Archaeology of Trade in the Western

Indian Ocean, 300 BC–AD 700

Eivind Heldaas Seland

Journal of Archaeological Research

ISSN 1059-0161
Volume 22
Number 4

J Archaeol Res (2014) 22:367-402

DOI 10.1007/s10814-014-9075-7

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J Archaeol Res (2014) 22:367–402
DOI 10.1007/s10814-014-9075-7

Archaeology of Trade in the Western Indian Ocean,

300 BC–AD 700

Eivind Heldaas Seland

Published online: 2 April 2014

© The Author(s) 2014. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com

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, connec-
tivity, agency, and social cohesion in ancient trade and exchange.

Keywords Western Indian Ocean · Trade · Exchange · Connectivity ·

Identity · Early Historic period · Pre-Islamic period · Classical period ·
Late antiquity

Introduction

On rare occasions, even modern archaeology takes on the characteristics of

exploration and sensational discovery. One such event occurred in late 2000, when
Belgian speleologist Peter De Geest and his team stumbled upon an ancient
sanctuary deep inside the Hoq cave on the northeast coast of Socotra. The sanctuary
contained a large number of graffiti in South Arabian, Indian Brahmi, Ethiopic
Geʾez, and Greek script, as well as an inscribed tablet in Palmyrene Aramaic, giving
a date corresponding to AD 257−258 (Dridi 2002; Robin and Gorea 2002; Strauch
2012; Strauch and Bukharin 2004). Present-day Socotra is among the most isolated
places in the world. In the centuries around the turn of the first millennium AD,

E. H. Seland (&)
Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies, and Religion, University of Bergen,
P.O. Box 7800, 5020 Bergen, Norway
e-mail: eivind.seland@ahkr.uib.no

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however, it was a crossroad of commerce based on the monsoon winds. This trade
brought together people from all coasts of the western Indian Ocean, dealing in
aromatics, spices, textiles, gems, glass, metal, slaves, grain, timber, and a range of
other commodities of prestige and subsistence. The discovery of the cave sanctuary
on the seemingly remote island provided not only an evocative reminder of the
multicultural nature of ancient world trade, but also emphasized that the western
Indian Ocean was never a barrier to contact; rather it is the proximate and natural
medium of communication for people living along its rim.
For this article, I gather the different strands of research published over the last
20 years and identify the main accomplishments of the joint scholarly effort during
this period. After a summary of early scholarship, I review regional points of view,
with brief surveys of recent publications focusing on South Asia, the Persian Gulf,
South Arabia, Socotra, East Africa, and the Red Sea. I then address the combined
evidence for ships, navigation, and people, before discussing the contributions of
western Indian Ocean archaeology to our understanding of early exchange in
general, with regard to key issues such as scale, organization, connectivity, agency,
and social cohesion. I owe much to recent syntheses on the topic (Beaujard 2012;
Ray 2003; Sidebotham 2012; Tomber 2008). I depart from these works, however, in
my scope as a review of recent research, rather than an analysis of the underlying
research questions. My intent is to assess the place of western Indian Ocean
archaeology within the wider discourse on ancient exchange. For reasons of space
and coherence, my literature review concentrates on the western part of the Indian
Ocean world: Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, Gulf of Aden, and the Red
Sea (Fig. 1); coverage of the Bay of Bengal and the eastern Indian Ocean is
intentionally limited. Similarly, although literature relevant to the Neolithic through
modern periods is cited, my emphasis is on the millennium after circa 300 BC. This
timeframe encompasses what would in South Asian chronology roughly correspond
to the Early Historic period and to the pre-Islamic period from the Hellenistic era
onward in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. I include results from complementary
disciplines of philology and history only when they relate directly to material
evidence and/or to the archaeological sites that are discussed. Selected titles on
these related periods, regions, and subjects are included in the bibliography of recent
literature at the end of the article.

Scholarly origins

Early modern travelers in the Indian Ocean knew their Periplus of the Erythraean
Sea (Della Valle et al. 1665, p. 5; Niebuhr 1774, p. 452), the anonymous first-
century Greek guide to travel and navigation in the Indian Ocean that still remains
important in modern historiography (Casson 1989). British colonial administrators
in India were well versed in classical sources describing the Indian Ocean
(McCrindle 1979; Vincent 1998) and meticulously recorded finds of Roman coins
from an early date (Ray 2008, pp. 189–190; Turner 1989, pp. 1–3). Western 19th-
century travelers and soldiers in Arabia and East Africa started connecting the
ancient remains they encountered on their travels with toponyms familiar from the

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Fig. 1 Present-day political borders and geographical subdivisions in the western Indian Ocean region
(map drawn by author)

Bible and classical accounts (Bent and Bent 1900; Wellsted 1838; Wellsted and
Ormsby 1840). Also, European historians of the classical world were well aware of
the literary and numismatic evidence of contacts with the East (Charlesworth 1926;
Mommsen 1904; Warmington 1995). The archaeology of Indian Ocean trade in any
modern sense of the word, however, started only in 1940, when Jouveau-Dubreuil
published a short note on finds made at the site of Arikamedu, just south of
Pondicherry on the Indian Coromandel coast. Among them was an intaglio engraved
with the portrait of the first Roman emperor, Augustus (27 BC–AD 14) (Begley
et al. 1996, pp. 2–3; Jouveau-Dubreuil 1940). The site became famous with the
excavations undertaken by the Archaeological Survey of India, directed by Wheeler
in 1945 (Wheeler et al. 1946), which were continued under the direction of Casal
from 1947 to 1950 (Casal 1949; Casal and Casal 1956). In their report, Wheeler and
his colleagues dubbed Arikamedu an Indo-Roman trading station on the east coast

