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London Times 3-May-1989
Dr James Kirkman
Archaeology on Africa's eastern coast
Dr James Kirkman, OBE, FSA, who died on April 26 aged 83, established
for the first time the archaeology of the East African coast upon a secure
and scientific footing.
For a quarter of a century until his retirement
in 1972, he undertook excavation in Kenya, on Pemba Island and on mainland
Tanzania at sites such as Gedi and the great Portuguese fortress of Fort
Jesus in Mombasa. This research formed the basis for much of the
present work on the Swahili coast.
James Speding Kirkman was born in 1906 and educated
at Cambridge University. After working briefly in Borneo and Ceylon
he was taken on as an archaeological volunteer at Castle Dove and later
joined Mortimer Wheeler at Maiden Castle. He then volunteered to work in
Iraq, but with the outbreak of the Second World War his career was suspended
and he joined the RAF where he served with typical courage as a rear gunner.
His war service enabled him to return to the Middle East where he became
proficient in spoken Arabic.
After the war he worked briefly at the Iraqi Embassy
in London and then joined the External Services.
Kirkman wanted, however, to return to archaeology
and his opportunity came in 1948 when a chance inquiry to Louis Leaky resulted
in his appointment as Warden of the Gedi National Park, near Malindi.
The mysterious ruins of Gedi have long fascinated
travellers. They were variously attributed to Arabs, Persians and Portuguese;
but the thick forest which covered the walls allowed for wild speculation
and little scientific certainty. For the next 10 years the forest was carefully
cut back, the houses, tombs and mosques uncovered by large-scale excavations.
Today Gedi is one of the most spectacular sites in Africa. Kirkman was
able [to] date and reconstruct the lifestyle of the Muslim inhabitants
of the African coast, identifying their pottery which reached Gedi from
as far afield as China and the Middle East.
With Gedi completed he worked on exposing and dating
the other major sites along the Kenyan coast such as Takwa, Ungwana and
Mnarani. These towns when taken together, covered the whole span of the
coastal civilisation from the 10th to the 19th denturies and so, in the
classical archaeological way, established the basic cultural sequence for
all to follow.
His book Men and Monuments on the East African
Coast (1964) exemplified much of the maxim that archaeologists dig
up people not things; his experiences in Iraq convinced Kirkman that the
medieval trading communities were Arab and not African in origin.
In 1958, after it had been 60 years a prison, the
Kenya Government declared Fort Jesus an historical monument, and asked
Kirkman to direct the conversion. Despite years of neglect this huge fortress,
built by the Portuguese as their East African headquarters in 1593, remained
exceptionally complete. For eleven years Kirkman worked across the site,
exposing the earliest buildings and clearing out great depths of rubbish
rich in artefacts and pottery. He set up a museum and built himself a house
within the fort.
His work is marked by the publication, Fort Jesus:
A Portuguese Fortress on the East African Coast (1974) and also provides
Kenya's most visited historical site.
Kirkman's retirement to Cambridge provided him with
new opportunities at libraries that were not available in Mombasa and there
followed a stream of articles on the history and archaeology of the Western
Indian Ocean world. He took on the editorship of the International Journal
of Nautical Archaeology and lent his considerable expertise to committees
such as the British Institute in Eastern Africa.
He leaves a widow, Dorothy, and one son.