The Malagasy World integrates the archaeology of Madagascar within linguistic, historic, and genetic inquiry and presents and synthesizes the most up-to-date knowledge from across these fields, with an emphasis on archaeology and material culture.
The volume explores the complex questions of origins, settlement, and Indian Ocean history, interweaving linguistic, genetic and material evidence. Attention is given to the role of Madagascar as an important site for exploring the ancient exchange of foods and animals between Africa, South Asia and South East Asia as well as for understanding the flourishing medieval trade that took place across the Indian Ocean, alongside the introduction to the island of practices informed by Islam. Diverse and elaborate mortuary practices and megalithic traditions that are found throughout the nation currently and historically are examined along with the co-evolution of people and landscapes, the emergence of socio-political complexity in different parts of the island, the material poetics through which claims to sovereignty were articulated, and the effects of these changes on local communities. Finally, the changing context of the Western Indian Ocean in the last 500 years after the arrival of Europeans is investigated, particularly early colonial encounters, and the uneven effects and consequences of the trade in enslaved people.
The Malagasy World is aimed at archaeologists, anthropologists, historians and linguists interested in Africa, the Indian Ocean and environmental history.
1. Introduction Arrivals: 2. First foragers - archaeological evidence 3. Genetic evidence for human diversity across Madagascar 4. Linguistic evidence for Madagascar’s settlement history and material culture 5. Oral histories of Madagascar’s first settlers and later migrations 6. The view from the east African coast Living with Change: 7. Madagascar’s holocene environments - multiproxy evidence 8. Marine and coastal paleoclimate reconstructions 9. Remote sensing and Holocene coastal settlement 10. Early human-animal interactions 11. Madagascar’s Holocene grassy biomes 12. Perspectives on living with change past, present and future Indian Ocean Worlds: 13. Madagascar in the Indian Ocean: an overview 14. Madagascar and the Comoros 15. Urbanism in Madagascar: Mahilaka and other trading towns 16. Vohemar, trading city and cemetery 17. Arabico-Malagasy sacred texts: the sorabe 18. Archaeology of the Onjatsy 19. Islam and traders in Western Madagascar 20. Perspectives on Madagascar and the Swahili world Circulations: Malagasy Foodways 21. Faunal introductions to Madagascar in regional and international context 22. Introduced plants and their Indian Ocean histories 23. Cattle histories (with a focus on the south) 24. Changing relationships to land and sea in Madagascar’s coastal communities 25. Rice and water management histories in highland Madagascar 26. Archaeoethnological survey of land use in a Betsileo commune 27. Vanilla and its histories 28. Swahili foodways: a comparison Circulations: Malagasy material culture and its networks: 29. Shell beads 30. Glass beads 31. Chinese and South East Asian ceramics in the Southwest Indian Ocean 32. Lathe-turned softstone (“chlorite-schist”) vessels 33. Metals and iron working in Madagascar 34. Textile histories 35. Traditional musical instruments of Madagascar 36. Funerary monuments across Madagascar Power, authority and place-making: 37. The emergence of complex political formations: an overview 38, Andrianampoinimerina and his works 39. Betsileo kingdoms – Manandriana case study 40. Oral histories of the Northern Sakalava 41. The Sakalava of the West 42. Politics in the history and archaeology of the northeast 43. The archaeology of the Androy 44. Madagascar’s rock art 45. Heritage and history in Madagascar 46. Perspectives on Place-making in Madagascar Enslavement, encounters and global circulations since the 16th century: 47. The archaeology of the south and early European incursions 48. The archaeological evidence for Robert Drury’s account 49. The Serapis Project and shipwreck archaeology in Madagascar 50. Madagascar’s involvement in the trade in enslaved people 51. The Malagasy slaves wrecked on Tromelin 53. Negative/colonial heritage in Mahajanga 54. Legacies of slavery in Madagascar
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