Racing Against the Tide: The 2024 archaeological field season at M’Bachile, Comoros islands, East Africa

Abstract

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 Southeast Asian 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 the results of recent excavations by our team at the Dembeni phase (8-10th century CE) site of the M’Bachile on Ngazidja. With colleagues from Centre National de la Research Scientifique (CNDRS), we conducted surveys and small-scale excavations at the site, focusing on the systematic collection of biological and material culture datasets to reconstruct subsistence, trade and exchange, and environmental impacts of island colonisation. This is part of an ongoing multidisiplinary research project by our team that, since 2010, has been investigating the origins and development of Indian Ocean trade and interaction in coastal East Africa and offshore islands.

About the presenters 

A/Prof. Alison Crowther

Alison Crowther is an ARC Future Fellow, field archaeologist and archaeobotanist with a long-term interest in trans-regional maritime trade and biological exchange in the Indo-Pacific, among a long list of other things. She completed her PhD on the spread of crops in the Pacific islands and has since gone on to lead a major fieldwork program in East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Comoros, Madagascar), as well as various side projects in Sri Lanka, Australia, and Türkiye.