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of India. The “Indo” part of the subtitle, however, appears largely to have been
overlooked. Attention soon centered on artifacts of Mediterranean origin in the
Indian Ocean world, which also were seen as evidence of Mediterranean presence,
well assisted by Wheeler’s (1955) best-selling popular account, Rome beyond the
Imperial Frontiers. Arikamedu is situated on the eastern seaboard of India.
Nevertheless, the influence of the site on the archaeology of exchange in the western
Indian Ocean can hardly be overstated, as the stratigraphy, chronology, and
arguably also the research agenda established at Arikamedu soon became pattern for
sites excavated elsewhere (Gupta 1996, p. 51).
The sunset of colonial archaeology thus became the wellspring of the
archaeology of Indian Ocean trade (Ray 2008, pp. 187–212), but things might
have turned out differently. In early 1952, the team of the American Foundation for
the Study of Man had to hastily abandon their excavations of the sanctuary Mahram
Bilqis in Marib in Yemen, but they were invited to set up operations in Oman
(Phillips 1955, pp. 224–238, 300–227). There, the site of Khor Rori, near present-
day Salalah, was excavated during the following year, but unfortunately, the final
report was almost 30 years in the making (Albright 1982). Although it could be
argued that the nascent discipline of South Arabian archaeology, as other branches
of Oriental archaeology, was as indebted to biblical archaeology as Wheeler had
been to provincial Roman archaeology, it was a discipline with a clear regional
commitment. Khor Rori boasts imposing walls and storehouses, monumental South
Arabian inscriptions, and material evidence of a balanced network of contacts with
India, the Gulf, and the Mediterranean, but primarily with the Hadramawti heartland
(Avanzini 2002, 2008). If Khor Rori had become the prototype of an Indian Ocean
port community, rather than the poorly understood Arikamedu, Indian Ocean
archaeology might have started out on a different trajectory.
The study of exchange flourished within theoretically and anthropologically
oriented archaeology in the 1970s (Earle and Ericson 1977; Renfrew 1977; Sabloff
and Lamberg-Karlovsky 1975), but this had little visible impact on archaeologists
working in the Indian Ocean. In the early postcolonial period, newly founded
national archaeological services and foreign missions in the Indian Ocean region
concentrated on establishing national subdisciplines. The Ethiopian excavations in
Adulis in present-day Eritrea in 1960−1961 (Anfray 1974), in retrospect another
example of colonial archaeology, was the only major project with relevance in a
wider Indian Ocean setting. At the same time, many classical archaeologists,
working in the tradition of Wheeler and in the parts of the Indian Ocean world that
had been subject to Hellenistic and Roman rule, turned their attention away from
trade after the devastating criticism of the modernist/formalist tradition voiced by
Finley (1973) in Ancient Economy. Similarly, many anthropologically oriented
scholars, disenchanted with neo-evolutionary approaches to (see Yoffee 2005),
turned toward the study of indigenous agency and trajectories of development. In
sum, this left the study of ancient Indian Ocean trade to scholars who, whether they
were archaeologists, classicists, Arabists, Indologists, or Orientalists by training and
inclination, did not engage critically with the notion that early historiography had
established that ancient Indian Ocean trade was in essence Roman trade with the
East. When Raschke (1978) published his critical 700-page review of overland and

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maritime connections between Asia and the Roman Empire, he found easy targets in
conclusions that were inferred from meager sources and an archaeological record
biased toward Mediterranean material.
Renewed interest in Indo-Roman as well as regional approaches to the
archaeology of the western Indian Ocean trade began in the 1980s and grew
throughout the 1990s, with the launching of several important survey and
excavation projects. Also, Casson’s (1989) translation of and commentary on the
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea made this key text available for the first time in a
modern, scholarly edition. After the turn of the millennium, it increasingly makes
sense to speak of archaeology in the western Indian Ocean as an integrated field,
where the different regional archaeologies of the Indian Ocean rim, including the
very significant parts controlled by the Roman Empire, give their share to a holistic
understanding of the ancient exchange systems based on the monsoon winds.

South Asia

Arikamedu (Fig. 2) was not only the birthplace of Indian Ocean archaeology, but it
also became the point of departure for the renewed interest in the material evidence
of Indian Ocean trade. This started with new studies of the material that was
excavated but only partly published by Wheeler and Casal (Begley 1983; Begley
et al. 1996, p. 7; Gupta 1996) and continued with new excavations directed by
Begley from 1989 to 1992 (Begley 1993; Begley et al. 1996, 2004). It became clear
that the site had a much longer and more complex history of occupation than the
original excavators had believed, not confined to the first two centuries AD, but
stretching at least from the second century BC to the 10th century AD (Begley et al.
1996, pp. 8–40). Francis (1991) demonstrated the site’s important role in the
production of Indo-Pacific beads, thus highlighting its eastward connections along
and across the Bay of Bengal and the diversity of trading links. The widely
distributed Rouletted Ware, first identified at Arikamedu but since found at
approximately 150 sites, including at least 11 outside South Asia (Schenk 2006, pp.
142–146), was originally interpreted as strongly inspired by Mediterranean patterns
(Wheeler et al. 1946). It has since been shown to develop out of regional traditions
in South Asia, spanning back at least to the second century BC. It is thus unrelated
to the monsoon trade with Roman-period Egypt (Begley 1983, 1988; Ford et al.
2005; Magee 2010; Ray 1994, pp. 59–61), although it may have been inspired by
Hellenistic-period pottery encountered in Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf
(Magee 2010; Ray 1994, pp. 59–61; Salles 2002, pp. 197–199). Even if the
significance of the Mediterranean connection has been played down over time,
Arikamedu has retained its position in the study of Indian Ocean trade. Beads as
well as pottery associated with the site have become highly useful proxies for
tracing trading connections, emphasizing the centrality of South India and Sri Lanka
in connecting the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal circuits of trade (Gupta 2005;
Pavan and Schenk 2012). The new studies and excavations at Arikamedu clearly
show a site with a much wider significance in terms of chronology and commercial

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Fig. 2 South Asian sites and places mentioned in the text (map drawn by author, base map © ESRI 2013,
used with permission)

as well as cultural diversity than the “Roman factory” inferred by Wheeler, but they
have not yet revealed much about the socioeconomic organization of the ancient
port (Tomber 2008, pp. 147–151).
Arguably the most important Indian site excavated after Arikamedu is Pattanam,
generally identified with the port of Muziris, mentioned in Roman as well as Tamil
literary sources (Shajan et al. 2004). The Kerala Council for Historical Research has
excavated at Pattanam since 2007. Along with locally produced pottery and beads,
finds include building structures, a wharf, a log boat, imported Mediterranean glass,

