The remote islands of the tropical region of the Indian Ocean (Madagascar, Comoros, Mascarenes, Seychelles, Chagos, Maldives, Cocos, and Christmas Island) lie generally >250 km from continental shores and, being relatively hard to reach and bring into cultural networks, their occupation required particular ability in seafaring. Their human history begins in the Holocene, when the general patterns of the monsoons and trade winds were established and maritime communities bounded the ocean on three sides, with offshore sailing in evidence at least 4000 years ago. Curiously, however, relatively fewer of the remote islands in the Indian than in the Atlantic or Pacific islands seem to have been inhabited by the fifteenth century, and the habitation histories of those that were remain enigmatic and often debated. In this context, the Research Topic seeks to clarify the circumstances of early colonization in each of the islands and to understand how the overall colonizing pattern and its ecological impacts developed.
Despite recent research in archaeology, paleoecology, and genetics, the timing, sources and biological impacts of initial human colonization on the remote Indian Ocean islands remain uncertain. That is especially so for Madagascar, where current colonization propositions range from early Holocene African foragers to late Holocene Austronesian farmers, with covariant differences in megafaunal extinction and landscape change. Divergent views are held also about the timing and priority of African, Austronesian, or South Asian occupation on other islands uninhabited at European discovery. Methodologically, the problem lies primarily in unresolved analytical difficulties of distinguishing natural from cultural causation in sedimentary, ecological, and taphonomic phenomena, and therefore also in defining the advent of human colonization in chronological sequences. Recent advances in archaeobotany; in microscopic research on extinct megafaunal bone damage; on alternative techniques of site chronology; on palaeobotanical microfossils of human occupation; on the inference of diet and habitat through stable isotope analyses, and on DNA histories of people, domesticates and commensals are helping to attain the goal.
The focus of this Research Topic is on the remote islands (above), but contributions on or with reference to offshore islands (e. g. Socotra, Lakshadweep, Andaman, Nicobar) are also welcome where relevant. We seek results and discussion of research:
• about recent fieldwork on archaeological sites that elucidate the age, origins, and activities of early human colonists (including Europeans where they are the early inhabitants).
• involving analyses of material that contribute to understanding colonization chronology, material culture sources, or subsistence activities, including methodological innovations or critiques.
• on genomic histories concerning the origins and movement of people, plants, and animals
• on sedimentary, vegetation, landscape, or faunal samples that elucidate palaeoecological changes before and within periods of human settlement and which may contribute to the discussion of ecological versus cultural change in settlement histories.
• on the role of climate change and ocean productivity, currents, and wind systems relative to the timing and pace of human settlement of the Indian Ocean islands.
This Research Topic has been developed in collaboration with
Sean Hixon (University of California, Santa Barbara).
The cover image depicts Francois Lahiniriko cleaning recently excavated bones of extinct pygmy hippo and elephant bird from a paleontological site in Velondriake, SW Madagascar, during an excavation with Sean Hixon.
