Dr. Henriette Rødland
Junior Postdoctoral Fellow (Heinz-Heinen-Fellowship)
Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies
October 2024–September 2025
henriette.rodland@hotmail.com
Title of current research project: "Traces of Clay: Exploring slave status and outsider identities on the Medieval Swahili Coast"
Academic Profile
In this project, I will investigate material culture associated with outsiders and enslaved migrants working and living in coastal East Africa between 1000–1500 CE. This region of Africa is often referred to as the Swahili coast, home to vibrant communities of merchants, artisans and farmers since the 7th century CE. While the region is known for its extensive use of slave labour under various colonial rules in recent times, little is known about the role of slavery before the 16th century. Scant but significant historical documentation suggests various forms of coercive labour were employed in domestic and agricultural contexts on the Swahili coast during the first half of the second millennium. These labourers are thought to have originated in the East African hinterland and interior, thus being culturally, religiously and linguistically different from the Swahili-speaking, urban Muslims living on the coast. However, few attempts have been made to identify their traces or discuss slavery in early Swahili societies in meaningful ways. Using the rich archaeological datasets available for the Swahili coast, my research will address this knowledge gap. Focusing particularly on artefacts of clay, I will explore how slave status and identity may have manifested through personal material culture, uncover the spaces in which enslaved people moved and lived, and identify the different types of (free and unfree) labour they we engaged in.
2016–2021
Part time lecturer, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University
2015
Graduate Attaché at The British Institute in Eastern Africa, Kenya
2015
Research and collections assistant, Sainsbury Research Unit, Norwich, UK
2016–2021
PhD in Archaeology, Uppsala University, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History
Thesis title: "Swahili Social Landscapes: Material expressions of identity, agency, and labour in pre-colonial Zanzibar, 1000–1400 CE"
2014–2015
MA in the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, University of East Anglia (Distinction), Sainsbury Research Unit
Thesis title: "Indigenous slavery in West Africa during the Atlantic slave trade: Using slave narratives to understand individual and communal responses to slavery"
2011–2014
BA in Archaeology, University of York (First Class Honours)
Thesis title: "Slavery in West and East Africa: Understanding the Similarities and Recognising Slavery through Archaeology"
Monographs
- 2021. Swahili Social Landscapes: Material expressions of identity, agency, and labour in pre-colonial Zanzibar, 1000–1400 CE. Studies in Global Archaeology 26. Uppsala University.
Peer-Reviewed Papers
- 2023. "Crafting Swahili Beads: Exploring a new glass bead assemblage from northern Zanzibar, Tanzania." In African Archaeological Review 40: 335–356.
- 2020. With S. Wynne-Jones, M. Wood, and J. Fleisher. "No such thing as invisible people: Toward an archaeology of slavery at the fifteenth century Swahili site of Songo Mnara." In Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 55 (4): 439–457.
Editorial Work
- 2020. Guest editor of a special issue of Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 55(4), together with Professor Stephanie Wynne-Jones, titled "Archaeological approaches to slavery and unfree labour in Africa."