Route to a Regional Past: Two Millennia of Archaeology in Lowland, NE Tanzania.

Archaeologies of coastwise East Africa rarely take account of the continental hinterland by affording it equal attention in research. I report on a project that applies historical archaeology to recuperate human pasts in the lower Pangani (Ruvu) Basin, northeastern Tanzania (500–1900 CE) extending to 200 km inland. I employed a nineteenth century caravan route to trace much earlier human settlement and wider interaction, emphasizing lowland, interior residues within an overall regional framework. A systematic survey in five vicinities documented more than 325 new archaeological localities spanning the known culture history of eastern Africa. Sites and artifacts, including
those along the foot slopes of the Eastern Arc Mountains, signal the florescence of iron-using, farming (and other) communities during the “Middle Iron Age” (600–1000/1200 CE). Evidence at multiple scales from this and later times suggests increasing human connectivity.