The Ruins of Gedi (Magofu wa mji wa kale wa Gedi in (Swahili) are a UNESCO World Heritage site near the Indian Ocean coast of eastern Kenya. The site is adjacent to the town of Gedi (also known as Gede) in Kilifi County and within the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest.
Gedi is one of many medieval Swahili coastal settlements that stretch from Barawa, Somalia, to the Zambezi River in Mozambique.Wilson, Thomas H. "Spatial Analysis and Settlement Patterns on the Eastern African Coast" Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde Bd. 28 (1982): 201. There are 116 known Swahili sites stretching from southern Somalia to Vumba Kuu at the Kenya-Tanzania border. Since the rediscovery of the Gedi ruins by colonialists in the 1920s, Gedi has been one of the most intensely excavated and studied of those sites, along with Shanga, Manda, Ungwana, Kilwa, and the Comoros.Spear, Thomas. "Early Swahili History Reconsidered." The International Journal of African Historical Studies vol. 33 no. 2 (2000): 283.
The site of Gedi includes a walled town and its outlying area.Reynolds, David West. "Swahili Ghost Town." Archaeology vol. 54 no. 6 (November/December 2001): 46.Schofield, J. F. "The City of Gedi: Presidential Address." The South African Archaeological Bulletin vol. 10 no. 38 (June 1955): 35. All of the standing buildings at Gedi, which include mosques, a palace, and numerous houses, are made from stone, are one story, and are distributed unevenly in the town. There are also large open areas in the settlement which contained earth and thatch houses.Schofield, J. F. "The City of Gedi: Presidential Address." The South African Archaeological Bulletin vol. 10 no. 38 (June 1955): 37.Fleisher, Jeffrey and Stephanie Wynne-Jones. "Finding Meaning in Ancient Swahili Spatial Practices." The African Archaeological Review vol. 29 no.2/3 (2012): 181. DOI: 10.1007/s10437-012-9121-0 Stone "pillar tombs" are a distinctive type of Swahili Coast architecture found at Gedi as well.
Gedi's location along the coast and association with similar sites along the Swahili Coast made it an important trade center. Although there are few historical documents specifically associating Gedi with Indian Ocean trade, the site is thought to have been one of the most important sites along the coast. Gedi's architecture and an abundance of imported material culture including pottery, beads, and coins provide evidence of the city's rising prosperity over the course of its occupation from as early as the eleventh century to its abandonment in the early seventeenth century.Wilson, Thomas H. "Spatial Analysis and Settlement Patterns on the Eastern African Coast" Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde Bd. 28 (1982): 211.Pradines, Stephane. "Islamization and Urbanization on the Coast of East Africa: recent excavations at Gedi, Kenya." Azania vol. 38 (2003): 181. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00672700309480369
The abandoned urban complex of Gedi preserves comprehensive physical evidence of Swahili cultural traditions. Its remaining mosques, houses, pillar tombs, streets, wells, and drainage systems, alongside locally made pottery and improved goods, document the religious, domestic, civic, and commercial life of the settlement. The surviving architecture, archeological deposits, and preserved town plan constitute the primary basis of the site's heritage value.
History of discovery and excavation
Although Gedi remained unknown to most of British East Africa's colonists until the 1920s, the site was known by the local Mijikenda peoples. Currently, the Giriama, one of the Mijikenda tribes, maintain a large community around the Gedi ruins who view the site as a sacred and spiritual place.Deadly, Tucker. "The Interdependence of Gedi Ruins and the Giriama: A Study of Ancestral Spirits, Jinn, and the Impact of Islam." Dickinson College, 2012. Despite changes in their belief system and the prominence of Islam in the region, evil and ancestral spirits are thought by many to reside at Gedi. According to local tradition, the ruins are protected by the spirits of its priests. These "Old Ones" are said to curse anyone who harms the site.
The Gedi ruins were first discovered by colonialists in 1884 after a British resident of Zanzibar, Sir John Kirk, visited the site. However, the ruins remained obscured until their subsequent rediscovery in the 1920s, when the site began to gain attention from the British East African government. Initial excavations at Gedi began in the late-1940s, and the site today remains one of the most intensely studied Swahili Coast settlements. The significance of the ruins has been largely used to assess the site's role within the region in association with other sites to provide insight into the development of Swahili culture, the organization of Indian Ocean trade, the introduction and spread of Islam, and the political and economic ties between Swahili communities through their cultural remains and their spatial relationships.Pradines, Stephane. "Islamization and Urbanization on the Coast of East Africa: recent excavations at Gedi, Kenya." Azania vol. 38 (2003): 180.Spear, Thomas. "Early Swahili History Reconsidered." The International Journal of African Historical Studies vol. 33 no. 2 (2000): 261. DOI: 10.2307/220649
Early archaeological research
Excavations commenced at Gedi in 1948 under the supervision of James Kirkman, lasting until 1958 with intermittent excavations occurring from the 1960s to the 1980s.Connah, Graham. African Civilizations: An Archaeological Perspective. 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001): 192. Kirkman excavated the buildings at the city's core, including the palace and several mosques and houses, and also cleared and repaired the walls. The Great Mosque was excavated in 1954 and the palace was excavated in 1963. Following his excavation of the Great Mosque, Kirkman's report "The Arab City of Gedi, The Great Mosque, Architecture and Finds" was published, followed by a series of monographs and papers.Kirkman, James. "Potters' Marks from Medieval Arab Sites in Kenya" The South African Archaeological Bulletin vol. 13 no. 52 (December 1958): 158.
