Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T04:29:25.964Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The archaeology of Mauritius

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2015

Krish Seetah
Krish Seetah*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA (Email: kseetah@stanford.edu)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The archaeology of Atlantic slavery has been widely studied in recent years, but less attention has been paid to the post-slavery system of indenture that transported contract labourers from South Asia, China and Africa to new lands. Colonial Mauritius has left abundant archaeological remains, not least the cemetery for slaves and freed slaves established at Le Morne in the nineteenth century. Analysis of aDNA has demonstrated that individuals buried at Le Morne were of Madagascan and East African (probably Mozambican) origin, testifying to the long-distance movement of slave labour.

Keywords

Indian OceanMauritiuscolonial period archaeologyslaveryarchaeology of indenture
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 89 , Issue 346 , August 2015 , pp. 922 - 939
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, R. 1999. Slaves, freedmen, and indentured laborers in colonial Mauritius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Allen, R. 2008. The Mascarene slave trade and labour migration in the Indian Ocean during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Slavery and Abolition 24: 33–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, R. 2010. Satisfying the “want for labouring people”: European slave trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500–1850. Journal of World History 21: 45–73. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jwh.0.0100 Google Scholar
Allen, R. 2016. History, historical archaeology and the “history of silence”: slavery, slave trading, and labour migrations in the Indian Ocean, 1700–1900, in Seetah, K. (ed.) Connecting continents: archaeology and history in the Indian Ocean. Chicago (IL): Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Appleby, J., Seetah, K., Calaon, D., Čaval, S., Janoo, A. & Teelock, V.. 2014. The juvenile cohort from Le Morne cemetery: a snapshot of early life and death after abolition. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 24: 737–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/oa.2259 Google Scholar
Armstrong, D.V. 2009. Degrees of freedom in the Caribbean: archaeological explorations of transitions from slavery. Antiquity 84: 146–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0003598×00099828 Google Scholar
Armstrong, D.V. & Hauser, M.W.. 2004. An East Indian laborers’ household in nineteenth-century Jamaica: a case for understanding cultural diversity through space, chronology and material culture. Historical Archaeology 38 (2): 9–21.Google Scholar
Arnold, D. 1991. The Indian Ocean as a disease zone. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 14: 1–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00856409108723152 Google Scholar
Bakker, K.A. & Odendall, F.. 2008. Managing heritage in a contested space: the case of Le Morne cultural landscape in Mauritius. SAJAH 23: 225–44.Google Scholar
Bernard, R.T.F. & Parker, D.M.. 2006. The use of archaeological and ethnographical information to supplement the historical record of the distribution of large mammalian herbivores in South Africa. South African Journal of Science 102: 117–19.Google Scholar
Biginagwa, T. 2009. Excavation of the 19th century caravan trade halts in north-eastern Tanzania: a preliminary report. Nyame Akuma 72: 52–60.Google Scholar
Bilby, K.M. & Handler, J.S.. 2004. Obeah: healing and protection in West Indian slave life. Journal of Caribbean History 38 (2): 153–83.Google Scholar
Boodhoo, R. 2010. Health, disease and Indian immigrants in nineteenth century Mauritius. Port Louis: Aapravasi Ghat Trust Fund.Google Scholar
Calaon, D. 2011. Industrial archaeology at Aapravasi Ghat: goods, ports and people histories. Newsletter: Aapravasi Ghat Trust Fund 9: 18–20.Google Scholar
Calaon, D., Čaval, S., Morales-Mateos, J. & Seetah, K.. 2012. Archaeological insights into the “Indentured Experience”: the case of Trianon Barracks, in Teelock, V. (ed.) Angage: explorations into the history, society and culture of indentured immigrants and their descendants in Mauritius (volume 2): 121–38. Port Louis: Aapravasi Ghat Trust Fund.Google Scholar
Campbell, G. & Alpers, E.. 2006. Introduction: slavery, forced labour and resistance in the Indian Ocean, Africa and Asia. Slavery & Abolition 25: ix–xxvii. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0144039042000292992 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carter, M., Govinden, V. & Peerthum, S.. 2003. The last slaves. Port Louis: CRIOS.Google Scholar
Chowdhury, A. 2003. Towards an archaeological heritage management of Aapravasi Ghat. Journal of Mauritian Studies (New Series 2): 87–104.Google Scholar