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Roman Terra Sigillata pottery, and a range of amphorae (Mediterranean transport

jars), all dating to the first century BC through the second century AD. Specimens of
Sassanian-period (AD 224–651) torpedo jars from Mesopotamia, late Roman (fifth
to seventh centuries) Aila/Aqaba amphorae, glazed Partho-Sassanian pottery, and
sherds of probable South Arabian origin also are reported (Cherian 2011; Cherian
et al. 2007, 2009; Selvakumar et al. 2009; Tomber 2009).
While the link to textual sources and the massive evidence of trade in bulk
commodities and luxury items have brought well-deserved attention to Pattanam,
the site is only one of many along the coasts of Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka. By
2008, evidence of commercial contacts with the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf had
been recorded from 36 sites in the form of Roman and late Roman amphorae and
Mesopotamian torpedo jars (Tomber 2007b, 2008, pp. 126–127, 176). Sites are
distributed all over South Asia, with clusters on the coasts of Gujarat, Maharastra,
South India, Sri Lanka, and Andhra Pradesh. Such early historical ports as Dwarka
(Gaur et al. 2006), Kamrej (Gupta et al. 2004), and Elephanta Island (Tripathi
2004), as well as the inland center of Nevasa (Gupta 1998; Gupta et al. 2001), do not
figure prominently in literary sources but nevertheless appear to have been
significant focal points of regional and long-distance exchange (see also Smith
2002). Imported pottery is not limited to Mediterranean and Mesopotamian wares
but also include vessels of Arabian (Selvakumar et al. 2009, p. 34) and probably
Aksumite origin (cf. Phillipson 2011, p. 200; Tomber 2005). Their presence
demonstrates not only a multiplicity of routes, ports, and carriers but also the
durability and longevity of commercial contacts with the western Indian Ocean
throughout the Indian Early Historic period (c. 300 BC−AD 500) and into the early
medieval period.
Along with South India, Sri Lanka enjoys a privileged geographical position as a
natural juncture between Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal networks (Bandaranayake
1990). Still, the island long remained underexplored archaeologically with regard to
Indian Ocean trade. References in literary sources (Weerakkody 1997) and large
finds of late Roman bronze and copper coins, also found in South India and
apparently imported in bulk (Bopearachchi 1992, 1998), long gave the impression
that the island did not emerge as an important node in commerce with the Persian
Gulf and the Red Sea until the fourth to sixth centuries AD. Excavations at
Tissamaharama, along with studies of ceramics from Mantai and Anuradhapura
(Carswell 1991; Carswell et al. 2013; Coningham 2002, 2006; Coningham et al.
1996; Coningham and Raymond 1999; Ford et al. 2005; Pavan and Schenk 2012;
Schenk 2001, 2006, 2007), however, have demonstrated that the island’s nodal role
can be traced back at least to the third century BC. The ship cargo of the second to
first centuries AD that was discovered in 2008 off the ancient port of Godavaya in
southern Sri Lanka is still under excavation, but preliminary publications and news
reports have announced finds of glass ingots and metal, possibly of Indian
provenance (Carlson 2010; Lawler 2012). This is only the second ancient shipwreck
discovered in the western Indian Ocean, so it is hoped that the ongoing excavations
will contribute to our understanding of technology and the organization and
commodities of Indian Ocean trade.

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Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman

Gulf archaeology (Fig. 3) has a long record as a robust regional archaeological

discipline, but thus far relatively few publications have approached Persian Gulf
sites and material from an Indian Ocean perspective or vice versa (see, however,
Kennet 2004; Salles 2012). Iron Age societies on the Arabian, Mesopotamian, and
Iranian littorals of the Persian Gulf were tightly integrated in networks of political,
cultural, and commercial nature (Magee 2005, 2010; Potts 2009, pp. 36–39). With
Alexander’s conquest of the Achaemenid Empire, large parts of the Gulf became
part of the Hellenistic world, but little is known of the extent or organization of
trade between the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. The island of Failaka in
present-day Kuwait has yielded considerable ceramic, epigraphic, and architectural
evidence of Hellenistic settlement (Callot et al. 2005; Hannestad 1983; Jeppesen
1989). The location of the island at the head of the Persian Gulf and its limited local
agricultural resources makes a connection of the settlement with commercial and/or
naval activities likely. Sherds of Arabian Red-and-Black-Washed pottery reveal
contacts with eastern Arabia (Hannestad 1983, pp. 49–50), while characteristic
Nabataean ceramics show that the site took part in exchange along the Persian Gulf/
Mediterranean axis around the turn of the first millennium AD (Hannestad 1983, pp.
51–52) and corroborate the literary report of Nabataean merchants in the region
(Pliny NH 6.145; see Rackham 1997–2001). Nabataean ceramics and coins also
have been found at Thaj and Qatif (Potts 1991), revealing that this network extended
into the Gulf. Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman coins are reported from a number of
sites in eastern Arabia (Howgego and Potts 1992), although the mechanisms by
which they arrived there are not known. Bahrain, with its strategic location halfway
along the south−north axis of the Gulf, ample supply of water, and rich pearl
resources, is likely to have been an important center of regional and interregional
navigation and commerce. Tylos-period (fourth century BC to seventh century AD)
cemeteries on the island have yielded hundreds of objects, documenting contacts
with Mesopotamia, Iran, and Egypt (Andersen 2007; Salles 1993, pp. 124–126;
2012, pp. 319–322).
Thus far, however, only one major site of primarily commercial nature has been
documented in the Persian Gulf, Ed-Dur in Umm al-Quwain (UAE). The site is
frequently, but not securely, identified with the Parthian Gulf emporium of Omana,
mentioned in the Periplus (sec. 36) (Potts 1997, p. 94, but see Mouton 2008, pp.
257–258). Results of the University of Ghent South-East Arabian Archaeological
Project in the late 1980s and early 1990s have been published in detail. Glass,
ceramics, and coins from funerary as well as residential settings show extensive
commercial contacts with Mesopotamia, India, and the Mediterranean world, as
well as other parts of Arabia and southern Iran (Haerinck 1998, 2001, 2011; Mouton
2008; Rutten 2007; Sidebotham et al. 2008; Whitehouse et al. 1998). Contacts with
the Mediterranean probably took place by way of ports in South Arabia, such as
Qana and Khor Rori, as well as from Mesopotamia and India, rather than directly
overland or from the Red Sea (Rutten 2007). The impression that commerce was an

