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This paper seeks to challenge the notion of the invisible slave in the archaeological record and investigates the way in which material culture may reflect the movements and practices of enslaved labourers on the East African Swahili coast. Archaeological approaches to enslavement have revealed the nuanced and complex experiences of a group of people often under-represented or absent in historical records, while also grappling with the challenges presented by the ambiguity of the material evidence. This paper presents a case study from the fifteenth-century Swahili site of Songo Mnara in Tanzania, an architecturally and materially wealthy stone town in the Kilwa archipelago. It focuses on the context, use, and spread of beads across the site, and considers the possibility of interpreting some classes - such as locally made terracotta beads - as proxies for the underclass and enslaved in an otherwise wealthy settlement. It presents a key study towards the aim of building a highly necessary methodology for the archaeology of slavery in East Africa and beyond, and suggests that certain types of material culture might be used to explore the activities of enslaved and/or underclass individuals.

Small-scale excavations were recently undertaken at the site of Ukunju Cave in the Mafia Archipelago, Tanzania, to collect new bioarchaeological and material culture data relating to the site's occupation and the nature of early subsistence and long-distance trade in the region. Our findings suggest that occupation of the cave began during the Middle Iron Age (MIA, seventh to tenth centuries AD), as indicated by the presence of local Early Tana Tradition (ETT)/Triangular Incised Ware (TIW) pottery in the lowest layers above bedrock, as well as small quantities of imported ceramics and glass beads also dating from the mid- to the late first millennium AD. Small assemblages of faunal and botanical remains, including introduced African crops (pearl millet, sorghum, baobab and possibly cowpea) were found in association with these finds, indicating that these MIA communities practised a mixed economy of fishing, domestic livestock keeping and agriculture. In addition, the presence of cotton suggests they may have also been producing fibres or textiles, most likely for local use, but possibly also for long distance trade. Although some quartz artefacts were recovered, we found no evidence of any pre-Iron Age LSA culture at the cave, contrary to previous claims about the site. Un travail pionnier visant à l'étude de l'occupation de la côte est-africaine avant l'Âge de Fer a relevé les indices d'une installation de groupes à l'Âge de Pierre tardif et au Néolithique sur plusieurs îles dont Zanzibar, Pemba et Mafia. Il a été proposé que ces occupations étaient associées à des marchandises de l'Océan Indien et des animaux domestiques et qu'elles dataient des derniers millénaires av. J.-C. Ces données ont fait l'objet de beaucoup de controverses et de débats, conduisant certains à remettre en cause la datation des sites, la qualité de la stratigraphie et l'identification des restes bio-archéologiques. Pour résoudre ces problèmes chronologiques, le projet Sealinks a récemment me

The south-east coast of Africa in the later first millennium was busy with boats and the movement of goods from across the Indian Ocean to the interior. The landing places were crucial mediators in this process, in Africa as elsewhere. Investigations at the beach site of Chibuene show that a local community was supplying imported beads to such interior sites as Schroda, with the consequent emergence there of hierarchical power structures.

Appendix in: Wood, Marilee (2012) Interconnections: Glass beads and trade in southern and eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean - 7th to 16th centuries AD. Studies in Global Archaeology 17. Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala.

Many tens of thousands of glass beads have been recovered from well-dated 8(th) to 16(th) century archaeological sites in southern Africa, making it possible to develop a temporally sensitive bead sequence which is made up of seven series. The series were developed based on morphological characteristics and recent chemical analysis has confirmed those results. The bead series are described in detail along with possible origins for the glass used to create them. Chemical composition of the glasses used to make the beads demonstrates that three major changes in glass chemistry occurred between the 8(th) and 15(th) centuries, suggesting the different glasses originated in geographically disparate regions and indicating that trade patterns connecting southern Africa to other Indian Ocean entities were far from static.