Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T09:26:53.278Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Time and the ancestors: landscape survey in the Andrantsay region of Madagascar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Zoë Crossland
Zoë Crossland*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI 48109-1382, USA. [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The landscapes of the central highlands of Madagascar are inhabited by the spirits of the dead as well as by the living. The ancestors are a forceful presence in the everyday world, and the archaeology of the central highlands is intimately entwined with them. This is made manifest both in the on-the-ground experiences encountered during fieldwork, and in archaeological narratives, such as the one presented here. Tombs are a traditional focus of archaeological research, and those that dot the hills of the central highlands are part of a network of beliefs and practices which engage with the landscape as a whole and through which social identity is constructed and maintained. In the central highlands, and indeed elsewhere in Madagascar, there is an intimate relationship between peoples’ understandings of their social and physical location in the world and their understanding of their relationship to the dead.

Keywords

MadagascarAndrantsaysurveylandscapeMerinaconquest
Type
Special section
Information
Antiquity , Volume 75 , Issue 290 , December 2001 , pp. 825 - 836
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2001

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

Belrose-Huygues, V. 1983. Structure et symbolique de l’espace royal en Imerina, in Raison-Jourde, F. (ed.), Les souverains de Madagascar: 125–51. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Bloch, M. 1971. Placing the dead: tombs, ancestral villages and kinship organization in Madagascar, London: Seminar Press.Google Scholar
Bloch, M. 1977. The disconnection between power and rank as a process: An outline of the development of Kingdoms in Central Madagascar, in Rowlands, M. & Friedman, J. (ed.), The evolution of social systems: 303–40. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Bloch, M. 1986. Hierarchy and equality in Merina kinship, in Kottak, C.P., Rakotoarisoa, J.-A., Southall, A. & Vérin, P. (ed.), Madagascar: society and history: 215–28. Durham (NC): Carolina Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bloch, M. 1995. People into places: Zafimaniry concepts of clarity, in Hirsch, E. & O’Hanlon, M. (ed.), The anthropology of landscape: perspectives on place and space: 63–77. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Callet, F. 1974. Histoire des rois (Tantarán’ ny andriana) Antananarivo: Editions de la Librairie de Madagascar.Google Scholar
Campbell, G. 1991. The state and pre-colonial demographic history: the case of nineteenth-century Madagascar, Journal of African History 32: 415–45.Google Scholar
Crossland, Z. 2001. Ny tany sy ny fanjakana (the land and the state): Archaeological landscape survey in the Andrantsay region of Madagascar. Ph.D thesis, Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan. Ann Arbor (MI): University Microfilms.Google Scholar
Dahl, 0. 1999. Meanings in Madagascar; cases of intercultural communication. Westport (CT): Bergin & Garvey.Google Scholar
Délivré, A. 1967. L’interprétation d’une tradition orale: l’histoire des Bois d’îmerina (Madagascar), Paris: Université de Paris.Google Scholar
Délivré, A. 1974. L’histoiredes Rois d’îmerina. Interpretation d’une tradition orale: (Madagascar). Paris: Klincksiock.Google Scholar
Evers, S. 1999. The construction of history and culture in the southern highlands: tombs, slaves and ancestors, in Middleton, K. (ed.), Ancestors, power and history in Madagascar: 257–82. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Hebert, J.-C. 1965. La cosmographie malgache suivie de l’énumération des points cardinaux et l’importance du nord-est, Taloha 1: 83–195.Google Scholar
Kottak, C.P. 1980. The past in the present: history, ecology and cultural variation in highland Madagascar. Ann Arbor (MI): University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Kus, S. 1982. Matters material and ideal, in Hodder, I. (ed.), Symbolic and structural archaeology: 47–62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kus, S. & Raharijaona, V.. 1990. Domestic space and the tenacity of tradition among some Betsileo of Madagascar, in Kent, S. (ed.), Domestic architecture and the use of space: 21–33. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kus, S. & Raharijaona, V.. 2000a. House to palace, village to state: scaling up architecture and ideology, American Anthropologist 102(1): 98–113.Google Scholar
Kus, S. & Raharijaona, V.. 2000b. Where to begin a house faoundation: Betsiledo ‘mpanandrO’ and the (re)creation of tradition, in Allibert, C. & Rajaonarimanana, N. (ed.), L’extraordinaire et le quotidien. Variations anthropologiques. Hommage au Professeur Pierre Vérin: 387–421. Paris: Editions Karthala.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. 1979. Central problems in social theory: action, structure and contradiction in social analysis, London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larson, P.M. 1992. Making ethnic tradition in a pre-colonial society: culture, gender, and protest in the early Merina kingdom, 1750–1822. Ph.D thesis, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ann Arbor (MI): University Microfilms.Google Scholar
Larson, P.M. 2000. History and memory in the age of enslavement: becoming Merina in highland Madagascar, 1770–1882. Portsmouth (NH): Heinemann.Google Scholar
Marchal, J.-Y. 1974. La petite région d’Ambohimanambola. Paris: ORSTOM. Atlas des structaires agraires au sud de Madagascar 2.Google Scholar
Mayeur, N. 1913 [1777]. Voyage au Pays d’Ancove (reprinted), Bulletin de l’Academie Malgache 12(1): 139–76.Google Scholar
Parker Pearson, M. & Ramilisonina. 1998. Stonehenge for the ancestors: the stones pass on the message, Antiquity 72: 308–26.Google Scholar
Raharijaona, V. 1988. Etude de peuplement de l’éspace d’une vallée des hautes-terres centrales de Madagascar: Archéologie de la Manandona (XVè-XIXème siècle). Unpublished thèse de Illème Cycle, University of Paris.Google Scholar
Raison, J.-P. 1984. Les hautes terres de Madagascar et leurs confins occidentaux. Paris: Éditions Karthala.Google Scholar
Wright, H.T. 1978. Toward an explanation of the origin of the state, in Cohen, R. & Service, E. (ed.), Origins of the state: 49–68. Philadelphia (PA): ISHI Press.Google Scholar
Wright, H.T. 1979. Observations sur l’évolution de la céramique traditionnelle en Imerina centrale (trans, by J.P. Domenichini), Taloha 8: 7–28.Google Scholar
Wright, H.T. & Kus, S.. N.d. An archaeological survey of Western Avaradrano. Unpublished manuscript, Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan.Google Scholar