• Carmel Schrire
  • Carmel Schrire
  • Distinguished Professor, SAS
  • Specialization: Prehistory, historical archeology, human ecology, hunter-gatherers; Australia, Africa
  • Degree and University: PhD, Australian National U, 1968
  • Office: Ruth Adams Building 202
  • Office Hours: Spring 2024 - Tuesday 12-2 pm RAB 201a, or by apptmt.
  • Phone: (732) 932-9006

 

 

Research Interests

Carmel Schrire has done archaeological and anthropological research on topics relating to Australia, the Arctic and South Africa. She is currently engaged in a long-term program of research into the early colonial contact between Europeans and indigenous people in the Age of Mercantile Capitalism.

altOne of Professor Schrire's major projects involved the excavation of a small outpost of the Dutch East India Company on the shores of Saldanha Bay, Cape, South Africa. Her book Digging through Darkness: Chronicles of an Archaeologist (UVA Press 1995) sets these finds in a broad, international perspective.

altProfessor Schrire's latest book, Tigers in Africa: Stalking the Past at the Cape of Good Hope (University Press of Virginia, 2002), presents a brisk vision of the scientific and social past at the Cape. Professor Schrire is currently working on the archaeology and history of the Castle of Good Hope (1666-1850), and hopes to unravel the material objects that elucidate the life and times on an old, colonial African frontier.

 

 

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Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town, South Africa
Photo by Gerald Hoberman

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The infilled moat at the Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town, South Africa