There are several locations known to be called or formerly called Shungwaya. See my webpage on Al-Jubb and south of it Bur Gao plus Shungwaya Ndogo at Shaka la Sia (on google maps: Sheeka Lasaay) which is again south of Bur Gao. The following place by James De Vere Allen also identified as being called Shungwaya is again further south on the coast: The third Shungwaya, not yet located, is said by nineteenth-century sources to be somewhere in the swamps and creeks on the mainland opposite Pate Island. This was the mouth of the southernmost and main course of the Ewaso Nyiro, and this is the place he has provisionally identified as the Tiung-lji of the late twelfth-century Chinese source. Note: as this place appears on early Portuguese maps of the 16^th century it must have been Medieval.

The only author that has something to say about the mainland opposite Pate is Ibn Majid (1470): Between the island and the continent is the way (for the ships). On the ocean side of the island is the reef, but close to the island you find that where she is it is necessary to redirect the course; it is up to close to Vazina (is an island way further south on the Kenya coast.); the continent is inhabited by tribes, as in Sarik. (This is the Ibrahim Khoury translation. Claude Jouannes has: the tribes on the mainland are like thieves.)

Taken from: Swahili Origins: Swahili Culture & the Shungwaya Phenomenon; By James De Vere Allen.

A fourth Shungwaya is on a former course of the Tana north of the modem settlement of Golbanti. A few miles south of Golbanti lies the swamp known as 'Lake' Kurawa, the 'Kirau' of many traditions. This is still an important dry-season grazing ground for the Orma south of the Tana River.

The fifth Shungwaya, known to modem Mijikenda as 'Kaya Singwaya', Shungwaya: The Setting is on the banks of the Lower Sabaki just by modem Jilore. It lies not far north of 'Mount' Mangea. This is the only Shungwaya site to be excavated, and yielded pottery going back to at least the tenth century. It was also, unlike later Mijikenda kayos, roughly rectangular in shape. It is still somewhat sacred in the eyes of nearby Mijikenda, in many of whose traditions it appears as 'Mwangea'.

Taken from: The archaeology of the iron-working, farming communities in the central and southern coast region of Kenya by RICHARD MICHAEL HELM.

Moro: central ritual enclosure.

Some of the ceramic at Kaya Singwaya (at Jilore) are also occurring contemporaneously in the South Pare Hills as Group B Combed Ware (Soper, R. 1967b) and in the North Pare Hills (Odner, K. 1971a). It can also be associated with the sherds of Combed Wavy Line pottery recovered from the Taita Hills (Collett, D. 1985), (Mutoro, H. 1987), at Marafa and other localities on the northern side of the Sabaki River valley (Collett, D. 1985; Tinga K. 1993), along the River Tana (Abungu, G. 1989: 128, type /g;), and the coastal towns of Shanga, in the Lamu Archipelago (Horton, M. 1996), Ungwana, Mambrui (Abungu, G. 1993) and Gedi, south of Malindi (Kirkman, J. 1954). Similar pottery is reported at Embu, (Soper, R. 1979) and elements are also incorporated within Group C pottery from Kilimanjaro (Odner, K. 1971b). Radiocarbon dates from this ceramic tradition have been recovered from Shanga and the South Pare Hills (Bombo) and both suggest a date range around the 9 th and 10th centuries AD Horton, M. 1996: 256).

Taken from: CONFLICTING HISTORIES; The archaeology of the iron-working, farming communities in the central and southern coast region of Kenya; by RICHARD MICHAEL HELM. (2000)

Archaeological evidence for settlement and subsistence change has been dominated by the traditional coastal historiography surrounding Shungwaya. Briefly stated, this argues that the coastal hinterland region was only intermittently occupied, first by early iron-working, farming communities during the 3'd century AD, and again following the much later 16^th century AD southwards migration from a central region north of the Tana River of the contemporary Mijikenda inhabitants.

The traditions tell:

-1 How the Bantu Sabaki speaking Mijikenda, Pokomo, and Swahili, along with the Taita, various Somali and possibly other peoples all lived collectively together at Shungwaya.

-2 How the Swahili through interaction with Arab traders first spread southwards along the coastal littoral.

-3 How later, following the aggressive expansion of Eastern Cushitic Oromo (Galla) pastoralists, several of these Shungwaya groups unable to defend themselves, were forced to follow (Pouwels, R. 1987; Nurse, D. 1994; Nurse, D. and Spear, T. 1985; Spear, T. 1978, 1982).

In contrast, intensive field survey has demonstrated a continuous and evolving iron-working, farming cultural sequence spanning the early first to late second millennium AD. This refutes existing claims that the Mijikenda migrated from Shungwaya in the 16^th century AD. Because the traditional Mijikenda 'Kaya' settlements were defensive and culturally sacred sites situated in forest clearings along the coastal upland ridge, believed to have been established during the supposed migration of the Mijikenda from Shungwaya.

Mutoro's excavations (1987; 1994) also identified ceramic materials which were characteristic of early coastal littoral settlements of the later first millennium AD. Such similarity was used to suggest a close interrelationship between early coastal Swahili and local hinterland populations (Abungu, G. and H. Mutoro, 1993).

One possibility mentioned of the existence of these origin myths is to seek unity and common strength among the tribes against the eighteenth-century colonization of the coast by the Omani. The same happened with the Swahili who started calling themselves Shirazi as a political statement against the leading elite who called themselves Arabs. (Who although consisting mostly of Africans and half casts were the supporters of the Omani colonizers).