Shellfishers’ Insights into Ecosocial System Resilience in Southwestern Madagascar 1000 BP to Present
Open Access
- Author:
- Buffa, Dani
- Graduate Program:
- Anthropology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- September 30, 2024
- Committee Members:
- Tim Ryan, Program Head/Chair
Rebecca Bliege Bird, Major Field Member
Raymond Najjar, Outside Unit & Field Member
Douglas Bird, Major Field Member
Isabelle Holland-Lulewicz, Chair & Dissertation Advisor - Keywords:
- environmental archaeology
Madagascar
paleoclimate
zooarchaeology
resilience
food security - Abstract:
- Madagascar’s southwestern coast is a dynamic socioecological system with extremely high levels of biological and cultural diversity interacting within a hypervariable climate. Using the seasonal estuaries in the Velondriake Marine Protected Area (MPA) and their mollusk fisheries as a case study, I investigate how subsistence communities rely on deep social networks and relationships to cope with hypervariable environments and how evidence of those relationships persists through the archaeological record of trade goods and subsistence. A key feature of coastal Indian Ocean ecosystems is rhythmic inter- and intra-annual variability in the precipitation-evaporation balance. These balance variations, which occur on short time scales and involve biophysical system recharacterization, are known as regime shifts. Collaborators and I theorize that communities have adapted to rhythmic environmental changes by acting upon intergenerational traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) which coevolves with their land. The resilience conferred by TEK is enhanced by long distance social networks offering access to resources farther afield when local conditions limit shellfish stocks. However, if these rhythms change or become unpredictable, these knowledge and resource sharing social networks may not be as protective. Through my dissertation, I address the following questions: 1) How do modern communities adapt to the challenges of anthropogenic climate change and fishery depopulation, and how is their ability to enact resilience-enhancing adaptations constricted or facilitated by outside interventions? 2) How are social ties in the past reflected through the spatial and temporal trends in typology of wearable trade goods? 3) How have food acquisition practices varied given pronounced environmental variability over the past 1000 years? In the first study, I develop an ethnographic toolkit to identify barriers to community agency and survey perceptions around proposed behavior changes related to natural resource conservation and alternative food acquisition strategies. This study demonstrates that communities in the Velondriake rely heavily upon one another for survival. It also highlights that a combination of socioeconomic and climate change related factors is rendering previously effective adaptation strategies ineffective. I then explore temporal and spatial trends in the shell bead production in Madagascar and how these trends fit into the larger Indo-Pacific world. This study demonstrates that, at least in terms of wearable trade goods, Madagascar is not an island but a crossroads in a web of interaction it is closely entwined within. It shows that these social networks so important to modern people are historical and are reflected in the archaeological record. Lastly, I use ethnoarchaeology and paleoclimate archives to compare mollusk harvesting through the pronounced environmental variability of the last 1000 years. This study demonstrates that shellfish harvesting patterns reflect changes in paleoecological conditions and that changing conditions are making previously reliable sources of food unreliable. Altogether, this dissertation demonstrates that Velondriake communities have relied upon the maintenance of social relations and social memory to survive through extreme environmental fluctuations over the past millennia.