1.2.2. Trade during the Adalite period in Siyaara
The period that is best represented at Siyaara is that of the Adal Sultanate (1415–1577). Around 61% of the imported ceramics that we have been able to identify are from this period, as opposed to 31% of the eleventh to fourteenth centuries and 8% of the seventeenth to nineteenth. The number might increase if we consider that some of the pottery typical of the previous period (such as SBBW and White Cream Ware) were probably still traded during the fifteenth century. As noted above, while materials from this period appear throughout the site, there is an obvious concentration in Central and East. The area next to the beach, the space around the two buildings and Mound 7 are the places that delivered the larger volume of imports. Small holes dug by nomads revealed an occupation layer belonging to this period some 0.25 m under the present surface.
If there is a fossil type for the Adalite horizon, this is Speckled pottery (Fig. 11). There is no site from this period that has not yielded at least a couple of sherds. In Siyaara, they are the most abundant type: we collected a minimum number of 35 vessels. They have yellow, buff or light orange fabrics, which are well-levigated and homogeneous but brittle, and a characteristic thick turquoise or green glaze with speckles. Shapes include large dishes, basins and jugs with pedestalled bottoms. The most common type is a large dish or basin with ring footing and flange rim. The quality of the glaze varies substantially, which probably indicates different places of production. In fact, it has been proposed that they were made in both southern Iran and South Arabia (Priestman 2013: 633). In our case, we can distinguish three types of glaze: turquoise-blue, green and light purple-pink. The first two fit neatly the Speckled 1 type defined by Priestman (2013: 632–633). The latter is the crudest of the three, with a more irregular surface and plenty of speckles (it can perhaps be related to Priestman’s Speckled 2 type); the green glaze is the finest and most homogeneous, and the turquoise/blue the most common in Siyaara and elsewhere in Somaliland. This kind of pottery has a very wide distribution: it has been found in the Gulf (Hansman, 1985: 52; Kennet, 2004: 42–43), Sudan (Smith et al., 2012: 181–182) and Eastern Africa (e.g. Pradines, 2004: fig. 228).
Underglaze Painted Fritware was probably also imported from Iran, although similar productions existed in Egypt (Watson 2004: 420–423). In Siyaara, it is less common than speckled pottery (Fig. 11, nos 7–14): we documented a minimum number of 13 vessels or 20 fragments, of which 16 are of turquoise and black underglaze-painted frit (FRIT.TB: Priestman 2013: 614–615), two turquoise and white (FRIT.BW) and two black and white. FRIT.TB is decorated with geometric designs, including a ruyin motif typical of Chinese porcelain, the two fragments of FRIT.BW have floral patterns, which are very common in Egypt. The fabric is in all cases white or buff, very soft and brittle and crumbles easily. These wares started production around the fourteenth century, seemingly inspired by Chinese porcelain, and continued until recent times. Their heyday, however, seem to be the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. There is a minimum number of 11 vessels.
The second most common of the fine wares during this period in Siyaara is the Blue Tihama from Yemen, of which we have documented 44 sherds, belonging to around 20 vessels (Fig. 12). Blue Tihama wares are common in Zabid and its hinterland, where they were first defined (Keall, 1983a: 56, Fig. 4, n° 8). The motifs, originally painted white, appear white, light blue or green against a dark blue to dark green background, and the fabric is brick red in color. The motifs are generally lines and dots, but we also have rows of SS (see Hardy-Guilbert and Rougeulle, 1995: Fig. 5, no. 6), crosshatching, and three cases of epigraphic decoration (including an invocation to Allah). These wares seem to originate during the thirteenth century, but the Classic Blue Tihama, which is the one we have documented in Siyaara, is dated between 1400 and 1550 (Hardy-Guilbert and Rougeulle, 1995: 35), coinciding with the Adal Sultanate. Keall (1983b: 383) believes that this pottery is a local imitation of Persian underglaze painted black and turquoise, which becomes popular during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Vessels with white slip-painted designs on a brown-red background (green in one case) are most likely from the same period and region, considering the very similar technique. They have a light yellow glaze and the decorations, which are painted on the bottom of the bowls, represent vegetal patterns, triangles filled with dots and six-pointed stars. The later are the most characteristic decoration of the Green-Yellow Tihama pottery (Keall, 1983a: 56), which appears around the thirteenth century. Our pieces might belong to an evolved version of this ware that continues under production until the fifteenth century: the Bleeding-Green Tihama (Keall, 1983b: 383). It has a cruder making, red clay fabric, white slip and green paint bleeding into a transparent glaze. Only one of our pieces, however, is actually green (Fig. 13). They are less common than Blue Tihama: only 8 vessels have been found.
