Large-scale networks of interaction and exchange have existed on the East African Swahili coast for at least the past two millennia, linking coastal populations with South Asia, the Middle East and the African Interior. The connections coastal inhabitants nurtured along those networks were crucial to the development of Swahili urban society in the early second millennium CE. The archaeological project detailed in this book explores the functioning of Swahili networks by examining their influence in the region around the town of Mikindani in southern Tanzania through a thorough programme of...