The Nineteenth-Century Colonial Archaeology of Suakin, Sudan
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The Nineteenth-Century Colonial Archaeology of Suakin, Sudan Daniel Rhodes
Published online: 23 November 2010 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
Abstract This paper seeks to examine the role of the built environment as a tool of nineteenth-century British colonial expression within the Red Sea island town of Suakin, Sudan. Within Suakin and its environs, four major European focal points were examined through the use of archaeological survey and excavation. These were; (1) waterfront development (2) centers of colonial management, (3) terrestrial and maritime communication and (4) defense. The central argument of the paper is that economic and social control was maintained through the creation of new urban morphologies and European domination of existing urban space. Keywords Sudan . British . Colonial . Maritime
Introduction This paper examines the role of the built environment as a tool of ideological expression within a British colonial urban centre of nineteenth-century Sudan (Fig. 1). The basis of the research was the premise that architectural forms simultaneously reflect and shape the people and cultures that build them (Pauls 2006). As a result of which buildings are continually modified and re-imagined as the social actions that inhabit and create them change through time (Parker Pearson and Richards 1994). With this as a starting point the research aimed to examine those elements that Parker Pearson and Richards (1994) term denotative functions (e.g. roofs, windows), connotative functions (e.g., processual arches, headquarters) and connotative ideologies (e.g., European zonation). In this way the survey recorded the archaeological material created or adopted by the British colonial authority during the nineteenth-century, Anglo-Egyptian occupation of the island of Suakin. The results of this fieldwork are intended to develop understanding of this
D. Rhodes (*) National Trust for Scotland, Hermiston Quay, 5 Cutlins Road, EH11 4DF Edinburgh, UK e-mail: [email protected]
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:162–189
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Fig. 1 Map of Northern Indian Ocean and Red Sea showing location of Suakin
period of colonial activity within the wider world system of European expansion. This survey of Suakin was part of a larger doctoral project, undertaken with the Centre for Maritime Archaeology, University of Ulster, which also included the examination of urban colonial centers along the coasts of Tanzania and Kenya (Rhodes 2008), and linked also to broader ongoing archaeological research on the earlier period of Suakin’s history and associated architectural conservation (Mallinson et al. 2009). The historic research presented here is based upon published accounts and the field survey is designed as the introductory part of a wider research agenda that addresses the pre-European indigenous archaeology of Suakin as well as indigenous reactions to European activity. As such this article should be approached as representing the first phase of the investigation of a single chapter within the wider story of Suakin
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