Maritimity in the Indo-Pacific World

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Maritimity in the Indo-Pacific World" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Indo-Pacific region has long been characterized by dynamic maritime interactions that shaped cultural, economic, and political landscapes. This symposium explores the concept of "maritimity"—the cultural and economic connections communities have with the sea—within the Indo-Pacific World, focusing on archaeological evidence that reveals the depth of these relationships. Drawing from diverse case studies across Southeast Asia, East Africa, South Asia, and Oceania, the panel investigates how maritime practices, technologies, and networks contributed to the development of coastal societies and their integration into broader regional and global systems. Themes include the role of seafaring and boat-building traditions in expanding trade routes, the development of coastal settlements as hubs of interaction, and the exploitation of marine resources that underpinned regional economies. The symposium also considers how environmental factors like monsoons and sea-level changes influenced maritime lifeways and how archaeological findings from ports, shipwrecks, and coastal landscapes shed light on the intertwined histories of communities across the Indo-Pacific. By highlighting the interplay between local adaptations and broader maritime networks, this session offers new perspectives on how maritimity shaped cultural identities and social dynamics in the Indo-Pacific over millennia, contributing to the region’s distinctive maritime heritage.

Other Keywords
Mobility • Multi-regional/Comparative

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-9 of 9)

  • Documents (9)
Documents
  • Comoros Connections: Recent archaeological research on maritime trade and migration in the western Indian Ocean (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Alison Crowther.

    This is an abstract from the "Maritimity in the Indo-Pacific World" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Comoros islands have been a key node in Indian Ocean trading systems since the late first millennium CE, and are suggested to have played a significant role in the still mysterious Austronesian colonisation of Madagascar. Yet little systematic archaeological research has been undertaken in the archipelago since the 1980s, leaving major gaps in...

  • Cowry connections: an archaeology of early globalisation in the Maldives (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mirani Litster.

    This is an abstract from the "Maritimity in the Indo-Pacific World" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Modern examples demonstrate that islands occupy an important role in globalisation events, and remote islands often have a specialised geopolitical and economic function. In this paper I will explore how early globalisation is reflected in remote island use, through an examination of the Maldivian archaeological record. Based on current evidence,...

  • Do mosques define maritimity on the Swahili coast? (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Horton.

    This is an abstract from the "Maritimity in the Indo-Pacific World" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mosques are the outward expression of Islam in Swahili coastal communities. They were often the first building constructed of stone, and in many towns the only stone-built architecture, representing permanence and identify. In trading communities, mosques also had a role as places of safety for fellow muslim travellers, and where they could practice...

  • Entangling the maritime trade routes of the Indian Ocean World: a view from southern Mozambique (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Abigail Moffett.

    This is an abstract from the "Maritimity in the Indo-Pacific World" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite evidence of contact between southern African coastal communities and Indian Ocean maritime networks from 600 CE, the connections between these coastal groups, the communities of the interior, and oceanic maritime routes during the Global Middle Ages remain poorly understood. Our current project, ENTANGLED, employs an interdisciplinary...

  • The environmental and social dimensions of early maritime interaction networks in the South China Sea (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Francis Allard.

    This is an abstract from the "Maritimity in the Indo-Pacific World" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. <html> The 1<sup>st</sup> millennium BCE witnessed the expansion of maritime networks linking several coastal areas of the South China Sea. By the middle of the millennium, interaction involved not only the movement of decorative objects of different types (e.g. jade ornaments; glass and stone beads, some originating in South Asia), but also raw...

  • FINDING THE MANGROVE HIGHWAY: 51,000 YEARS OF MARINE ADAPTATION AT BOODIE CAVE, WESTERN AUSTRALIA (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Fiona Hook.

    This is an abstract from the "Maritimity in the Indo-Pacific World" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Coastal environments have been argued to be crucial in the dispersal of modern humans from Africa to Australia. However, there is limited archaeological evidence of coastal resource use between Arabia and Sahul before 50,000 years ago. Boodie Cave on Barrow Island, Australia, occupied by Aboriginal people around 51.1 ka, offers some of the earliest...

  • No Maritime for YOU? The Analytical Value of “Maritime” as Commercial and Military Activity for Understanding the Evolution and Institutionalization of Global Economies. (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rahul Oka.

    This is an abstract from the "Maritimity in the Indo-Pacific World" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. <html> The formal definition of maritime specifically pertaining to human activity in the Oxford Dictionary is “connected with the sea, especially in relation to seafaring commercial or military activity.” A recent approach (Fleischer et al 2011) using temperate zone marine subsistence activity as a baseline, defines a maritime society as one that...

  • Reefs & Relics: An Ichthyo-Archaeological Approach to Cultural and Environmental Conservation in Andavadoaka, Madagascar (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lily Singman-Aste.

    This is an abstract from the "Maritimity in the Indo-Pacific World" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The village of Andavadoaka, located in the Morombe district of Befandefa in Southwestern Madagascar, is home to the Vezo fishing people. The coral reefs around the area have been the focus of conservation efforts due to their high biodiversity as well as threats to the ecosystem. These threats negatively impact the Vezo, as the sea is their main...

  • Regional Coastal Dhow Trade Networks are not Limited by Monsoons, Rather Driven by Trade Needs: Implications for the early Swahili Marinescape (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Morse.

    This is an abstract from the "Maritimity in the Indo-Pacific World" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The nature of how ancestral peoples of the Eastern African coast engaged with their maritime environment remains a source of debate and uncertainty in the archaeological literature. Therein, the alternating monsoon seasons that occur during the winter and summer across the Indian Ocean are often seen as a major roadblock to maritime trade on the...