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Akshay Sarathi (Ed.): Early Maritime Cultures in East African and the Western
Indian Ocean: Archaeopress, Oxford, 2018, 226 pp., ISBN 978-1784917128

Article  in  African Archaeological Review · November 2020

DOI: 10.1007/s10437-020-09416-4

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Afr Archaeol Rev
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-020-09416-4
BOOK REVIEW
Akshay Sarathi (Ed.): Early Maritime Cultures in East
African and the Western Indian Ocean
Archaeopress, Oxford, 2018, 226 pp., ISBN 978-1784917128
Matthew Pawlowicz
Accepted: 31 October 2020
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
This interesting volume gathers together papers from a
conference, titled “Early Maritime Cultures on the East
African Coast,” held at the University of Wisconsin in
the fall of 2015. It is part of the Access Archaeology
initiative from Archaeopress, which develops open-
access e-pdfs for archaeological work that does not fit
traditional publishing models. The volume demonstrates
the value of the initiative, as the broad range of topics,
themes, and geographical foci of the chapters make it
difficult to identify a common theme, and there is no
introduction or conclusion to provide such a synthesis.
Yet in their variety, the chapters satisfy the editor’s
objective to provide a rich interdisciplinary literature
devoted to the study of the East African maritime past,
placing that past within the context of the broader Indian
Ocean and pushing the reader to consider new and
cross-disciplinary perspectives.
The volume is truly an eclectic mix, comprising 13
chapters, which explore a variety of spatial and temporal
scales. It begins with a chapter by Amanuel Beyin and
Daniella E. Bar-Yosef Mayer considering MSA/LSA
sites along the Eritrean Red Sea coast, but the remainder
focuses on more recent periods, including some focused
primarily on the last few centuries. The contributors are
drawn from a range of disciplinary backgrounds includ-
ing archaeology, history, linguistics, art history, and
anthropology. There is considerable diversity in the
types of papers in the volume as well, with several
M. Pawlowicz (*)
Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, USA
e-mail: mcpawlowicz@vcu.edu
chapters presenting data-heavy reports, others providing
reviews of historical trends across broad geographic
zones, and still more practicing a form of microhistory
linking particular aspects of material culture from sites
around the Indian Ocean with their larger context. This
diversity means that different papers will appeal to
different readers, but the volume pushes the reader to
go beyond their specific interests to consider other time
periods, places, and disciplinary perspectives.
If there is a broader theme threaded through the
chapters of this volume, it might be the concept of the
“maritime silk road.” Recent interest in the history of
connections across the Indian Ocean has been stimulat-
ed by the inclusion of a “21st Century Maritime Silk
Road” component in the Belt-and-Road Initiative of the
People’s Republic of China, which often explicitly in-
vokes that history. Several of the chapters reference and
engage with such connections, albeit to varying degrees.
For instance, the chapters by Sing C. Chew and by
Wensuo Liu and Yanrong Wang provide useful over-
views of the maritime networks of the Indian Ocean,
during the Classical Period and early second millennium
CE respectively. Chapurukha Kusimba makes an im-
portant and compelling case for the inclusion of East
Africa within those networks as he traces the history of
contacts between China and East Africa. Maritime silk
roads are also referenced in articles less directly focused
on them, such as Hawarden’s study of logboats from
Zimbabwe.
Still, maritime silk roads are not the primary focus of
many of the chapters, allowing the volume to touch on a
range of other compelling topics. A number of the

chapters provide data-heavy reports on projects from
around the Indian Ocean rim. The chapter by Beyin
and Bar-Yosef is a prime example, with a detailed and
well-illustrated account of Stone Age sites along the
Eritrean Red Sea coast, providing information for a
relatively little-known portion of the African continent.
Akshay Sarathi’s account is another good example,
presenting evidence from his work exploring shellfish
exploitation and marine subsistence strategies on Zan-
zibar over time. There is substantial linguistic evidence
presented in Roger Blench’s account of the peopling of
Madagascar, which helpfully draws together archaeo-
logical and genetic evidence with the language data,
though it would have been good to see more of the
linguistic evidence discussed via reconstructions using
historical linguistics methodologies (see Ehret 2012).
There are several chapters that provide broad over-
views of interactions across the Indian Ocean. These
include those chapters that, more or less explicitly, detail
the characteristics of maritime silk roads at different
points in time, such as that of Chew, as well as that from
Liu and Wang. Kusimba’s chapter provides a useful
overview from an East African perspective, and forces
consideration of the history of those networks to extend
beyond the core areas that have been the traditional foci
of inquiry. Beatrice Nicolini describes the important role
of Asian merchants and soldiers in East Africa in the
nineteenth century, emphasizing the significance of those
links in a similar fashion. Perhaps the standout submis-
sion in this group is Marina Tolmacheva’s authoritative
discussion of the history of Arab sailing in the Indian
Ocean prior to the coming of the Portuguese, providing a
critical reading of the sources available for that period.
I also found some of the more tightly focused chap-
ters stimulating, as they made use of particular, and in
some cases singular, finds as a foundation for exploring
broader themes within the maritime history of the Indian
Ocean. A notable example is Ian McIntosh’s chapter,
which uses finds of Kilwa coins along the northern
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Afr Archaeol Rev
Australia coast as a jumping off point to explore the
wider interregional networks that touched northern Aus-
tralia and contemporary issues of cultural heritage and
community archaeology. Hawarden’s multidisciplinary
approach to considering the possibility of a deeper his-
tory of large logboats plying the rivers of southern
Africa and linking interior communities to Indian Ocean
trade was similarly thought-provoking, and also linked
to community-based heritage considerations in Zimba-
bwe. Harriet Oppenheimer’s chapter, discussing culi-
nary traditions in the Comoros, provides a useful plat-
form for thinking about cultural links and creolizations
across the Indian Ocean. Several of the chapters focused
on the most recent periods largely fit this microhistory
approach as well. For instance, Martin Oppenheimer’s
study of Comorian marriage and kinship practices acts
as a base for considering the social structures underlying
traditional maritime trade. Vera-Simone Schwartz’s art-
historical exploration of the connections between archi-
tectural forms and imported artifacts shows some of the
patterns of cultural exchange that accompanied mari-
time trade, even if the comparison with Italy was per-
haps pushed beyond the limits of its utility.
Ultimately, the editor should be commended for
pulling together a diverse and compelling collection of
chapters. So, too, should Archaeopress be commended
for the Access Archaeology initiative, which enables
such eclectic volumes to find a publisher and a
readership.
Reference
Ehret, C. (2012). Linguistic archaeology. African Archaeological
Review, 29, 109–130.
Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to
jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional
affiliations.