter in a specialist book

CEP classification

—

OECD FORD branch

60102 - Archaeology

Project

<a href="/en/project/GJ20-02725Y" target="_blank" >GJ20-02725Y: Comparing urban morphological transformation in precolonial to colonial urban traditions</a><br>

Continuities

P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Publication year

2023

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Book/collection name

Narrating the past: archaeological epistemology, explanation and communication

ISBN

978-615-5766-61-9

Number of pages of the result

29

Pages from-to

241-269

Number of pages of the book

436

Publisher name

Archaeolingua

Place of publication

Budapešť, Maďarsko

UT code for WoS chapter

—