Nineteenth-century highland Madagascar was a place inhabited by the dead as much as the living. Ghosts, ancestors and the possessed were important historical actors alongside local kings and queens, soldiers, traders and missionaries. This book considers the challenges that such actors pose for historical accounts of the past and for thinking about questions of presence and representation. How were the dead made present, and how were they recognized or not? In attending to these multifarious encounters of the nineteenth century, how might we reflect on the ways in which our own history-writing makes the dead present? To tackle these questions, Zoë Crossland tells an anthropological history of highland Madagascar from a perspective rooted in archaeology and Peircean semiotics, as well as in landscape study, oral history and textual sources.

'From fires to missionary history to stone monuments to ghost stories, Crossland paints a Malagasy history that is as alive as the world in which these encounters occurred.'

Carla Klehm Source: Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa

'… this is a rich and complex study by a younger scholar with a depth and a range which takes its remit well beyond its immediate locus in nineteenth-century highland Madagascar … Zoë Crossland’s writing is richly informed by theoretical perspectives.'

John Mack Source: Antiquity

‘Crossland offers a richly layered analysis of Madagascar’s present and past landscapes … The richness of [her] interpretations … cannot be fully appreciated without reading this book, which is highly recommended.’

Michael T. Lucas Source: Historical Archaeology

‘Crossland has crafted a fascinating and richly detailed historical ethnography of the Imerina kingdom (fanjakana) of the Malagasy highlands.’

Susan D. Gillespie Source: Journal of African Archaeology