Project description
Quarantine practice in 19th-century Indian Ocean
The potential threat of disease as a consequence of migration from non-European countries emerged during the recent migration crisis. However, such concerns and practices such as quarantine were applied in past periods of history. The EU-funded ISLand project intends to deliver a new way of perceiving human interactions within colonial empires and link colonial studies with the medical history and the emerging concept of healthscaping. The project combines history, archaeology and anthropology to study quarantine facilities in the Indian Ocean world during the 19th-century period that was crucial for the European empires in the region and a turning point for the conceptualisation of modern public health. The quarantine practice will be analysed from the perspective of the social, political and ecological changes of this period.
Objective
The proposed research presents an experimental and completely novel investigation within the historical archaeology,
applied to isolated contexts. The main objective of ISLand is to provide a new way of thinking about human interactions
within colonial empires and bringing colonial studies into dialogue with medical history and the emerging concept of
healthscaping. It seeks to do so by studying quarantine facilities in the Indian Ocean World during the long nineteenth
century, a crucial period for the history of European empires in that region and a flashpoint for the conceptualization of
modern public health. Quarantine, traditionally viewed as merely a mechanism for the control of disease, will be analyzed as
the outward material response to important changes taking place socially, ecologically, and politically at the time.
The project is a part of an international, interdisciplinary effort, combining history, archaeology, and anthropology. The
researcher will tap numerous archival sources and archaeological data from selected sites, examine them through social and
spatial analysis, and systematically analyze a test case in Mauritius through the most innovative methods that target
landscape and standing archaeology.
The broader impacts of ISLand have relevance for current European approaches to the migration crisis, where the threat of
disease has been ignited as a potentially debilitating consequence of immigration from extra-European countries. The
training-through-research project at the Stanford University, the top institution where acquiring knowledge and skills in
historical archaeology, will allow the applicant to develop into a position of professional maturity with a specific
interdisciplinary set of skills. With the support of the host institutions in EU, the researcher will promote historical archaeology
in European academy, stimulating new approaches in usual archaeological research and an interdisciplinary approach with
cultural anthropology.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
1012WX Amsterdam
Netherlands