ABSTRACT
Swahili stone houses have been the subject of particular attention in recent years. Found in traditional settlements on the East African coast, where mud and thatch houses are normal, these have been used to explain the method by which particular groups asserted their identity and role within the community. By using ‘house power’ (Donley 1982), with complex symbolic and social associations, patrician groups who claimed Arab as opposed to African ancestry came to dominate trading activities on the Swahili coast in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The origins of this patrician group, known as the Waungwana, have been the subject of controversy. Linda Donley-Reid (1990) has argued through her oral historical and ethnoarchaeological research that a middle Eastern origin was an important factor in the importance of this group (Figure 7.1). J. de V. Allen (1979; 1993) took a completely opposing view, that these claims were largely bogus, and that stone house architecture was just one facet of a complex indigenous society.