Chowdhury, A. 2006. The symbolic and archaeological significance of Le Morne Brabant: a fugitive slave site of Mauritius. Journal of Indian Ocean Archaeology 3: 50–61.Google Scholar
Colwell-Chanthaphonh, C. & de Salle-Esso, M.. 2014. Saints and evil and the wayside shrines of Mauritius. Journal of Material Culture 19: 253–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1359183514540066 Google Scholar
Colwell-Chanthaphonh, C., le Chartier, S. & Jacquin-Ng, S.. 2014. The search for Makak: a multidisciplinary settlement history of the northern coast of Le Morne Brabant, Mauritius. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 18: 690–717. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10761-014-0263-4 Google Scholar
Corruccini, R.S., Handler, J.S., Mutaw, R.J. & Lange, F.W.. 1982. Osteology of a slave burial population from Barbados, West Indies. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 59: 443–59. http://doi: 10.1002/ajpa.1330590414 Google Scholar
Cox, G. & Sealy, J.. 1997. Investigating identity and life histories: isotopic analysis and historical documentation of slave skeletons found on the Cape Town Foreshore, South Africa. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 1: 207–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1027349115474 Google Scholar
Cox, G., Sealy, J., Schrire, C. & Morris, A.. 2001. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic analysis for the underclass at the Colonial Cape of Good Hope in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. World Archaeology 33: 73–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00438240126647 Google Scholar
Crosby, A.W. 2004. Ecological imperialism: the biological expansion of Europe, 900–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511805554 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crossland, Z. 2001. Time and the ancestors: landscape survey in the Andrantsay region of Madagascar. Antiquity 75: 825–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0003598×00089407 Google Scholar
Croucher, S. 2007. Clove plantations on nineteenth-century Zanzibar: possibilities for gender archaeology in Africa. Journal of Social Archaeology 7: 302–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1469605307081390 Google Scholar
Drescher, S. 2002. The might experiment: free labour versus slavery in British emancipation. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Engler, S. 2012. Umbanda and Africa. Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 15 (4): 13–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/nr.2012.15.4.13 Google Scholar
Fandrich, I.J. 2007. Yorùbá influences on Haitian vodou and New Orleans voodoo. Journal of Black Studies 37: 775–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0021934705280410 Google Scholar
Finnegan, E., Hart, T. & Halkett, D.. 2011. The ‘informal’ burial ground at Prestwich Street, Cape Town: cultural and chronological indicators for the historical Cape underclass. South African Archaeological Bulletin 66 (194): 136–48.Google Scholar
Floore, P. 2008. Historical archaeology of Fort Fredrik Hendrik, a Dutch East India Company outpost at Mauritius. Unpublished report on the 1997–2000 excavation seasons.Google Scholar
Fregel, R., Seetah, K., Betancor, E., Suárez, N., Calaon, D., Čaval, S., Janoo, A. & Pestano, J.. 2014. Multiple ethnic origins of mitochondrial DNA lineages for the population of Mauritius. PLoS ONE 9 (3): e93294. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0093294 Google Scholar
Fuller, D., Boivin, N., Hoogervorst, T. & Allaby, R.. 2011. Across the Indian Ocean: the prehistoric movement of plants and animals. Antiquity 85: 544–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0003598×00067934 Google Scholar
Hansen, J. & McGowan, G.. 1998. Breaking ground, breaking silence: the story of New York's African burial ground. New York: Henry Holt.Google Scholar
Jamieson, R.W. 1995. Material culture and social death: African-American burial practice. Historical Archaeology 29 (4): 39–58.Google Scholar
Kusimba, C.M. 2004. Archaeology of slavery in East Africa. African Archaeological Review 21: 59–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/B:AARR.0000030785.72144.4a CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lane, P.J. 2010. Developing landscape historical ecologies in Eastern Africa: an outline of current research and potential future directions. African Studies 69: 299–322. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2010.499203 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lane, P.J. 2014. The archaeological potential for reconstructing the history of labour relations in East Africa, c. 1500–1900. History in Africa 41: 277–306. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/hia.2014.10 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lodhi, A.Y. 1973. The institution of slavery in Zanzibar and Pemba. Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies.Google Scholar
