Antarctic Islands and Capitalism Beyond Maps

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.

Antarctica has no native populations and is predominantly presented as wilderness, an untouched natural landscape. However, humans have been there since the South Shetland Islands were first sighted around the 1820s. Historical archaeological studies have connected these remote islands to the expansion of modernity and capitalism, showing that the islands were used during the nineteenth century for extractive practices of local marine resources. Based on the results of decades of archaeological research in the region, this paper discusses how the logic of capitalism shaped the particularities of the initial process of geographical exploration of these remote islands and of the early incorporation of Antarctica into the modern world.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Contact(s): Nicole Haddow