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important part of the basis for the settlement is strengthened by the fact that Ed-Dur
is essentially a one-period site during the first and early second centuries AD
(Haerinck 2001, pp. 4–5).
There is little evidence of widespread direct navigation between the Persian Gulf
and the Red Sea in antiquity (Salles 1988). Thus South Arabia and Northwest India
likely played key roles in connecting the Red Sea−Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf
−Arabian Sea corridors of exchange. In addition to Ed-Dur, signs of this nodal role
can be seen in Dibba al-Hisn and Mleiha in the emirate of Sharjah. Dibba al-Hisn on
the east coast of the UAE has yielded Parthian, Roman, and Indian materials from
funerary settings of the same period as Ed-Dur, making it an alternative location for
ancient Omana (Jasim 2006). Finds from Mleiha, farther inland, include material of
Indian, African, Iranian, and Mesopotamian origin, revealing that it also was
connected to a comprehensive Indian Ocean network in the first centuries AD
(Benoist et al. 2003; Mouton 2008). Rich finds of Indian Red Polished ware from
Suhar in Oman date back to the start of the settlement, probably the first century AD
(Kervran 1998, pp. 40–43). Finally, the late pre-Islamic and Early Islamic
assemblages from the site of Kush in Ras al-Khaimah (UAE) provide evidence of
contacts with Mesopotamia as well as India (Kennet 2004, pp. 69–71).
Contacts with the Gulf also are evident from Arabian Sea contexts. Mesopo-
tamian torpedo jars of the Sassanian period are documented from a number of sites
on the Indian subcontinent (Tomber 2007b), and Parthian pottery has been found in
stratified settings in Tissamaharama, Sri Lanka (Schenk 2007). Other types of West
Asian glazed pottery are reported from South Asia (Glover 2002) and South Arabia,
including Khor Rori (Sedov and Benvenuti 2002, pp. 192–193).
In the first to third centuries AD, merchants from the Syrian city of Palmyra,
sailing out of the Mesopotamian kingdom of Mesene, were among the carriers of
this trade (Potts 1997). Palmyrene inscriptions from the second century commem-
orate not only caravans to southern Mesopotamia and a Palmyrene acting as Satrap
of Tylos (Bahrain) on behalf of the Mesenian king (cf. Gawlikowski 1994), but also
merchants travelling by ship to the Kushan kingdom, presumably to the port of
Barbarikon in present-day Pakistan (Delplace 2003). Tombs on the island of Kharg,
present-day Iran, have been characterized first as Palmyrene (Ghirshman 1958, pp.
265–266) and later as Nabataean (Steve 2003, pp. 67–68); these identifications
based on stylistic arguments should be considered tentative.
Along with the already cited ceramic evidence from the Indian subcontinent,
literary sources indicate continued and flourishing trade between Iran, Mesopota-
mia, eastern Arabia, and the Arabian Sea in the Sassanian period (Daryaee 2009;
Whitehouse 1996; Whitehouse and Williamson 1973). In Iran, the combined
commercial and military/administrative sites of Siraf and Rishahr have yielded Red
Polished ware from India and painted ceramics from the Minab region at the
entrance to the Persian Gulf (Whitehouse 1996, pp. 341–342). Also, a fortress was
maintained by the Sassanids at Qal‘at al-Bahrain (Kervran et al. 2005). With regard
to eastern Arabia, the general trend in the archaeological record is a decline in the
number of settlements, burials, and coin finds compared to the Hellenistic and
Parthian periods (Kennet 2007).

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Southern Arabia and Socotra

Southern Arabia (Fig. 3) played a key role in ancient Indian Ocean exchange. The
region was a main supplier of frankincense and myrrh. These aromatics were utilized
for religious, funerary, cosmetic, and medicinal purposes in India, the Persian Gulf,
and the Mediterranean world. Southern Arabia also was important as a meeting point
for maritime routes connecting the Red Sea, East Africa, India, and the Gulf, and
merchants from Arabia took active part in maritime trade (Peacock et al. 2007b).
Politically, the inland mountains and major valleys (wadis) of southern Arabia
were divided into a number of kingdoms based on a combination of irrigation and
dry farming (Breton 1999; De Maigret 2002; Schippmann 2001; Simpson 2002).
Several ports were maintained along the arid coastline. Two of these, Khor Rori in
Oman and Qana in Yemen, have been extensively documented.
Khor Rori (ancient Sumhuram) was originally excavated by the American
Foundation for the Study of Man in the 1950s and was long interpreted as an outpost
established and maintained by the kingdom of Hadramawt for the control of the
frankincense trade with the Roman world (Albright 1982). The site has seen
renewed excavations and restorations by the Italian Mission to Oman since 1996.
The new studies have established a much longer chronology for the settlement than
was previously thought, starting in the fourth century BC and extending to the fifth
century AD (Avanzini 2002, 2008; Avanzini and Sedov 2005). Pottery assemblages
show contacts with India, the Persian Gulf, and the Mediterranean (Pavan 2007;
Pavan and Schenk 2012; Sedov and Benvenuti 2002). The economic basis and
settlement history of the site include local agricultural production, an extramural
settlement, and a role in the metal trade with southeastern Arabia and the Persian
Gulf. Nevertheless, the importance of frankincense production and trade for ancient
Sumhuram has never been doubted (Avanzini 2002, 2008).
Farther west along the coast of South Arabia, near the modern village of Bir Ali
in Yemen, ancient Qana was identified by Wellsted in 1834 and first surveyed by
Doe (1961) in 1957. The site has been excavated by the Soviet and later the Russian
Archaeological Mission to the Republic of Yemen in several campaigns since 1972,
partly in cooperation with other international teams (Salles and Sedov 2010, pp. 2–
3). The original reports are in Russian, and the site was long known mostly through
shorter syntheses (Sedov 1992, 1998, 2007); the results of the excavations up to
1994 recently became available with related studies in French and English (Salles
and Sedov 2010).
Ancient Qana consists of a fortress at the prominent hilltop of Husn al-Ghurab
and a settlement of fluctuating size on the beach below that appear to have been
established in the first century AD. The site likely was the main port of the early
South Arabian kingdom of Hadramawt, which was arguably the main supplier of
frankincense in the ancient world. The port continued in operation under Himyarite
rule in late antiquity until the settlement was abandoned in the early seventh century
(Sedov 2010b). Sedov connects the foundation and existence of Qana with the
Hadramawti key role as a supplier of frankincense from South Arabia and Socotra in
the monsoon trade with the Mediterranean, India, and the Persian Gulf (Sedov
2010b, pp. 453–454).

