Historical Archaeology in the Indian Ocean

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Historical Archaeology in the Indian Ocean," at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Historical archaeologists have contributed to our understanding of Atlantic colonial history through studying monumental architecture and material culture from everyday life. Despite the archaeology of the recent past being relatively new to the Indian Ocean region, scholars have already noted the need for engaging novel paradigms through material, landscape, and maritime studies based on historical and cultural contexts of the region. Long standing trade-networks between Africa, South Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and Australia were defining features of the Indian Ocean for centuries before European imperial expansion. Papers in this session utilize a host of disciplinary approaches to examine labor, race, ethnicity, diaspora, human-environment relationships, over the past five hundred years. In drawing together regional papers, this session moves towards the establishment of comparative and connected spatial patterns, artifact typologies, and environmental dynamics. The session as a whole demonstrates the potential contributions research in the IOW can make to historical archaeology broadly.