Lui, J.M. 1984. Race, ethnicity and the sugar plantation system: Asian labor in Hawaii, 1850 to 1900, in Cheng, L. & Bonicich, E. (ed.) Labour migration under capitalism. Asian workers in the United States before World War II. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
MacEachern, S. 2007. Where in Africa does Africa start?: identity, genetics and African Studies from the Sahara to Dafur. Journal of Social Archaeology 7: 393–412. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1469605307081399 Google Scholar
Marshall, L.W. 2012. Spatiality and the interpretation of identity formation: fugitive slave community creation in nineteenth-century Kenya. African Archaeological Review 29: 355–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10437-012-9117-9 Google Scholar
Orser, C.E., Jr. 2008. Historical archaeology as modern-world archaeology in Argentina. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 12: 181–94.Google Scholar
Pearson, A., Jeffs, B., Witkin, A. & MacQuire, H.. 2011. Infernal traffic: excavation of a liberated African graveyard in Rupert's Valley, St Helena. York: CBA Research Report 169.Google Scholar
Pike, P. 1873. Sub-tropical rambles in the land of Aphanapteryx. New York: Harper & Brothers.Google Scholar
Police, D. 2001. Les pratiques musicales de la population servile puis affranchie de Maurice dans les écrits francophones des XVIIIè et XIXè siècles, in Teelock, V. & Alpers, E. (ed.) History, memory and identity: 81–110. Port Louis: Nelson Mandela Centre for African Culture.Google Scholar
Rhodes, D. 2011. The nineteenth-century colonial archaeology of Suakin, Sudan. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 15: 162–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10761-010-0132-8 Google Scholar
Schmidt, P.R. & Walz, J.R.. 2007. Re-representing African pasts through historical archaeology. American Antiquity 72: 53–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/40035298 Google Scholar
Seetah, K. 2010a. Le Morne Cemetery: archaeological investigations. Report commissioned by and prepared for the Truth and Justice Commission, Port Louis, Mauritius. From reports by D. Calaon, S. Čaval, J. Appleby & E. Lightfoot. Unpublished report.Google Scholar
Seetah, K. 2010b. “Our struggle”: colonial legacies on an island paradise. SHIMA, The International Journal for Island Cultures 4 (1): 99–112.Google Scholar
Seetah, K. 2015a. Objects past: objects present. Material signatures of ephemeral communities. Journal of Social Archaeology 15: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1469605315575124 Google Scholar
Seetah, K. 2015b. “The Minister will tell the nation. . .”: the role of media for public archaeology in Mauritius. World Archaeology 47: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2015.1017600 Google Scholar
Seetah, K., Balbo, A., Calaon, D., Čaval, S., Farr, H., Pluskowski, A., Appleby, J., Durand, C., Lightfoot, E., Morales, J. & Moreno Escobar, M.. 2011. The Mauritian Archaeology and Cultural Heritage project: exploring the impact of colonialism and colonization in the Indian Ocean. Antiquity 85: 330.Google Scholar
Summers, G. & Summers, F.. 2008. A note on the rockcut ditch on Île de la Passe, Mauritius. Azania 43 (1): 124–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00672700809480462 Google Scholar
Summers, G. & Summers, F.. 2009. Archaeological potential of the Forbach Estate Camp for Labourers. Unpublished final report, August 2009.Google Scholar
Teelock, V. 1998. Bitter sugar. Moka: Mahatma Gandhi Institute.Google Scholar
Teelock, V. 2009. Mauritian history. Moka: Mahatma Gandhi Institute.Google Scholar
Teelock, V. 2012. The potential for archaeological study of Mauritian indenture history and heritage, in Teelock, V. (ed.) Angage: explorations into the history, society and culture of indentured immigrants and their descendants in Mauritius (volume 2): 101–21. Port Louis: Aapravasi Ghat Trust Fund.Google Scholar
Tinker, H. 1974. A new system of slavery: the export of Indian labour overseas 1830–1920. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Vaughan, M. 2005. Creating the Creole Island. Durham (NC): Duke University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/9780822386919 Google Scholar
White, S. 2011. Geographies of slave consumption: French colonial Louisiana and a world of things. Winterthur Portfolio 44: 229–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Willems, W.J.H. 2009. European and world archaeologies. World Archaeology 41: 649–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00438240903371510 Google Scholar
Wynne-Jones, S. 2007. It's what you do with it that counts: performed identities in the East African coastal landscape. Journal of Social Archaeology 7: 325–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1469605307081392 Google Scholar