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Early in the site’s occupation, imported ceramics, mainly Roman Dressel 2–4
transport amphorae but also Dressel 1b and Dressel 7–11 amphorae carrying
primarily wine but probably also garum (fish sauce), and possibly wheat, show
extensive contacts with the Mediterranean economy. Green-glazed pottery and
storage jars of Black-and-Grey ware reveal commercial connections with the
Persian Gulf and southeastern Arabia (Sedov 2010b, pp. 462–463). Connections
with the Mediterranean continued between the late second to early fifth century AD
at the same time that imported objects show increased contact with the Persian Gulf
and, to a limited extent, also with India and southeastern Iran (Sedov 2010b, pp.
463–465). More extensive architectural remains characterize the settlement at that
time, indicating development from a place of seasonal exchange to a commercial
city. In one of the structures from this period, a Greek-language graffito of
monotheistic, probably Jewish, content was found (Bowersock 1993). A building,
which may be identified as a synagogue on architectural grounds, was later erected
on the site (Sedov 2010a). In addition to lending material context to the rise of
monotheism in southern Arabia as known from literary sources, these finds are
suggestive of the multicultural nature of Indian Ocean commerce and open
questions of continuity with the better-documented Jewish diaspora of the medieval
period and of the role of religion in early Indian Ocean trade.
The size of the settlement was again reduced in the sixth to early seventh
centuries. Sherds from Aqaba in present-day Jordan and the Aksumite kingdom in
Ethiopia/Eritrea dominate the record of imported ceramics, reflecting growing
Aksumite importance in Red Sea and Indian Ocean exchange as well as Aksumite
imperial ambitions in southern Arabia at that time (Sedov 2010b, pp. 465–466).
The island of Socotra, due east of Cape Guardafui, is today part of the Republic
of Yemen (Fig. 4). According to the Periplus (sec. 31), it also was controlled from
the Arabian mainland in the first century AD, when it was ruled by the kings of
Hadramawt. Socotra is home to such plants as aloe, Dragon’s blood (Dracaena
cinnabari), and frankincense (genus Boswellia, several species) (Cheung et al. 2006,
pp. 87–90). These crops were commercially important in antiquity and were almost
certainly exploited. The island lacks harbors and mooring places sheltered from the
summer (southwestern) monsoon. Until the opening of a commercial airport in
1999, Socotra was not easily accessible and long remained a blank spot on the
archaeological map of the Indian Ocean. Shinnie (1960, p. 103) visited Socotra as
part of the Oxford University expedition in 1956 and noted walled and terraced
parcels of land that he tentatively connected with ancient cultivation of aromatics
(but see Weeks et al. 2002, pp. 120–122). Doe (1970) conducted the next
archaeological survey in 1967, recording visible architectural structures. The
Russian Archaeological Mission to the Republic of Yemen has been active on the
island since 1983, surveying and excavating the settlement of Hajriya, located
inland of the modern village of Suq on the northern coast. Their results have yielded
the first material with a relationship to ancient Indian Ocean exchange. Although the
surveyed structures were dated to the 10th through 13th centuries, surface finds
include ceramics dating to the first through fourth centuries AD that were imported
from the Mediterranean, southern Arabia, the Persian/Arabian Gulf, and possibly
India; these materials are similar to those from stratified layers of the third and

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fourth centuries at Qana (Naumkin and Sedov 1995, pp. 224–229). Further evidence
of maritime contacts of the pre-Islamic period were discovered in 2010 during a
Russian survey at Kosh, near the western point of the island, where surface pottery
assemblages also revealed close affinities to material excavated at Qana (Vinog-
radov 2011). Along with the spectacular epigraphic record of approximately 250
inscriptions from the Hoq cave (Dridi 2002; Robin and Gorea 2002; Strauch 2012;
Strauch and Bukharin 2004), these finds now place Socotra as a major node in the
pre-Islamic Indian Ocean network. The fact that the island altogether lacks suitable
natural harbors makes this all the more interesting; this apparent contradiction could
perhaps be approached through studies of ship technology or the seasonality of
trade.
Khor Rori, Qana, and the sites on Socotra are all materially, epigraphically
(partially), and historically affiliated with the early South Arabian kingdom of
Hadramawt, centered in the eastern part of present-day Yemen. Literary sources
record that other South Arabian kingdoms also took part in maritime trade
(Schiettecatte 2012), most importantly Saba-Himyar, which came to control the
Arabian side of the Bab al-Mandab and the straits separating the Red Sea and the
Gulf of Aden—the area where the Himyarite empire evolved during the third
century. Imported late Roman Aila/Aqaba amphorae are reported from the German
excavations at the Himyarite highland capital of Zafar (Damgaard 2009, pp. 87–88;
Raith et al. 2013), but thus far pre-Islamic port sites, with the exception of Aden,
which is completely covered under later habitation, have not been securely
identified, much less surveyed or excavated.

Fig. 3 Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Red Sea sites and places mentioned in the text (map drawn by
author, base map © ESRI 2013, used with permission)

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Fig. 4 East African and Socotra sites and places mentioned in the text (map drawn by author, base map
© ESRI 2013, used with permission)

East Africa

Another underexplored part of the Indian Ocean rim with regard to early maritime
exchange is East Africa (Fig. 4). The Swahili coast is famous for its role in the
Indian Ocean exchange from the late first millennium AD onward (Horton and
Middleton 2000; LaViolette 2008; Shipton et al. 2013; Walz and Gupta 2013), but
there is an ongoing and unresolved debate on the role of this region during the first
millennium. Extensive fieldwork, especially along the coast of Tanzania, but also in
Kenya and Mozambique, has shed light on settlement in the early Iron Age period
(Chami 2004, 2005; Chami and Msemwa 1997). The formation of urban centers
along the coast was clearly under way toward the end of this period (Juma 2004;
Sinclair 1982); external contacts are evidenced for instance by the presence of
imported beads (Wood 2012). Claimed material evidence of early first millennium
or earlier contacts with the Indian Ocean system from sites on Mafia Island and in

