Archaeology of Trade in the Western Indian Ocean, 300 BC–AD 700

2014/04/01 by Eivind Heldaas Seland · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Asian Studies and History #Eurasian Exchange Networks #Global Maritime and Colonial Histories

paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/s10814-014-9075-7

openalex publication_date 2014/04/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

In the millennium after 300 BC, the western Indian Ocean emerged as a main hub of Old World exchange. Study of this commerce long depended on separate regional archaeologies and a handful of literary sources with Western/Roman bias. A recent surge in scholarly interest has led to a vast increase in data that has fostered a more balanced understanding of the commercial, human, and material aspects of ancient Indian Ocean trade. This review summarizes recent research on the topic and assesses its significance to wider scholarly debates on scale, organization, connectivity, agency, and social cohesion in ancient trade and exchange.

Citations

• Rome and Mesopotamia – importers into India in the first millennium AD
• The Persian Gulf or the Red Sea? Two axes in ancient Indian Ocean trade, where to go and why
• The Byzantine-Aksumite period shipwreck at Black Assarca Island, Eritrea
• The ‘diaspora’ diaspora
• Early ports in the Horn of Africa

Cited by

• Black Assarca shipwreck [wikipedia]

Related

• Indian Ocean Trade in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries: Demand, Distance, and Profit
• Changing Commerce and Merchant Power in the Indian Ocean: Impacts on Afro-Asian ‘Core’ and ‘Peripheral’ Polities, ca. 300 BCE to 1800 CE
• Behind gold for pepper: The players and the game of Indo-Mediterranean trade
• Sri Vijaya as the Entrepôt for Circum-Indian Ocean Trade
• Baubles, Bangles and Beads: Commodity Exchange between the Indian Ocean Region and Interior Southern Africa during 8th–15th Centuries CE