Under the supervision of Dr. Gayle J. Fritz, Sarah Walshaw will collect and analyze data on ancient Swahili plant food production and consumption derived from archaeological excavations on Pemba Island, Tanzania. Charred plant remains offer the most direct information about ancient diets as well as the activities associated with plant processing: harvesting, threshing, winnowing, storage, and cooking. Working with an NSF-funded project led by Dr. Adria LaViolette, Ms. Walshaw will collect charred plant material from five archaeological sites on Pemba that represent the transition (AD 800-1600) from small village settlements to densely populated communities. She will also collect modern reference specimens to aid in the identification of archaeological plant remains, and conduct surveys among Swahili subsistence farmers to determine how crops such as millet, sorghum, and rice may have been processed in the past.
Centralized control of food production accompanied the rise of cities in many regions of the world, with city administrators controlling the processing, storage, and redistribution of grains. Much of our knowledge about urban food production derives from studies of hierarchically organized cities. The more egalitarian societies of sub-Saharan Africa, therefore, offer a comparative perspective on urban food production. Walshaw will investigate the role of plant food production in Swahili urbanization to determine whether plant production remained a predominantly rural, domestic activity, or whether specialized domains of production outside the control of the household developed in cities. This research offers a window into the lives of the Swahili rural majority during urbanization, which may reveal a considerably different view than the Arab-dominated model drawn from ethnohistory and the archaeology of wealthy urban communities.
This research represents one of the few comprehensive studies of plant food production from sub-Saharan Africa, and will contribute significantly to our understanding of relatively egalitarian food production systems in general, and Swahili plant use in particular. Additionally, collections of East African plants are significantly lacking, therefore the modern plant samples collected during this study are essential to future research. This study will assist in graduate student training both here and abroad. Walshaw will instruct Tanzanian archaeology students and faculty in the recovery and analysis of archaeological plant remains, an underdeveloped aspect of the current university curriculum. She will also join Dr. LaViolette and additional team members in presenting archaeological data to the communities surrounding the field sites, including a local secondary school.
Finally, in documenting the ancient Swahili plant food production system, Walshaw will discover how indigenous resources were used prior to the introduction of the Asian (rice, coconut, banana, mango) and New World (corn, cassava) crops that form the staples of African diets today. Indigenous food resources are generally underutilized in Africa, and increased reliance upon local resources may improve a critically limiting food base. For example, finger millet, a traditional East African crop, has the potential to be a critical weaning food that could reduce infant mortality, yet finger millet is scarcely grown today. This study may help us understand why African crops declined in use and how they might be useful today.