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the Rufiji Delta (Chami 1999, 2005) has, however, been met with skepticism (Helm
et al. 2012; Horton and Middleton 2000), and interest has been directed toward
studies of mobility as evidenced by genetics, linguistics, and the movement of crops
(Beaujard 2011; Boivin et al. 2012; Fuller et al. 2011; Helm et al. 2012). These
approaches have provided considerable new insight into the long-term dynamics of
the Indian Ocean system (Boivin et al. 2010) and on the later-period archaeology of
East Africa. It might be anticipated that they also will shed more light on the East
African coast during the first millennium.
The author of the Periplus knew of the ports on the coast of Somalia as “the far-
side ports” (Greek: ta peran emporia), signifying their situation either outside Bab
al-Mandab (from a Red Sea point of view) (Casson 1989, pp. 55, 59, 115) or
perhaps equally likely opposite the coast of southern Arabia. Arab, Indian, and
Egyptian traders visited these ports in search of frankincense and other aromatics.
For political and security reasons, the coast of Somalia has been effectively closed
to archaeologists since the start of the civil war in 1991 (Mire 2011). The British
Institute in East Africa conducted some exploratory work before that (Chittick 1969,
1976, 1979), and Chittick directed excavations at the site of Ras Hafun, south of
Cape Guardafui in 1976 (Smith and Wright 1988). Published results emphasize
evidence of contacts with the Mediterranean world, but Mesopotamian and Indian
ceramics also were recorded (Tomber 2008, pp. 159–160). Provided there are stable
political conditions, Somaliland and Puntland in northern Somalia are among the
most promising areas for future archaeological work on ancient Indian Ocean trade
(Mire 2011); because of the arid environment there also is potential for aerial or
satellite approaches like those recently applied with success on the Arabian
Peninsula (Kennedy 2011; Kennedy and Bishop 2011).

The Red Sea

In contrast to East Africa, the Red Sea (Fig. 3) has experienced an explosion of
scholarly interest since the 1990s. Key sites such as Adulis, Berenike, and Myos
Hormos have seen major archaeological investigations, and a series of Red Sea
conferences under the auspices of the Society for Arabian Studies has brought
together scholars from different disciplines with a common interest in the region and
have resulted in numerous publications.
Adulis, on the coast of present-day Eritrea, was the main coastal settlement of the
kingdom of Aksum and was occupied from the first millennium BC to the early
Islamic period. Early explorers and excavators identified the site and documented
monumental structures—palaces and churches—connected with its late phase of
occupation (Anfray 1974; Munro-Hay 1989; Paribeni 1907; Sundström 1907;
Zazzaro 2013). New fieldwork took place in 2004−2005 as a part of an Eritreo-
British project, which located the probable site of the middle-late Aksumite-period
port, as well as the first century AD mooring place indicated in the Periplus,
unknown until then (Peacock and Blue 2007a, b; Peacock et al. 2004). Surface
ceramics show a range of vessels from the Mediterranean world, with an emphasis
on the late period, and amphorae of the Aila/Aqaba type which also are found at

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Qana, Zafar, and Aksum. Significant import of Mediterranean marble also can be
traced (Peacock and Blue 2007a, pp. 37, 79–108, 130). An Eritreo-Italian team
resumed excavations at Adulis in 2011; their preliminary findings of regionally
produced Adulitan ware from stratified levels show not only a localized ceramic
tradition but also that the site has a settlement history stretching back into the first
millennium BC (Zazzaro and Manzo 2012). Near the island of Black Assarca, off
the coast and north of Adulis, the recovery of the cargo of a small sixth/seventh-
century merchant ship revealed large numbers of Aila/Aqaba amphorae and also
globular pilgrim-flask-type amphorae from kilns at Aila (Pedersen 2008). Together
with results from the Aksumite capital in the highlands of present-day Ethiopia
(Munro-Hay et al. 1989; Phillipson 1998, pp. 63–70, 2011, pp. 195–200; Wilding
1989), the finds reinforce the impression long prevalent in the scholarly literature of
the Aksumite kingdom as an actor in ancient Indian Ocean exchange from the first
century AD onward but with increased importance in the fourth to early seventh
centuries. In this period, literary sources imply Aksumite attempts to control the
southern Red Sea and the transit trade between the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea.
The prominent presence of ceramic transport vessels from Aqaba points toward that
port being the main northern trading partner of late period Adulis.
No pre-Islamic port has yet been securely identified along the African coast
between Adulis in Eritrea and Berenike in present-day Egypt. Literary and
papyrological documents show that the shoreline was the target of Ptolemaic
elephant-hunting expeditions (Casson 1993; Sidebotham 2011, pp. 39–53), and
evidence of Meroitic contacts with the Indian Ocean (Håland 2013) should be
present along the coast of present-day Sudan. Discussions on the location of the
arguably most important of these ports, Ptolemais Theron, still rely on literary
evidence (Bukharin 2011), and few advances have been made on the ground since
Crowfoot’s (1911) survey published more than a century ago.
Egyptian Berenike was established in the third century BC as a part of the
Ptolemaic effort to access Red Sea resources. The port experienced peaks of
operation in its early days, in the first century AD and again in the fourth and fifth
centuries, with limited evidence of activity before or after. The site was abandoned
by the mid-sixth century (Sidebotham 2011; Sidebotham et al. 2008, pp. 171–175).
Berenike was excavated from 1994 to 2001 by a joint American−Dutch team headed
by Sidebotham and Wendrich (1995, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2007). New work has
been undertaken since 2008 by an American-Polish team led by Sidebotham and
Zych (2010, 2011, 2012a).
Berenike has extraordinary conditions of preservation and minimal later
disturbance, and extensive and long-standing archaeological work at the site has
yielded results that are too voluminous to be discussed here in detail (recent
syntheses include Cappers 2006; Sidebotham 2011; Wendrich et al. 2003). Among
the important results are traces of the Ptolemaic period harbor, including
infrastructure tentatively connected with the transit of live elephants trapped in
the African Red Sea hills for purposes of war (Radowska˛ and Woźniak 2011;
Sidebotham and Zych 2010, pp. 10–11, 2012a, p. 31). Berenike has so far yielded
evidence of 12 written languages, including South Arabian, Palmyrene Aramaic,
and Tamil-Brahmi (Sidebotham 2004; 2011, pp. 74–75; Sidebotham and Zych 2010,

