ABSTRACT
Since 1991 we have been working together on a multi-disciplinary project organized by the University of Sheffield and the Museum of Art and Archaeology in Antananarivo. The main aim of the project is to examine the history of tombs, land use and landscape in the extreme south of Madagascar. In recent years we have become particularly interested in studying the formation of the Tandroy kingdom through the separate strands of local oral histories, European written records and archaeology. We are primarily concerned with the recent past of the last 1,000 years and particularly with the pre-colonial period between the fifteenth century and 1900. The extreme south of Madagascar, an area of 19,000–20,000 sq. km of semi-arid grassland and spiny forest, is known as Androy (‘the land of thorns’). The Tandroy (‘people of the land of thorns’) have lived here for centuries though most, if not all clans, have origin stories which involve a migration from the north or east. Tandroy people have a strong sense of ethnic identity which is reinforced and reproduced through dialect, a distinctive house-building tradition, a lavish attention to funerals and tomb-building, polygamous marriage, mixed pastoralism, the growing of non-rice crops such as manioc, and a reputation for toughness. The dead are buried singly and without any secondary rites in contrast to most other parts of the country. So strong is this sense of ethnicity that many Tandroy consider other Malagasy to be virtually foreigners. Just how this notion of difference and identity has come about is a question to which the answers lie in the distant past.
