I remember, as a student of R. Michael Gramly, Ph.D., whose worked at
Lukenya Hill, Kenya and used to present an interesting look at East Africa
and early coastal trade (I must admit being interested from "Stand on
Zanzibar" a sci-fi novel of the near future, etc., mono-molecular line falls
into hands of terrorists, slices anything without gloves of the same
material, legalized  "pot" brands, etc.) and spoke about the Arab trade to
East Africa and the early appearance of giraffes in the court of Ghengis
Khan. The Arab trade relied on the changing winds and currents that allowed
the trade across the Indian Ocean. I also met a student from Long Island,
who ended in the Seychelles Islands after attempting to cross Africa from
Morocco with a surfboard atop a LandRover. He showed me some of the pictures
he took to document recent effects of American-European culture in Africa
then back in the early 1970's. One interesting toy was a if you will a skate
like toy with a long bar attached to a steering wheel of sorts, which the
child would "drive" along standing, in an area of heavy trucks and extremely
rutted roads.

Anyway, I read that apparently there was a large corporate effort in the
Netherlands to build a "road to Batavia" to the island of Java, in the
Netherlands East Indies. almost a slogan if you will. I am pretty sure it
was going to be a real road, though may have ended up symbolically
representing it never built.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Pat Reynolds" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 29 April 2004 Thursday 14:22
Subject: Re: SHA York 2005, Historical Archaeology of the Indian Ocean


> Hi David,
>
> I'm working on archaeology of the "Dutch" outside the Low Countries,
> both in colonized and trading partner contexts (I'm a part/time research
> student at York).  Many of those colonies were in the Indian Ocean.
>
> I'm looking at a specific building technique ('muurankers' - a way of
> 'stapling' a building together), and other material culture.
>
> I've not done any serious thinking about what I might write for the SHA
> conference..... possibly concentrating on somewhere in the Indian Ocean,
> but probably global in scope.
>
> With best wishes,
>
> Pat
>
> In message , David Petts <[log in to unmask]> writes
> >Hi
> >I am trying to put together a session on the Historical Archaeology of
the
> >Indian Ocean for the SHA conference. I already have a number of offers of
> >papers, but I'd like to see if there is anybody else working on this
area.
> >So I'd be keen to hear from anyone who is doing relevant research (e.g.
East
> >Africa, Madagascar, PersianGulf, Red Sea, South Asia etc)
> >
> >David Petts
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >---
> >Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
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> >
>
> --
> Pat Reynolds
> [log in to unmask]
>    "It might look a bit messy now,
>                     but just you come back in 500 years time"
>    (T. Pratchett)
>