Comoros Connections: Recent archaeological research on maritime trade and migration in the western Indian Ocean

Summary

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 our understanding of the origins and lifeways of the earliest Comorians and their maritime connections. This paper presents an overview of recent archaeological research in the Union of the Comoros, involving new excavations at the sites of Membeni and M’Bachile on Ngazidja and Old Sima on Ndzuani. A major focus of the project has been on the systematic collection and analysis of archaeo-biological datasets to better understand the origins of the people, plants and animals found at the earliest ‘Dembeni’ phase settlements, as well as high definition studies of local and exotic material culture. These studies are allowing us to better understand the place of the Comoros in trans-regional networks of exchange and mobility, and situate contemporary Comorian culture in a longer-term trajectory of maritime interactions and influences that stretch far across the Indian Ocean to Asia and beyond.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Maritimity in the Indo-Pacific World

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51697