20th Annual Leon Levy Lecture

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW.

Registration is required at THIS LINK.

The Leon Levy Lecture is supported by the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation and the Leon Levy Foundation.

This lecture examines how recent archaeological research has transformed the understanding of precolonial state formations in Eastern and Southern Africa. Drawing on excavations and analyses conducted over the past two decades at sites such as Kilwa Kisiwani, Songo Mnara, Mtwapa, Great Zimbabwe, Khami, and Mapungubwe, this study contends that a fundamental reconceptualization of African political complexity is underway. Archaeological evidence now demonstrates the centrality of indigenous agency in the development of coastal urban centers, the sophistication of elite strategies for accumulating and displaying power, and the intricate networks of long-distance trade that connected interior and coastal communities across the Indian Ocean world. Rather than being passive recipients of external influences, African elites actively shaped political, economic, and technological systems that sustained complex polities for centuries. This synthesis offers a comprehensive account of state formation processes, with particular attention to the mechanisms by which elites consolidated power in coastal urban settings and contributed to long-distance trade, metallurgical production, and governance structures. Recent debates concerning heterarchical versus hierarchical political organization are addressed, along with new perspectives on resilience, adaptation, and the role of local agency in state development.

Chapurukha M. Kusimba is Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Florida and Director of its Center for East Africa and Indian Ocean Studies. Trained at Kenyatta University and Bryn Mawr College, he served for nearly two decades as Curator of African Archaeology and Ethnology at the Field Museum. His work reconstructs the rise and decline of Swahili urbanism and the Indian Ocean networks linking eastern Africa to Arabia, South Asia, and China. He has directed excavations at Mtwapa, Manda, Tsavo, and Mount Elgon in Kenya. He has undertaken projects in Rwanda, India, and China, combining archaeometallurgy, ancient DNA, and community-based heritage work. His books include The Rise and Fall of Swahili States (1999), Swahili Worlds in Globalism (2024), and Kin Beneath the Label (2026). A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and past President of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists, he now studies climate change and disease in Swahili collapse.

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