Stephanie Wynne-Jones

Stephanie Wynne-Jones is an Africanist archaeologist, whose research focuses on East African material culture, society and urbanism. She is Professor and Deputy Head of the Department of Archaeology at the University of York.[1] She previously worked as assistant director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa (2005-2008) and remains a Trustee and Member of the BIEA Governing Council.[2] In 2016, Wynne-Jones was elected to Fellowship of the Society of Antiquaries of London.[3] Wynne-Jones is one of the Core Group at the Danish National Research Foundation Centre of Excellence in Urban Network Evolutions (Urbnet), Aarhus University. Between 2015 and 2017 she was a Pro Futura Scientia Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala.[4]

Research

Wynne-Jones' research has explored the medieval history of eastern Africa, with a focus on the Swahili coast and the caravan trade that connected it with the African interior.[5] She has directed a series of projects across east Africa, including at Kilwa Kisiwani in southern Tanzania, at Vumba Kuu on the Kenya coast, on Mafia Island, at Ujiji by Lake Tanganyika and on Zanzibar.[6] Her 2016 monograph draws on these multiple research projects to develop the idea of a distinctive system of value and engagement with material culture to be found on the precolonial Swahili coast.[7] She is joint editor with Adria LaViolette of The Swahili World.[8]

She is part of a network that have been exploring the Global Middle Ages and has co-written a response to Gordon Childe's seminal article What Happened in History?[9] Her current research project examines the urban ecology of early settlement on Zanzibar.[10] Wynne-Jones research also focuses on archaeological theory - exploring social complexity by challenging the idea unilineal social progress through archaeology.[11]

Excavation

Wynne-Jones has directed excavations at multiple sites across eastern Africa. These include:

  • Songo Mnara, a stone town in Tanzania which is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.[12] Her excavations at the site have applied multiple methodologies to exploring the uses of space across the 14th - 16th century Swahili town. Wynne-Jones has focused in particular on the domestic spaces and how they were inhabited and used as part of domestic activity and external trade.[13] Together with Jeffrey Fleisher she has also published extensively on the site itself and the methodologies used to recover traces of daily life.[14]
  • Vumba Kuu, a site on the southern coast of Kenya. Wynne-Jones' work here has explored the materiality of historical traditions at the site and how the histories rest on practices and priorities of life at Vumba.[15]
  • At Unguja Ukuu, an archaeological site on the island of Zanzibar, Wynne-Jones has been exploring the layout of the site[16] and experimenting with ways of recovering high-resolution chronologies of urban life.[17]

Objects and materials

Wynne-Jones has a particular interest in objects and materials and has published extensively on the ways that people interacted with material culture in the African past. She has published on the role of money and the ways that coinage was part of a wider set of objects that held value through the ways people interacted with them.[18] Together with Jeffrey Fleisher she has explored the ceramic dataset of the Early Tana tradition.[19] With Jason Hawkes, she has explored the lapidary trade in the east African coast and suggested that connections with India began in the first millennium AD.[20]

Co-production

Wynne-Jones was Principal Investigator for CONCH (Co-Production Networks for Community Heritage in Tanzania). This project explored the built environment of the Swahili coast to further understanding of the area's past, both locally and globally.[21] She is lead on community production and material culture for Rising From the Depths, an AHRC-funded project exploring the potential for tourism through maritime heritage on the east African coast.[22][23] She has advocated for greater depth in understanding of how coastal communities interact with sites and objects relating to their heritage.[24]

Education

Wynne-Jones was awarded a PhD by the University of Cambridge in 2005, for a thesis exploring the settlement of the Kilwa region during the period of urbanisation at Kilwa Kisiwani.[25] Her BA(Hons) in Archaeology was from the University of Bristol (1995-1998), followed by an MPhil in African Archaeology at the University of Cambridge.[1]

References
  1. "Stephanie Wynne-Jones - Archaeology, The University of York". www.york.ac.uk. Retrieved 2020-03-07.
  2. "Charity Details - British Institute in Eastern Africa". beta.charitycommission.gov.uk. Retrieved 2020-03-07.
  3. "Stephanie Wynne-Jones". Society of Antiquaries of London. Retrieved 2020-03-07.
  4. "SCAS: Stephanie Wynne-Jones". www.swedishcollegium.se. Retrieved 2020-03-07.
  5. "Stephanie Wynne-Jones: Africa in the Medieval World Lecture Series: 'Objects and Encounters on the Medieval East African Coast'". hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2019-12-28.
  6. "Stephanie Wynne-Jones". A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe. Retrieved 2020-03-07.
  7. Wynne-Jones, Stephanie (2016). A Material Culture: consumption and materiality on the precolonial East African coast. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198759317.
  8. "The Swahili World: 1st Edition (Hardback) - Routledge". Routledge.com. Retrieved 2019-12-28.
  9. Leyser, Conrad; Standen, Naomi; Wynne-Jones, Stephanie (2018-11-01). "Settlement, Landscape and Narrative: What Really Happened in History". Past & Present. 238 (suppl_13): 232–260. doi:10.1093/pastj/gty031. ISSN 0031-2746.
  10. "Staff". Urban Ecology and Transitions of the Zanzibar Archipelago. 2019-04-23. Retrieved 2019-12-29.
  11. Levy, Janet E. (2009). "Socialising Complexity: Structure, Interaction and Power in Archaeological Discourse, edited by Sheila Kohring & Stephanie Wynne-Jones, 2007. Oxford: Oxbow Books; ISBN-13 978-1-84217-294-0 paperback £32 & US$64; iv+244 pp., 40 figs., 4 tables". Cambridge Archaeological Journal. 19 (1): 137–139. doi:10.1017/S0959774309000201. ISSN 1474-0540.
  12. Welham, K.; Fleisher, J.; Cheetham, P.; Manley, H.; Steele, C.; Wynne‐Jones, S. (2014). "Geophysical Survey in Sub-Saharan Africa: magnetic and Electromagnetic Investigation of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Songo Mnara, Tanzania". Archaeological Prospection. 21 (4): 255–262. doi:10.1002/arp.1487. hdl:1911/97372. ISSN 1099-0763.
  13. Wynne-Jones, Stephanie (2013-12-01). "The public life of the Swahili stonehouse, 14th–15th centuries AD". Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 32 (4): 759–773. doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2013.05.003. ISSN 0278-4165.
  14. "Jeffrey Fleisher | Department of Anthropology | School of Social Sciences | Rice University". anthropology.rice.edu. Retrieved 2020-03-07.
  15. Wynne-Jones, Stephanie (2010). "Remembering and Reworking the Swahili Diwanate: The Role of Objects and Places at Vumba Kuu". The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 43: 407–427.
  16. Fitton, Tom; Wynne-Jones, Stephanie (2017). "Understanding the layout of early coastal settlement at Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar". Antiquity. 91 (359): 1268–1284. doi:10.15184/aqy.2017.141. ISSN 0003-598X.
  17. Sulas, Federica; Kristiansen, Søren Munch; Wynne-Jones, Stephanie (2019-03-01). "Soil geochemistry, phytoliths and artefacts from an early Swahili daub house, Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar". Journal of Archaeological Science. 103: 32–45. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2019.01.010. ISSN 0305-4403. S2CID 134305615.
  18. Wynne-Jones, Stephanie; Fleisher, Jeffrey (2012). "Coins in Context: Local Economy, Value and Practice on the East African Swahili Coast". Cambridge Archaeological Journal. 22 (1): 19–36. doi:10.1017/s0959774312000029. hdl:1911/71217. ISSN 0959-7743. S2CID 41661941.
  19. Wynne-Jones, Stephanie; Fleisher, Jeffrey (2013). "Ceramics and Society: Early Tana Tradition and the Swahili Coast (Data Paper)". Internet Archaeology (35). doi:10.11141/ia.35.7. ISSN 1363-5387.
  20. Hawkes, Jason D.; Wynne-Jones, Stephanie (2015-12-25). "India in Africa: Trade goods and connections of the late first millennium". Afriques. Débats, Méthodes et Terrains d'Histoire (6). doi:10.4000/afriques.1752. ISSN 2108-6796.
  21. "Stephanie Wynne-Jones | CONCH". www.conchproject.org. Retrieved 2019-12-28.
  22. "Rising from the Depths » Stephanie Wynne-Jones". Retrieved 2019-12-28.
  23. Henderson, Jon; Breen, Colin; Esteves, Luciana; La Chimia, Annamaria; Lane, Paul; Macamo, Solange; Marvin, Garry; Wynne-Jones, Stephanie (2021-06-22). "Rising from the Depths Network: A Challenge-Led Research Agenda for Marine Heritage and Sustainable Development in Eastern Africa". Heritage. 4 (3): 1026–1048. doi:10.3390/heritage4030057. ISSN 2571-9408.
  24. Wynne-Jones, Stephanie (2007). "It's what you do with it that counts". Journal of Social Archaeology. 7 (3): 325–345. doi:10.1177/1469605307081392. ISSN 1469-6053. S2CID 144788677.
  25. Wynne-Jones, Stephanie Anne (2005). Urbanisation at Kilwa, Tanzania, AD800-1400 (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge. doi:10.17863/cam.20445.
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