Anthropology

Asian elephants have been an integral part of social life in India for centuries – as war elephants, participants in temple rituals, heavy laborers, and recently in conservation discourse.

CGII funding is contributing to a project addressing Swahili women’s roles from 600-1600 CE on the East African coast in the realms of agricultural production, cuisine, cultural transmission, craft production, and leadership.

My project considers the way Ainu people, the Indigenous people of northern Japan, express identity and think about what being Indigenous means within their communities.

My archaeological research in western Zambia studies daily life and interactional histories in ‘in-between’ places between emergent state systems in southern Africa from the 8th to the 18th centuries CE.

My project explores the archaeology of the Swahili in Zanzibar Tanzania, during the Portuguese and Omani colonial occupations of the 16th-20th centuries CE.

This is a collaboration with the Athar Lina Initiate to conduct research and create co- design strategies for socially and contextually aware modes of turning the water that is inundating historic buildings into a resource for improving the social and built environments of the Al-Khalifa neighborhood in Cairo, Egypt.

Archaeological excavations at San Jacinto, an ancient temple from the Formative Period on the Peruvian central coast (1500 B.C.), have revealed the architectural design of an important section of the monument.

Dr. Moutu will guide the work of UVA students enrolled in my Curating Culture course, contribute to the Fralin’s knowledge about their collection of Oceanic art, give lectures, and connect with professionals in anthropology and museums at UVA and other institutions in the region.

Historical records attest the Bight of Biafra as a significant European entrepôt during the Trans-Atlantic period.

This project is a comparative ethnographic study of gender-based community care programs and their impact on LGBTQ elderly in a non-Western context.