Faculty

James Faubion

Jeffrey Fleisher

Eugenia Georges

Christopher Kelty

Hannah Landecker

Susan Mcintosh

Amy Ninetto

Stephen Tyler

Elizabeth Vann

Visiting Faculty

Tarek Elhaik

Emeritus Faculty

George Marcus

Rod Mcintosh

Julie Taylor

Staff

Graduate Students

Undergraduates

Alumni

Current Interests

fleisher

I am an anthropological archaeologist with interests in complex societies, urbanization, political economy, regional and landscape archaeology, households, and power. My research is focused on the Swahili coast in eastern Africa, where I have had a long-term commitment to recovering the settlement history of a particular region on Pemba Island, Tanzania. This work has been aimed at a number of issues: My previous work attempted to understand the character of ancient Swahili urbanism (prior to AD1500) - and to evaluate the proposition of coastal urbanism in general - through survey and excavations in the area surrounding three known Swahili stonetowns. More recently, I have completed the field portions of a three year project that returned to this region to look more closely at the political economy of one of these stonetown regions. By identifying and excavating houses of non-elite urban and rural residents, this project attempts to build an understanding of the local domestic economy and how it articulated with the better known Indian Ocean economy within which the Swahili operated. I am currently working on a monograph that details this research with Prof. Adria LaViolette and Prof. Bertram Mapunda.

  • Fleisher, Jeffrey (2007). "Urbanism and Urbanization: Prehistoric." In The New Encyclopedia of Africa, Second Ed., John Middleton and Joseph Miller, eds. Charles Scribner's Sons.

  • Fleisher, Jeffrey (2007) "The Changing Power of Swahili Houses, AD Fourteenth to Nineteenth Centuries." In The Durable House: House Society Models in Archaeology, Robin A. Beck, ed. Occasional Paper No. 35, Center for Archaeological Investigations. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University (with Adria LaViolette).

  • Fleisher, Jeffrey (2005) "The Archaeology of African Cities and their Countrysides" In African Archaeology: A Critical Introduction, Ann B. Stahl, ed. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 327-352 (with Adria LaViolette).

  • Fleisher, Jeffrey, (2004) "Behind the Sultan of Kilwa's 'Rebellious Conduct': Local Perspectives on an International East African Town." In African Historical Archaeologies, Andrew Reid and Paul Lane, eds. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum, pp. 91-123.

Picture Credits: