Adria LaViolette


Adria Jean LaViolette is an American archaeologist at the University of Virginia. She is a specialist in Swahili archaeology and is the joint editor of The Swahili World.

Early life and education

Adria LaViolette is one of the four children of Paul A. LaViolette Jr., and Jean Scully LaViolette.
She received her BA in 1977 from Yale University, her MA in 1981 from Washington University in St. Louis. Her PhD was also from Washington University in St. Louis in 1987 for a dissertation on the subject of "An Archaeological Ethnography of Blacksmiths, Potters and Masons in Jenné, Mali".

Career

LaViolette is an archaeologist at the University of Virginia where she specialises in Swahili archaeology. She is the joint editor with Stephanie Wynne-Jones of The Swahili World.

Selected publications

1990s

  • 1990 - "Iron Age Settlement around Mkiu, South-eastern Tanzania". Azania 25:19-26..
  • 1994 - "Masons of Mali: A Millennium of Design and Technology in Earthen Materials." In Society, Culture, and Technology in Africa. S. Terry Childs, ed. pp. 86–97. Philadelphia: MASCA Research Papers in Science and Archaeology.
  • 1995 - "Women Craft Specialists in Jenne: The Manipulation of Mande Social Categories". In Status and Identity in West Africa: Nyamakalaw of Mande. D. C. Conrad and B. E. Frank, eds. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  • 1999 - "Elusive Wattle and Daub: Finding the Hidden Majority in the Archaeology of the Swahili" Azania 87–108.

2000s

2010s

  • 2013 - The Early Swahili Trade Village of Tumbe, Pemba Island, Tanzania, AD 600–950. Antiquity 87 : 1151–1168...
  • 2013 - The Swahili World. Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology. Oxford University Press 901-914
  • 2013 - Swahili Historical Chronicles from an Archaeological Perspective: Bridging History and Archaeology, and Coast and Hinterland, in Southern Tanzania. In The Death of Prehistory. P. Schmidt and S. Mrozowski, eds. pp. 117–140. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • 2015 - When Did the Swahili become Maritime? Jeffrey Fleisher, Paul Lane, Adria LaViolette, Annalisa Christie, Mark Horton, Edward Pollard, Erendira Quintana Morales, Thomas Vernet, and Stephanie Wynne-Jones. American Anthropologist 117: 100–115.
  • 2018 - Craft and Industry. Adria LaViolette. In The Swahili World pp. 319–334. London: Routledge.
  • 2018 - Pemba Island, c. 1000-1500 CE. Adria LaViolette. In The Swahili World, pp. 231–238. London: Routledge.
  • 2018 - The Swahili World. Adria LaViolette and Stephanie Wynne-Jones. In The Swahili World, pp. 1–14. London: Routledge.
  • 2018 - The Swahili World. Adria LaViolette and Stephanie Wynne-Jones. Routledge Worlds Series. London: Routledge.
  • 2018 - Developments in Rural Life on the Eastern African Coast, a.d. 700–1500. Adria LaViolette and Jeffrey Fleisher. Journal of Field Archaeology 43: 380–398.

2020s

  • 2022 - Holocene human-ecodynamics and the littoral zones of the Zanzibar Archipelago. Adria LaViolette et al. Frontiers in Earth Science.
  • 2023 - Assembling Islamic Practice in a Swahili Urban Landscape, 11th-16th Centuries. Adria LaViolette, Jeffery Fleisher, Mark Horton. J. of Social Archaeology 23: 99–124.