Krish Seetah

Krish Seetah's research covers a range of issues relating to colonialism and colonization within three main contexts, using archaeo-historic datasets as source evidence. The first looks specifically at the late-medieval expansion of the Venetian Republic around the Adriatic, from the perspective of diet and cuisine as markers of identity. The second explores the role played by fauna during the religious crusades that took place in the Baltic and later spread to Spain and North Africa. Finally, his main fieldwork focuses on 'European influence in non-European contexts', specifically Mauritius and the Indian Ocean World.  Prof.  Seetah is the director of Stanford's ‘Mauritian Archaeology and Cultural Heritage’ (MACH) project, which studies European Imperialism and colonial activity.Much of his work uses bioarchaeological materials, with a strong emphasis on human-environmental interactions. He is keen to use the long duree perspective to help contextualize the most recent phase of globalization witnessed in the IOW, and study both the impacts of imperialism on ecology, identity and the development of nationhood following mass diaspora.

His main teaching focuses on osteoarchaeology, and he has a recent volume (with Brad Gravina: published by the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge) focused on the interplay of inanimate objects and human agency. His current writing project centers on the anthropology of consumption, specifically of meat. Seetah gained his Ph.D. in Archaeology from the University of Cambridge, holds two MSc degrees, the first in Ecology and a second in Osteoarchaeology, with a BA in Biology. He has held visiting fellowships at Cambridge University, UK, the Scientific Research Center, Slovenia, and is currently an ERC Research Fellow at Reading University, UK.