Simulating African Agro-Pastoralist Routes and Interactions (SAFARI)

Simulating African Agro-Pastoralist Routes and Interactions (SAFARI, the Swahili word for journey) uses computational modelling, satellite remote sensing, statistical analyses and targeted archaeological field surveys to investigate overland pastoralist mobility corridors in a broad region across eastern Africa. Through a state-of-the art interdisciplinary methodology, it evaluates relationships between pastoralist mobility corridors, the emergence of coastal Swahili urbanism, and the expansion of caravan trading during the Middle-Late Iron Age (MIA-LIA, eighth-nineteenth centuries CE). Results from this study will inform an understanding of the emergence of early globalization in this part of the world. Though pastoralist presence has been hypothesized at early coastal Swahili urban centres, it remains unclear to what extent MIA-LIA pastoralist mobility between inland regions and the coast impacted spatiotemporal developments in Swahili urbanism and the emergence of caravan trade routes. Pastoralist interaction routes would have been conditioned by the ecological considerations of cattle herders, who relied on access to water and grasslands. Comparing modelled mobility pathways to spatial databases of coastal and inland settlement and maps of caravan routes in the nineteenth century, SAFARI will explore whether pastoralist mobility was a significant factor in shaping early connections between eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean. Satellite remote sensing and targeted field surveys will be used to test and refine models, and narrow down the affordances and limitations structuring the spatial organization of mobility corridors. Training and analysis will occur at the McDonald Institute for Archaeology at Cambridge University, primarily within the Computational and Digital Archaeology Lab.