Despite decades of archaeological research, roughly 75% of Madagascar's land area remains archaeologically unexplored and the oldest sites on the island are difficult to locate, as they contain the ephemeral remains of mobile hunter/forager campsites. The known archaeological record is therefore biased toward later sites, especially sites dating to the second millennium AD, following the expansion of Indian Ocean trading networks. Systematic archaeological investigations are required to address these biases in the known archaeological record and clarify the island's early human history, but funding limitations, logistical and time constraints in surveying large areas and a relatively small number of active field archaeologists present substantial barriers to expansive areal survey coverage. Using theoretical models derived from human behavioral ecology (i.e., ideal free distribution, optimal foraging theory) in conjunction with freely available remote sensing data, we illustrate how archaeological survey of Madagascar's landscapes can be rapidly expanded, more effectively target early archaeological deposits, and address questions about the island's settlement. This study illustrates the potential for theoretically-driven satellite-based remote sensing analysis to improve our understanding of the archaeological record of the world's fourth largest island.

In the 1960s and 1970s the biology and geology of the Grand Récif of Tuléar, (now Toliara) in southwestern Madagascar, was thoroughly studied and reported. Toliara is the largest city in the south of the country, and the Grand Récif offshore provides both artisanal fisheries and coastal protection to the growing regional capital. Substantial research on the comparatively pristine reef was described in a volume of Atoll Research Bulletin in 1978. Since then, published scientific study of this reef has been largely lacking. The present study compares the condition of the Grand Récif of circa 40 years ago, with that seen in a brief resurvey undertaken in 2008, on transects corresponding to some of those documented previously. The trend has been of severe degradation; hard coral cover on the fore-reef slopes has declined substantially, and there has been a near total loss of the "architectural species" in particular. Coral has been replaced to great extent by fleshy algae. Observations also indicate severe decline on the broad reef flat, back reef and lagoon areas. Perhaps most seriously for the local fisheries and human communities, is that the fore reef is almost depleted in reef fish today.Comparisons are made of coral cover, coral morphological types and fish trophic structure with other reefs in southern Madagascar, which are not located near large human populations. Although a rise in mean sea surface temperature has occurred throughout the region of approximately 1 o C over this 40 year period, which is probably a contributing cause of decline throughout, the Grand Récif is in much worse condition than most of the more remote reefs with which it is compared. It is suggested that the main reasons for the substantial decline in the Grand Récif over the past 40 years lies in the fact that the region's population has grown substantially, there is a complete lack of any resources management, heavy overfishing, and no pollution control, resulting in massively increased discharges of sewage, sediments and other pollutants.Reef condition today is unrecognisable from that described in the 1970s. Unless far-reaching and effective management interventions are adopted to safeguard the Grand Récif the remaining ecosystem services upon which Toliara and its population depend will soon all but disappear. ________________________ 1 Blue Ventures Conservation, 22-24 Highbury Grove,

In this paper, we advocate a collaborative approach to investigating past human–environment interactions in southwest Madagascar. We do so by critically reflecting as a team on the development of the Morombe Archaeological Project, initiated in 2011 as a collaboration between an American archaeologist and the Vezo communities of the Velondriake Marine Protected Area. Our objectives are to assess our trajectory in building collaborative partnerships with diverse local, indigenous, and descendent communities and to provide concrete suggestions for the development of new collaborative projects in environmental archaeology. Through our Madagascar case study, we argue that contemporary environmental and economic challenges create an urgency to articulate and practice an inclusive environmental archaeology, and we propose that environmental archaeologists must make particular efforts to include local, indigenous, and descendent communities. Finally, we assert that full collaboration involves equal power sharing and mutual knowledge exchange and suggest an approach for critical self-evaluation of collaborative projects.

Remote sensing technology has become a standard tool for archaeological prospecting. Yet the ethical guidelines associated with the use of these technologies are not well established and are even less-often discussed in published literature.With a nearly unobstructed view of large geographic spaces, aerial and spaceborne remote sensing technology creates an asymmetrical power dynamic between observers and the observed. Here, we explore the power dynamics involved with aerial and spaceborne remote sensing, using Foucault's notion of power and the panopticon. In many other areas of archaeological practice, such power imbalances have been actively confronted by collaborative approaches and community engagement, but remote sensing archaeology has been largely absent from such interventions. We discuss how aerial and spaceborne imagery is perceived by local communities in southwest Madagascar and advocate for a more collaborative approach to remote sensing archaeology that includes local stakeholders and researchers in all levels of data acquisition, analysis, and dissemination.

This rapid communication describes a lithic blade that was recently recovered during excavations in the Velondriake Marine Protected Area in southwest Madagascar. This represents the only recorded archaeological lithic blade recovered from southwest Madagascar. The blade was recovered in situ at a depth of 1.66 meters, a deposit dating to between 750 and 1200 B.P. at site G134, adjacent to the modern village of Antsaragnasoa. While similar in material choice (translucent-brown chert) and morphology (parallel-sided blade) to other lithics recovered at the northern sites of Ambohiposa and Lakaton'i Anja, it is significantly larger than other recorded lithics on Madagascar. More research is required but this finding suggests that lithic technology may have been more widespread on the island, particularly among coastal communities, than previously thought.