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p. 12). A considerable number of Greek texts on ostraca, papyri, and other media
that shed light on everyday life and economic transactions at the port have been
published (Bagnall et al. 2000, 2005). Imported ceramics include vessels from India,
South Arabia, and Aksum (Begley and Tomber 1999; Tomber 2000, 2012). While
conclusions on ethnicity are difficult to infer, Roman Berenike reinforces the
cosmopolitan impression of ancient Indian Ocean exchange from the cave sanctuary
of Hoq on Socotra. Buildings from Berenike show reuse of Mediterranean-style ship
timbers from Indian teak, revealing that vessels were built or repaired in India in
Mediterranean mortise-and-tenon tradition or alternatively that they were built in
Egypt from imported wood (Sidebotham 2011, pp. 203–205; Sidebotham and
Wendrich 2007, p. 290). Textiles that have been recovered include cottons woven
from Z-spun yarns, and thus probably of Indian origin, and fragments of sails woven
in Mediterranean style (Wild and Wild 2001, 2007). Finally, Berenike has yielded a
rich archaeobotanical record, including the spectacular find of an Indian-made
vessel resembling a dolium-type transport jar containing 7.55 kg of black pepper
(Piper nigrum) imported from South India. Other finds show contacts with the Nile
Valley, the Mediterranean, South Asia, Arabia, and the East African coast (Cappers
2006). The Berenike teams and other groups have completed considerable surveys
and excavations at sites between the Nile River and the Red Sea, shedding light on
the land-based infrastructure connected with maritime trade (Sidebotham et al.
2008).
To the north along the Egyptian Red Sea coast, Myos Hormos (Islamic-period
Quseir al-Qadim) was the second major Egyptian port in the Indian Ocean/Red Sea
trade. The University of Chicago excavated the site in 1978, 1980, and 1982
(Whitcomb and Johnson 1979, 1982), but the main results relevant to the pre-
Islamic period come from the University of Southampton excavations from 1999 to
2003 (Blue 2007; Peacock and Blue 2006, 2011). Myos Hormos is also likely to
have been a Ptolemaic settlement, but apart from a few Hellenistic coins, no other
traces from this period have been identified (Peacock and Blue 2006, 2011, p. 345).
Maritime activities in the port were their busiest following the construction of a
wharf built of amphorae, earth, rocks, and ceramic debris late in the first century BC
or early in the first century AD, (Blue 2011; Peacock and Blue 2006, pp. 67–94).
The site shows no signs of permanent occupation after the mid third-century
(Peacock and Blue 2006, pp. 174–175).
Finds from Myos Hormos partially parallel those from Berenike, and the sites
together contribute to what is arguably a fairly robust impression of Roman-period
Red Sea and Indian Ocean trade seen from an Egyptian perspective. Archaeobo-
tanical materials document imports from the Indian Ocean region, including rice
and black pepper (Veen et al. 2011a, b). Basalt carried as ballast that has been found
at Myos Hormos and Berenike has been shown to originate from South Arabia and
probably was imported from the ports of Qana and Aden (Peacock et al. 2007a).
Fragments of Roman glass, already amply documented during the Chicago
excavations (Meyer 1992), were abundant in trash dumps (Peacock 2011). Close
parallels exist with the sealed storerooms discovered in the ancient Kushan capital
of Begram, Afghanistan, in 1937 and 1939, revealing the ultimate destination of
some of the glass exported from the Red Sea ports (Mairs 2012; Mehendale 2011;

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Menninger 1996; Whitehouse 1989, 2001). Pottery with texts in South Arabian,
Palmyrene Aramaic, and Tamil-Brahmi echo the heterogeneous cultural environ-
ment of Berenike (Tomber 2011), and ceramics from the Adulis area also have been
found (Tomber 2012, p. 204).
A major breakthrough of the excavations at Egyptian Red Sea ports is that ship
fittings from Myos Hormos and timbers from Berenike document that at least some
of the vessels operating out of Egyptian Red Sea ports were of the type common in
the Mediterranean (Blue 2009; Blue et al. 2011; Sidebotham and Zych 2010, pp.
19–20). As in Berenike, remains of sails from Myos Hormos show Mediterranean
patterns combined with Indian fibers and techniques (Handley 2011).
While Myos Hormos was abandoned by the third century, Berenike enjoyed a
period of renewed prosperity from the fourth century (Sidebotham 2002;
Sidebotham and Zych 2012b, pp. 140–143, 152). The overall trend, however,
seems to be that ports of the northern Red Sea became more important in late
antiquity. This is partly visible in the fragmented literary record from the period
(Decker 2010, pp. 204–208; Ward 2007) but also in the presence of late Roman/
early Islamic amphorae that have been shown to originate from kilns in Aila
(Aqaba) in present-day Jordan (Parker 2009; Whitcomb 2001). These are reported
from sites along the Red Sea (Damgaard 2009, pp. 87–88; Peacock and Blue 2007a,
pp. 79–108, 130; Pedersen 2008; Raith et al. 2013; Wilding 1989), Southern Arabia
(Sedov 2010b, pp. 465–466) and India (Tomber 2009, p. 48). The content of these
amphorae has not been established, but garum (Parker 1998, pp. 390–391), dates,
and wine and a variety of agricultural products from the hinterland have been
suggested (Parker 1998, pp. 390–391, 2009, p. 83; Peacock 2007, pp. 103–104).
Pre-Islamic ports along the Arabian coast of the Red Sea are still largely not
documented. Most scholars suggest the Nabataean port of Leuke Kome was located
at Aynuna (Graf 2000), near the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba, where remains of a
Nabataean settlement are documented (Ingraham et al. 1981, pp. 76–78); others
have favored al-Wajh, 250 km farther south, on topographical and literary grounds
(Nappo 2010). In the Farasan Islands, off the coast of southern Saudi Arabia, the
sensational find of two Latin inscriptions documenting Roman military presence in
the second century AD (Phillips et al. 2004; Villeneuve 2004, 2005–2006, 2007) has
been followed by surveys by the University of Exeter MARES Project (Cooper and
Zazzaro 2012) that promise to shed more light on the pre-Islamic archaeology of
these strategically situated islands.