Also from Yemen come the blue and white underglaze painted wares that Keall (1983a: 56-57) has named Tihama Blue and White. According to Keall, they have a fine white body clay, but five of our examples have orange or red fabrics, and the other three, grey, perhaps suggesting different places of production. They have simple blue geometric motifs painted on a white background and a completely colorless glaze. We may have both Yemeni and Persian productions, as south Iran also delivered blue and white underglaze-painted wares, whose trade seems to have increased during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Priestman 2013: 623–624). In both cases, they are imitations of Chinese blue and white porcelain and their chronology is roughly situated between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries.
There is another type of glazed ware that in all likelihood comes from Yemen: it is represented by small to medium-sized bowls with pedestalled bottoms, slightly everted to slightly inverted thickened rims, wheel marks on the walls, grey or brown fabric, and a characteristic dark olive green glaze—for which we call this type of pottery Dark Glaze Ware. Sherds belonging to a minimum number of 11 vessels were collected during the survey. The green glaze is of poor quality, appears highly degraded and decolored in most cases and has been applied carelessly: while it covers mostly the rim and the upper part of the exterior wall, it usually drips along the wall down to the bottom. Compared to other productions, they are crude and were likely cheaper than other wares arriving in the Horn. Their dating in the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries is confirmed by their presence in Adalite levels elsewhere. They were most likely produced in Yemen: there are some parallels (Ciuk and Keall, 1996: pl. 95/46, l) and they bear similarities to Yemeni Early Monochrome Ware. While they are not as common as underglaze painted wares in Siyaara, they appear in different sites in Somaliland, meaning that the country was indeed the final destination of these productions.
As for unglazed wares, it is almost certain that Yemeni White Cream, as noted above, was still produced and traded during this period. If so, it had to compete with Thin Grey Ware, which is common throughout Somaliland. In Siyaara we have found a minimum number of 18 vessels. These wares have very thin walls of homogeneous ashy color and well-levigated, porous fabric. The shapes correspond with drinking cups and juglets (known as qulla in Arabic) with slightly everted direct rims and ring footings. The place or places of production seems to be in Egypt or Syria and the chronology wide. In Suakin it appears in levels from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries (Smith et al., 2012: 180–181). In Somaliland, they appear systematically in sites of the Adalite period.
Chinese wares are represented by porcelain, celadons and Martabani jars. Siyaara has yielded the largest collection of Chinese Blue and White Porcelain in Somaliland so far. We gathered 48 sherds of blue and white porcelain, dated between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries (Fig. 14). To the period comprised between the late fourteenth and early seventeenth century, we can assign a minimum number of 31 vessels, mostly cups and bowls. As some of the pieces are too small to be identified properly it is likely that the actual number is higher. They are most abundant in Central, with 18 items. North delivered 4 pieces; East, 5 and South, 5. Motifs characteristic of the fifteenth to mid-sixteenth century are the beribboned double vajra decorating the bottom of a cup or bowl (Crick, 2002: 181–182), of which we have four examples; a honeycomb pattern along the rim (Crick, 2002: 182), of which we have three items; the ruyin motif, which appears on the pedestal of one of our cups; lotus scrolls covering the wall of the vessel (four items), and ingzhi fungus (Crick, 2002: 183) that appears on the bottom of one of our bowls. All our pieces are bowls or teacups. Most of the items we were able to identify came from the Jingdezhen kilns, but there is at least one piece from Fujian: it is the bottom of a bowl decorated with wavy lotus petals, of which we have excellent parallels in the San Isidro shipwreck of the first quarter of the sixteenth century (Goddio, 1997: 109).