Along with the excavations at Gedi during the 1950s, concurrent excavations also took place at similar sites along the Swahili Coast.Kirkman, James. "Potters' Marks from Medieval Arab Sites in Kenya" The South African Archaeological Bulletin vol. 13 no. 52 (December 1958): 156. Wilson's 1982 survey of the 116 sites along the coast found 34 isolated ruins, which he concluded likely contained possible settlements or isolated dwellings.Wilson, Thomas H. "Spatial Analysis and Settlement Patterns on the Eastern African Coast" Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde Bd. 28 (1982): 210. Although smaller settlements were studied, larger sites received the most attention.Wilson, Thomas H. "Spatial Analysis and Settlement Patterns on the Eastern African Coast" Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde Bd. 28 (1982): 210–211. Other than Gedi, the site most intensively excavated was Ungwana at the mouth of the Tana River, which was similar in size to Gedi.Kirkman, J. S. "The Culture of the Kenya Coast in the Later Middle Ages: Some Conclusions from Excavations 1948–56." The South African Archaeological Bulletin vol. 11 no. 44 (December 1956): 89. However, compared to sites similar in size, Gedi had one of the more densely populated urban centers.
Recent archaeological research
Since the 1990s archaeological research at Gedi and other Swahili coastal settlements has intensified. From the 1980s archaeological research increasingly began to focus more on the relationships between the coastal communities and the interior, challenging the original notion that the development of the Swahili Coast was driven by foreign influence through Indian Ocean trade or by Arab colonists. Another important development in the study of Swahili coastal sites is the increased attention given to remains of structures that were not built of stone. Surveys of the open terrain at Gedi found dense concentrations of mud-thatched dwellings. In 2001, Stephane Pradines from the Institute Francias d'Archeologie Orientale and archaeologists from the National Museum of Kenya conducted a topographical survey of Gedi, which mapped the distribution of neighborhoods in order to investigate the site's urban development. Concurrently, Lynn Koplin conducted surveys of the mud-thatch neighborhoods, focusing on the area between the inner and outer walls.Reynolds, David West. "Swahili Ghost Town." Archaeology vol. 54 no. 6 (November/December 2001): 46–47. From 2002 to 2003, research at Gedi continued to focus on urban development prior to the fifteenth century, with focus on a group of coral houses built by social elites in the site's urban core.
The changing interpretation of Gedi is itself part of the site's research history. Early reports often treated coral-stone towns as evidence of an Arab or foreign settlement. Later work on language, local ceramics, subsistence and earth-built neighbourhoods places Gedi within the history of African coastal communities who adopted Islam and participated in Indian Ocean exchange without losing their local social and material traditions.
History of occupation
The history of occupation at Gedi has been extrapolated as a result of excavations and historical documents pertaining to its material culture, architecture, and the known history of trade linking the Swahili Coast with the regions adjoining the Indian Ocean. The settlement of Gedi occurred long after the emergence of the earliest settlements along the Swahili Coast with the intensification of trade in the sixth century. The earliest evidence for occupation at Gedi is a grave marker that has been radiocarbon dated to between 1041 and 1278, placing the original settlement of the site sometime in the eleventh or early twelfth century.
Gedi's participation in trade is believed to be the contributing factor in its founding and its later development into a city supporting an estimated population of 2,500 inhabitants at its peak. Despite the absence of historical documents specifically mentioning Gedi, it is considered to be one of the most important sites along the coast. Prior to the construction of the outer wall in the fifteenth century, the city initially developed in the northern section of the modern site. The adoption of Islam by the inhabitants in the twelfth century is marked by the presence of three superimposed mosques in the northern area the city, which were constructed during the twelfth to the fourteenth century. The style of architecture and the absence of minarets characteristic of all of Gedi's mosques has been used to suggest that the locals were influenced by the Ibadite denomination.
From the eleventh through the fourteenth centuries, urban development at Gedi expanded primarily to the north, west and south with the eventual shift of the population around the Great Mosque during the fifteenth century. Gedi's population and prosperity peaked during the fifteenth and into the sixteenth century until it and many other coastal sites began to decline in the late-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Gedi was abandoned by the middle of the seventeenth century. The presence of the Portuguese from the sixteenth century has been considered one of the primary factors in Gedi's eventual abandonment with their attempts to monopolize trade and due to armed intervention. However, a drop in the water table seen with the deepening of the well next to the Great Mosque, a Wazimba raid along the coast in 1589, and Oromo migrations and raids from Somalia may have been additional factors in the abandonment of Gedi and most of the mainland coastal sites north of Mombasa.