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.
One 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.
Professor 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.
 Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town, South Africa |
The infilled moat at the Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town, South Africa |
