jats:p The material culture and dwellings of the Zigua villages of Kwa Fungo and Kwengoma, in north-eastern Tanzania, bear the traces of complex social and historical dynamics. In this paper, we analyse household inventories and ethnographic interview data originally collected in 1991 by a team from the University of Dar es Salaam and the National Museum, Tanzania. We rely on oral histories as well as on Zigua epistemologies and ideas of percolating pasts to historicise and contextualise the processes that shaped the material world of these two village communities. The paper focuses on investigating the shift from round ( msonge) to rectangular ( banda) house-types, the household material changes generated by labour migrations and Nyerere’s Ujamaa, the materialisation of healing practices, and the formation of specific aspects of identity. </jats:p>