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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Remembering and reworking the Swahili diwanate: the role of objects and places at Vumba Kuu
Author:Wynne-Jones, StephanieISNI
Year:2010
Periodical:International Journal of African Historical Studies (ISSN 0361-7882)
Volume:43
Issue:3
Pages:407-427
Language:English
Geographic term:Kenya
Subjects:towns
Swahili
historiography
archaeology
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/23046818
Abstract:Vumba Kuu was a Swahili town of the 14th and 15th centuries on the southern coast of Kenya, abandoned in the late 16th century by its population who moved to Vanga and Wasini Island. By the 19th century, as today, it was difficult to identify physically, as the site had mostly disintegrated. The location was remembered among local groups, however, and the creation of Vumba's history as one of the Shirazi settlements of the south Kenya coast had begun some time before A.C. Hollis inscribed it in 1900. The present author examines the process of creating Vumba's historical traditions. Through the results of archaeological research at the site of Vumba Kuu she explores the scene of the events related by the traditions. The settlement of Vumba Kuu emerges as a humble site, unable to bear the rhetorical weight of later histories, which have made it famous as a type-site for Swahili manifestations of power. The evidence of archaeology at Vumba Kuu does not simply 'disprove' these histories; rather, it gives an insight into the ongoing process of historical memory and the process of forgetting Vumba Kuu's humble past while commemorating an ideal past that worked for the present. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]
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