SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND SETTLEMENT PATTERNS ON THE EAST AFRICAN COAST

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of the study of settlement patterns and spatial analysis as methods of interpreting and analysing archaeological information from the sites along the East African coast.1 The sites under consideration are the 116 known ruins that line the coast from Mogadishu in the north to Vumba Kuu on the present Kenya-Tanzania border, the northern portion of a larger group of similar sites that extends southward to Mozambique and the Comoro Islands (Allen 1980, 1981, Wilson 1980b). The Kenya-Tanzania border is an arbitrary boundary at which to end the sample of sites for this study, but the demarcation was chosen because the author is more familiar with the sites of the northern Swahili world than with those to the south (Wilson 1978, 1980a). These sites appear to be members of a single cultural tradition that can be traced archaeologically back to at least the 9th century A. D. In size the coastal sites vary from town ruins approaching 30 hectares, as at Pate, to the isolated mosques found along the coast, as at Kongo or Mida Creek (Fig. 1). The types of settlements represented by these ruins range from densely populated and highly concentrated towns with a high proportion of the community living in homes built of coral rag set in a mortar of lime and sand, to small rural communities with the people living in houses of mud packed onto wooden frames with roofs of thatch (Allen and Wilson 1979).