Archaeology of Migrations: Integrated Maritime and Land Archaeology to Assess Disease Control in the Indian Ocean

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "In Small Islands Forgotten: Insular Historical Archaeologies of a Globalizing World", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This paper illustrates the relationships between the indentured laborers diaspora, the progress in maritime technology, and crises caused by the outbreak of diseases of epidemic proportions in the British Indian Ocean colonies.

The improvement of shipbuilding made the voyage faster; however, one downside was the increased transmission of diseases in the colonies, which forced aggressive measures to address this problem. The establishment of quarantine stations was a preventive system extensively applied in the Indian Ocean. This system has also had reverberations on maritime routes and has caused serious environmental impacts on small and uncontaminated islands.

The combination of land and maritime investigation has the potential to open a window onto otherwise opaque elements of indentured people’s voyages and the way diseases were spread on small islands. Moreover, historical archaeology can bring the interweaving of these issues to the fore, suggesting greater correspondence to discussions on past and present mobilities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• In Small Islands Forgotten: Insular Historical Archaeologies of a Globalizing World   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow