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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:People, Not Pots: Locally Produced Ceramics and Identity on the Nineteenth-Century East African Coast
Authors:Croucher, SarahISNI
Wynne-Jones, StephanieISNI
Year:2006
Periodical:International Journal of African Historical Studies
Volume:39
Issue:1
Pages:107-124
Language:English
Geographic term:East Africa
Subjects:pottery
identity
archaeology
1800-1899
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
History and Exploration
Architecture and the Arts
Anthropology and Archaeology
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/40033998
Abstract:Locally produced ceramics are the mainstay of archaeological research in East Africa. They are understood to be products of a particular sociocultural milieu such that ceramic variation will correspond with cultural variation at some level. Ceramics are thus seen to indicate some form of shared identity - the archaeological 'culture'. In this paper, through the examination of locally produced ceramics from the 19th-century East African coast, the authors examine the multiplicity of ways that identities were created and experienced in coastal society. They believe that one's discipline determines, to a great extent, the level at which one conceptualizes and understands identity. Here, they examine how widescale regional identities can intersect with more local, individual or gendered identities played out through the production and use of local ceramic types. By these means they hope to illustrate the ways in which historical data (documentary, oral, linguistic) and archaeological data can work in conjunction to produce rich interpretations of the past on the East African coast. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]
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