Zoë Crossland’s research deals with the historical archaeology of Madagascar, and with evidential practices around human remains. Her approach to historical inquiry is informed by Peircean "semeiotics," which she uses to explore the imbrication of the material and the immaterial, the human and the nonhuman.
The research Crossland has undertaken in Madagascar has been concerned with archaeologies of encounter, including a consideration of how material traces in the landscape made the dead present as historical actors (2014). She is now working with colleagues Chantal Radilmilahay, Bako Rasoarifetra and Rafolo Andrianaivoarivony on the history of irrigated riziculture in the highlands, with a particular focus on the constitution of sovereignty through and with the partnership of rice plants, paddy fields and irrigation structures.
In her work on forensic evidence and the archaeological production of the dead body, Crossland considers the work of inference and practical activity by which archaeology conjures and evaluates competing claims about the past. She is presently working on a book, The Speaking Corpse, which teases out the different evidential relations through which the forensic corpse presents itself as witness. She does this by attending to the ways in which the evidence of the dead is explained and delineated for popular consumption by forensic anthropologists.
Student applications:
She is currently accepting PhD students and is especially interested in working with students who wish to explore the intersections of archaeological theory and environmental archaeology in the context of Madagascar, the East African coast and the Indian Ocean more widely. She also encourages students with an interest in semiotic archaeology to apply to Columbia's PhD program.
