AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST When Did the Swahili Become Maritime?: A Reply to Fleisher et al. (2015), and to the Resurgence of Maritime Myopia in the Archaeology of the East African Coast Chapurukha M. Kusimba and Jonathan R. Walz ABSTRACT In this article, we respond to an article by Jeffrey Fleisher et al. (2015) in which they pose the question: When did the Swahili become maritime? We draw from our research findings in coastal and inland Eastern Africa to show that inland African societies were an essential component in the development of Swahili urbanism and maritimity. To understand change in any part of the East African coast requires understanding the entire context of economic, political, and social interaction across the diverse dimensions of this society. By excluding inland Eastern Africa from their analysis, Fleisher et al. omit the interactions between land and sea that were the basis of this society’s development. We conclude that Swahili society resulted from intercommunity interaction, socioeconomic networks, and exploitation of diverse regional resources. [trade, maritime, mosaics, urbanism, Swahili] RESUMEN En este art´ ıculo, respondemos al escrito de Jeffrey Fleischer et al. (2015) en el cual hacen la pre- gunta: ¿Cu ´ ando los swahilis se convirtieron en una sociedad mar´ ıtima? Nos basamos en los hallazgos de nuestra investigaci ´ on en ´ Africa oriental costera e interior para mostrar que las sociedades africanas del interior fueron un componente esencial en el desarrollo del urbanismo y la maritimidad swahili. Entender los cambios en cualquier parte de la costa africana oriental requiere entender el contexto entero de las interacciones econ ´ omicas, pol´ ıticas y sociales a trav ´ es de las diversas dimensiones de esta sociedad. Al excluir ´ Africa oriental interior de su an ´ alisis, Fleisher et al. omiten las interacciones entre el mar y la tierra que fueron la base del desarrollo de esta sociedad. Concluimos que la sociedad swahili result ´ o de la interacci ´ on intercomunitaria, las redes socioecon ´ omicas y la explotaci ´ on de diversos recursos regionales. [comercio, mar´ ıtimo, mosaicos, urbanismo, Swahili] F or decades, anthropologists have debated the origins of the Swahili people of the East African coast. After a long period of colonial scholarship in which the Swahili were regarded as descendants of Muslim immigrants from the Near East, postcolonial scholars reestablished the African identity of Swahili history and culture (Allen 1993; Nurse and Spear 1985). Fleisher et al. (2015) take us back to an earlier conception and argue that as Swahili society became Islamic after the second millennium CE, it took on the character of maritimity that they teleologically view as more essentially Swahili than the many other dimensions of that cultural complex. 1 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 120, No. 3, pp. 429–443, ISSN 0002-7294, online ISSN 1548-1433. C  2018 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/aman.13059 In this response, we argue that focusing on maritim- ity as definitive of Swahili society leaves out many other nonmaritime characteristics crucial to Swahili identity and to historical processes and cultural practices of this cultural group and region. We take issue with Fleisher et al.’s theo- retical approach and their methodology. First, they conceive of the Swahili as a singular, distinct, and bounded society that achieved its high point in the late Iron Age, when urban- ization, Islamic architecture, and other features of complex society developed. Their theoretical approach invents a ho- mogeneity that did not exist, assumes a teleology of urban development and a coming into being of “Swahili-ness,” and