This meeting of the Houston Archeological Society will feature a program by Jeff Fleischer, professor of anthropology at Rice University, highlighting the ancient Swahili of the eastern African coast. From their homeland in southern Somalia to Mozambique, the Swahili have been long recognized as an Islamic, mercantile society that negotiated the trade between the African continent and the Indian Ocean world.

Fleischer has been exploring these issues through a number of projects on the East African coast that focus on seventh-16th century settlements. He also published an article about these projects in the January 2014 issue of Archeology Magazine.