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Abstract

Off the east coast of Africa lies the “Great Red Island” of Madagascar, with a history that has left the island rich in superlatives: It is Earth’s oldest island and among the hottest of the biodiversity hotspots. Definitive European accounts of the island extend over five hundred years into the past, but our knowledge of the island’s human history extends further via the archaeological record. Basic questions on the earliest human settlement of the island remain unresolved. However, archaeological traces of how people subsisted on endemic taxa in the island’s diverse environments are relatively clear, and traces of introduced plants and animals reflect connections across the Indian Ocean. How past people thrived on the island is closely tied with century-old environmental history narratives regarding extinction and deforestation, which remain relevant during ongoing attempts to conserve the island’s biological and cultural diversity. Durable elements of the archaeological record also reflect past resource extraction, connections with far-reaching trade networks, and the rise of an empire that ruled much of the island by the late 19th century. Though the Portuguese captain Diogo Dias visited Madagascar in 1500, the island’s recent history stands out due to its limited period of colonial control (French: 1895–1960). The fantastical stories of Madagascar’s man-eating trees and elephant-hunting birds no longer capture the Western imagination, yet the island’s diverse cultural heritage and human-environment interactions draw the attention of researchers and the curious public both within Madagascar and abroad.