Ceramic trends on Unguja Island in Zanzibar, Tanzania provide insights into non-elite political strategies on the East African Swahili Coast. Synthesizing imported ceramic data from two seasons of systematic field survey across rural Unguja with historical, ethnographic, and archaeological evidence from coastal East Africa, this paper argues that an integrative orientation toward power characterized bottom-up action on the Swahili Coast over the second millennium CE. While theories of bottom-up action have emphasized commoner autonomy and resistance to clientage, debt, and social inequality, evidence from the Swahili Coast attests to efforts by non-elites to seek entrance into cycles of reciprocal obligation as a means for recognition and social mobility—a specifically non-egalitarian orientation toward power. In response, elites competed with one another to accumulate wealth-in-people, resulting in a competitive patron-client system that prevented political consolidation. Elucidating these dynamics contributes to an understanding of how non-elite political strategies have shaped sociopolitical systems globally.

坦桑尼亚桑给巴尔安古贾岛的陶瓷趋势为东非斯瓦希里海岸的非精英政治战略提供了见解。本文综合了安古贾农村两季系统实地调查的进口陶瓷数据以及东非沿海的历史、人种学和考古证据，认为对权力的综合导向是公元第二个千年斯瓦希里海岸自下而上行动的特征。虽然自下而上的行动理论强调平民自治和对附庸、债务和社会不平等的抵制，但来自斯瓦希里海岸的证据证明，非精英人士努力寻求进入互惠义务循环，作为承认和社会流动的手段——对权力的一种特别非平等主义的取向。作为回应，精英们相互竞争以积累人民财富，从而形成了一种竞争性的庇护制度，阻碍了政治整合。阐明这些动态有助于理解非精英政治策略如何塑造全球社会政治体系。