The Settlement of Madagascar: What Dialects and Languages Can Tell Us

The dialects of Madagascar belong to the Greater Barito East group of the Austronesian family and it is widely accepted that the Island was colonized by Indonesian sailors after a maritime trek that probably took place around 650 CE. The language most closely related to Malagasy dialects is Maanyan, but Malay is also strongly related especially for navigation terms. Since the Maanyan Dayaks live along the Barito river in Kalimantan (Borneo) and they do not possess the necessary skill for long maritime navigation, they were probably brought as subordinates by Malay sailors. In a recent paper we compared 23 different Malagasy dialects in order to determine the time and the landing area of the first colonization. In this research we use new data and new methods to confirm that the landing took place on the south-east coast of the Island. Furthermore, we are able to state here that colonization probably consisted of a single founding event rather than multiple settlements.To reach our goal we find out the internal kinship relations among all the 23 Malagasy dialects and we also find out the relations of the 23 dialects to Malay and Maanyan. The method used is an automated version of the lexicostatistic approach. The data from Madagascar were collected by the author at the beginning of 2010 and consist of Swadesh lists of 200 items for 23 dialects covering all areas of the Island. The lists for Maanyan and Malay were obtained from a published dataset integrated with the author's interviews

Reconstructing the history of ocean wildlife around Ascension Island

1. In 2016, the UK government announced plans for a large-scale Marine Protected Area around Ascension Island, a UK Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic. 2. To improve baselines for marine life to support ambitious conservation and assess change over time, archives were searched for historical accounts of wildlife from Ascension's discovery in 1501 to the present. For more recent changes, 139 interviews with past and present inhabitants were conducted. 3. Ascension's marine life has, from first discovery to the present, been consistently remarked upon for its exceptional abundance. Historical sources indicate declines in seabird and turtle populations from human exploitation and introduction of rats and cats. They are recovering with good management, although still below pre-settlement abundance. 4. Interviews with residents indicate more recent changes, notably declines in catch per unit of fishing effort at popular shore angling sites, a decline in yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) and increase in Galapagos sharks (Carcharhinus galapagensis). 5. What is very notable, however, based on the interviews, was that there was no temporal signal suggestive of recent systemic decline, in marked contrast to many parts of the world where recent wildlife declines have been pervasive and steep. Ascension represents a remarkable and immensely important centre of abundance in a sea of depletion and change, warranting full protection for all the island's waters

The matter of Makira: colonialism, competition, and the production of gendered peoples in contemporary Solomon Islands and medieval Britain

Since civil tension disrupted Solomon Islands between 1998 and 2003, the Arosi of Makira have elaborated discourses according to which their island contains a secret and preternaturally powerful subterranean army base. These discourses have clear antecedents in Maasina Rule, a post-World War II socio-political movement sometimes analysed as a “cargo cult”. Offering an alternative interpretation, I compare Arosi discourses about the Makiran underground to the Matter of Britain as represented in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain (completed c. 1138). I argue that both sets of discourses arise from the dynamics of mutually precipitating communities mythologizing themselves and each other in terms of the analogous oppositions colonizer is to colonized as allochthon is to autochthon as male is to female. This comparison, I conclude, recommends the medieval European phenomenon of a “matter” as a productive model for understanding contemporary ethnogenetic myth-making in and beyond Melanesia