The Archaeology of Modern Worlds in the Indian Ocean

Case studies that show the importance of the Indian Ocean region to the emergence of modernity and globalization

This volume brings together a diverse range of specialists working in multiple areas of the Indian Ocean world, providing broad geographical coverage and comparisons across sites. Contributors use a historical archaeological approach, which bridges everyday life in the recent past with large-scale processes of globalization, to examine topics related to colonialism, labor, race, ethnicity, diaspora, human-environment relationships, and heritage.

Case studies from Zanzibar, Mauritius and the Mascarene islands, India, Indonesia, Java, and other locations emphasize networks and connections across the Indian Ocean. Contributors apply a variety of disciplinary methods, including bioanthropology, analysis of medieval illustrations and colonial documents, architectural history, and anthropology of built space. They discuss the material history of domestic areas, religious structures, and colonial outposts; the structure of the slave trade; and the everyday implications of disease and health management within laboring populations.

This volume decenters European narratives and actors to show the important ways this region shaped the modern world. By highlighting the experiences of ordinary people in East Africa and South and Southeast Asia, the research in these chapters contributes to a better understanding of histories in the Global South over the last four hundred years.