Martaban is represented by a minimum number of 18 vessels. We collected 22 fragments of which 21 in the northern half of the site (14 in Central) and one in South Beach. Therefore, despite their long chronologies, we can surmise that they belong mostly (or entirely) to the Adalite period. Three fabrics have been documented, grey with black particles, similar to the Zhao’s types 5–6 already documented at Bandar Abbas, and with an olive-green glaze; beige, brittle, with no inclusions and dark green glaze; and brick-colored with white inclusions and vacuoles, which is the most common. The latter is covered in thick, dark brown-black glaze. It matches well Zhao’s Fabric 4 (2015: 286), which corresponds with jars produced in Guangdong between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries. Among the Chinese celadons from this period, we can single out two flanged rims from large basins (30 cm in diameter), a flanged rim in olive green glaze and a sherd decorated with iron painting from a dish or bowl produced in Guangdong during the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. Except for one of the flanged rims, which appeared in Tumulus, the rest were found in Central.
From Southeast Asia, we have fragments from at least six Myanmar celadons. They appear in East and Central: mound 7 delivered several sherds. From here comes a bottom from a large bowl or basin with a characteristic chocolate painting on the outer part of the base. This has been documented on the kiln site of Kalong, in northern Thailand (Rooney, 1988: 139) and similar examples were recovered from the Lena Shoal in the Philippines (Crick, 2002: 214). The kiln was operative between 1300 and 1550 (Miksic, 2009: 65). However, recent research has recovered very similar celadons with identical finish in Myanmar (Sugiyama and Sato, 2019). In fact, both southern Myanmar and northern Thailand experienced a “golden age” in ceramic development during the fifteenth century (Miksic, 2009: 66), although kilns were operative until the seventeenth (Nan Kyi Kyi Khiang, 2007: 27). Unmistakable Myanmar productions are the Opaque White Tin-Glazed wares, dated to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Fig. 15). These wares are known from several East African sites (Zhao, 2015b: Fig. 28) and the Gulf (Sasaki and Sasaki, 2012). Their exact provenance is still not known, but the regions of Twante, Bago, Karen and Mon have been suggested, including the kiln of Kaw Don, where several pieces very similar to our items have been found.2 We have collected three bases from this type of pottery, two in Central and one in North. Similar Southeast Asian ceramic assemblages have been found in fifteenth-century levels in the Persian Gulf (Sasaki and Sasaki, 2003, Sasaki and Sasaki, 2012) and Egypt (Kawatoko, 2005: 854), whereas in East Africa Southeast Asian products appear during the second half of the fifteenth century (Zhao, 2015b: 25).
During this period, a large number of glass bracelets also arrived in the Horn. The most popular are monochrome bangles in cobalt or ultramarine blue glass, sometimes dark green, of which 46 individuals were found. They are either plain or ribboned. In this case, Somaliland was one of the destinations of trade, as they are relatively common in inland sites. They can be dated between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their provenance is unclear, but places of production are known to exist in Egypt, Syria, Iran and India. Traces of bracelet production have also been documented in Yemen (Doe 1971: 134–137; Boulogne and Hardy-Guilbert, 2010: 143–144) and it is very probable that some or many of our pieces came from the Aden region. It has been observed that monochrome bangles tend to predominate in Yemen, as opposed to other areas of the Islamic world (Boulogne, 2012: 193). Polychrome items are, indeed, less common in Siyaara and elsewhere: eleven can be dated between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries (Fig. 16). Nine have enamel punts or knobs: similar, though not identical, pieces are assigned an Indian origin and a sixteenth-seventeenth century date (Hansman, 1985: 80–82, Fig. 19, d-h; Boulogne and Hardy-Guilbert, 2010: 140–142) and it has been suggested that craftsmen might have been moving between India and Yemen (Boulogne and Hardy-Guilbert, 2010: 144). Two other polychrome bangles that can be dated in the Adalite period have a central protruding spine decorated with oblique lines. The majority of bracelets from this period appeared in Central, but a few were collected in South Beach (N = 3) and East (N = 2). Only half a dozen beads have been found of which one barrel-shaped in blue glass and decorated with white chevrons is probably from India and from the period under discussion. Siyaara also yielded a large collection of glass bottles and phials. The most common item is a cylindrical bottle in olive green, aqua or honey-colored glass with very thin walls and a high pushed-in base with a pointed kick (MNI = 13). This form is very abundant elsewhere and many examples have been documented in Zeila and Farhad. In Egypt they appear in Mamluk levels (thirteenth to the fifteenth century) (Kucharczyk, 2015: 77, Fig. 2), thus spanning the Ifat and Adalite periods in Somaliland.
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