Brandeis Stories

By David Levin
January 7, 2026

Pottery shards, some thousands of years old, are frequently underfoot at Mafia.

It’s an archeologist’s dream, yet researchers like Alexandra Ratzlaff are only beginning to excavate the site, largely due to its remote location.

“I’m a Roman archaeologist, and people assume I’m working in Italy,” Ratzlaff, an assistant professor of classical and early Mediterranean studies, says with a laugh. “I’m like, no, actually I’m in East Africa.”

Mafia, which sits just off Tanzania’s east coast, is home to a unique archaeological site called Ras Kisamani — possibly one of the most connected ancient markets in the region. 

Roman and Greek documents describe a legendary port called Rhapta, located somewhere along Africa’s southeastern coast, Ratzlaff says. Although the site lay in the extreme hinterlands of the Roman empire, its strategic location meant sailors could time their voyages with the strong annual eastward monsoon winds to carry their ships directly across the Indian ocean, saving them months of port-hopping along coastlines.

Rhapta’s precise location remains unknown, but Ras Kisamani offers tantalizing clues. Ratzlaff and her colleagues have already found dozens of artifacts there from Rome, China, India, Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, making it clear that the site was a major trade center for nearly 2,000 years until it was mysteriously abandoned in the 1600s. 

Finding a definitive connection to Rhapta will take some doing, however, since the site is rapidly disappearing. Rising seas and natural erosion have transformed its landscape from a small peninsula into a loose archipelago over the last two millennia. Its ancient stone towers now stand partially inundated by seawater, while its beaches collapse a little more into the ocean after every storm. The urgency to record and make sense of the area’s history is palpable. “Unfortunately, because of climate change and industrialization along the coast, the site is becoming almost entirely submerged,” Ratzlaff says. “The main section is probably somewhere offshore.”

Last summer, Ratzlaff brought five Brandeis students into the field to help chip away at Mafia island’s mysteries. Their work was equal parts archaeology, underwater exploration and community preservation: At Ras Kisamani, the students conducted traditional digs on land and snorkeled into shallow channels offshore, mapping artifacts and submerged structures, occasionally joined by enormous, gentle whale sharks that thrive in the nearby ocean. 

The Brandeis group’s work yielded even more evidence of Ras Kisamani’s golden era of trade. In addition to African and imported pottery, the team uncovered more than 200 coins from the Abbasid Dynasty, which covered much of the middle east from 750 to 1258 AD, and the Tang Dynasty, which ruled China from 618 to 907 CE. They also gathered valuable clues explaining why the site may have been abandoned suddenly.

In interviews with the Brandeis team, local village elders described traditional myths and legends about the settlement’s demise. After a feud with a neighboring town, according to legend, the gods destroyed Ras Kisamani with a great wave. The team’s excavations support such stories with hard evidence. At their dig sites, the group found deep-water seashells that had been smashed into layers of soil dating to the 17th century, evidence of a devastating tsunami that could have wiped out the settlement.

The combination of archaeology and community engagement is just one example of how the field of classics spans multiple disciplines, says Ratzlaff. In addition to mastering ancient language and texts, she and her students regularly improvise and engineer technical solutions at remote locations in the field, building equipment as it’s needed. They’ve also used high-tech scanning tools to preserve 3D digital copies of artifacts, and done complex chemical analyses to study food residue on pottery.

It is no surprise, then, that her students often double- or triple-major in fields like biochemistry or neuroscience along with Classical languages — building a broad skill set in the process. That trend is a boon for classical archaeology. “We have a lot fewer angry parents worried their kids are wasting their education getting a degree in classics,” Ratzlaff jokes. “We can show them you can actually do something with it.”

An interdisciplinary approach has been essential at Ras Kisamani. To fully study the site, Ratzlaff has collaborated with GIS specialists, digital imaging experts and micromorphologists, scientists who study the microscopic structure of soil and sediment. She’s also joined colleagues at Virginia Tech, University of Rhode Island, and the National Museums of Kenya to build a museum on Mafia, training local women’s groups in conservation work and creating exhibits that incorporate the interviews her students collected.

Collaborating with local stakeholders is especially important for Ratzlaff. The work her team is doing at Mafia, she says, isn’t just about understanding the ancient world. It’s also about preserving the island’s unique cultural heritage.

“At the end of the day, this is the story of people,” she reflects. “Every artifact represents dozens of choices by different individuals. The world was a much smaller, more diverse place 2,000 years ago than we give it credit for.”