The archaeology of trade in the western Indian Ocean

Several developments are possible as a result of the profusion of available sites, data,
and studies described above. The archaeology of Indian Ocean trade is clearly freeing
itself from the constraints of a past as a discipline primarily of historical archaeology.
Most of the recently documented sites are not mentioned in the classical or other
literary sources, are not possible to positively identify with places recorded there, or
have a much longer period of occupation and activity than is indicated in the literary
material. Moreover, the chronological horizon, which was long restricted to the first

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two centuries AD, has come to encompass the late first millennium BC and the entire
first millennium AD. The great volume of recent finds and the relative prosperity of
port sites from the third to the seventh century AD show that old analyses of the
fluctuations of Indian Ocean trade, based on economic patterns in the Mediterranean,
need to be reconsidered. Finally, although material of Mediterranean origin continues
to dominate the record of imported pottery at most Indian Ocean sites, the presence of
ceramics from Arabia, East Africa (Aksum), South Arabia, Mesopotamia, and India
at sites across the western Indian Ocean, along with textiles, archaeobotanical, and
zooarchaeological material, gives a much more varied and comprehensive image of
commodities and carriers in the monsoon exchange.
Regardless of the surge in projects, fieldwork, and publication over the last two
decades, there is still plenty of work to do. None of the sites discussed above has
exhausted their potential for surveys and excavations, and a number of major ports
known from literary sources and the multitude of smaller maritime communities
remain unidentified. The archaeology of the Arabian Red Sea coast and the African
coast south of Egypt in the first millennium AD (with the notable exception of
Adulis) is still virtually unknown, and many known sites in India, Arabia, and the
Persian Gulf have been subject to little more than registration.
In addition to the results from research on specific sites and regions, several fields
of study with relevance across the region also have benefited from recent work.
Wreck sites discovered in the western Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, and the Red
Sea have thus far not yielded identifiable remains of ships. The remains of
Mediterranean-style fittings along with sails woven from Indian cotton (Blue 2009;
Blue et al. 2011; Handley 2011; Wild and Wild 2001, 2007) and both cedar from
Lebanon and teak from India fixed in traditional Mediterranean mortise and tenon
technique (Sidebotham 2011, pp. 203–205; Sidebotham and Wendrich 2007, p. 290;
Sidebotham and Zych 2010, pp. 19–20) that have been recovered at Berenike and
Myos Hormos indicate a complex situation. Discussions on technology and
navigation also continue to concentrate on comparative evidence. Mediterranean
and later-period Indian Ocean ships have been used to tentatively discuss the
performance of ancient ships (Pomey 2012; Varadarajan 1995; Whitewright 2007a,
b). The monsoons have not changed significantly since antiquity (Gupta et al. 2003),
and modern pilot guides and navigational charts, along with historical descriptions,
can be used to reconstruct seasonal sailing patterns (Beresford 2013; Casson 1989,
pp. 283–291; Facey 2004; Seland 2008, 2011).
Although ethnicity—loosely defined as perceived common ancestry combined
with boundary maintenance (Barth 1969; Brubaker 2005, pp. 5−7)—was clearly a
relevant category to people in the ancient world, it remains a challenge to identify
and trace in the archaeological record (Hu 2013). Several Indian Ocean sites,
however, have yielded evidence on the cultural affiliation and geographical origin of
inhabitants and visitors. The ceramic record from Arikamedu and other sites in
southern India has been cautiously interpreted in favor of the resident foreign
community envisioned by Wheeler (Tomber 2008, pp. 147–152; Will 2004).
Cooking pots of Indian origin at Khor Rori in Oman could indicate long-term visits
by sailors from the subcontinent (Pavan and Schenk 2012; Sedov and Benvenuti
2002; Yule 1993, p. 81); related finds from Myos Hormos (Tomber 2011) and

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Berenike (Sidebotham 2011, p. 75) invite similar conclusions. Thomas (2012), using
proxies such as diet, occupation, and tableware, has argued that groups of different
origin resided in different quarters of Egyptian Red Sea ports. Language is another
potentially useful though indirect proxy. Berenike and Myos Hormos have yielded
written evidence in South Arabian and Tamil-Brahmi script (Sidebotham 2011, p.
75; Tomber 2011). The Latin inscriptions from the Farasans, and possibly also the
Greek dedication from Qana (Bowersock 1993), are indications of outward mobility
from Egyptian ports. Drawing on epigraphic material in Prakrit, Sanskrit, Old
Sinhalese, and Tamil, all in Brahmi script, from sites in peninsular India, Ray (2006,
p. 121) has identified three language groups involved in overlapping trading
networks. Most spectacular, of course, is the evidence from Hoq, Socotra, where
worshipers utilizing Greek, Aramaic, South Arabian, Ethiopic, and several Indic
languages sought out the same sanctuary (Dridi 2002; Robin and Gorea 2002;
Strauch 2012; Strauch and Bukharin 2004).
On a related note, there is increasing evidence of religion as a potential group
marker. In addition to the sanctuary at Socotra, several temples and a church have
been excavated at Berenike (Sidebotham 2011, pp. 81−85), temples at Qana and
Khor Rori (Pavan and Sedov 2008; Sedov 2005), and a synagogue at Qana (Sedov
2010a). Attempts also have been made at tracing the connections between trade and
Christianity in the later part of the pre-Islamic period (Seland 2012b; Tomber
2007a). The combined findings of these studies underline the multicultural nature of
ancient Indian Ocean trade. Merchants and sailors from all coasts of the western
Indian Ocean took active part. The seasonality of the monsoons implied prolonged
stays in foreign ports, where visiting merchants would interact with local
inhabitants. Business, personal circumstances, slave trade (Walz and Brandt
2006), and shipwrecks would cause people to stay abroad permanently or for long
periods of time, and it seems safe to assume that all major ports taking part in Indian
Ocean trade also would be home to a foreign diaspora. In that respect, Wheeler’s
(1955) Rome beyond the Imperial Frontiers was perhaps not so far off target after
all, although the narrative it contained was blatantly one-sided.

The western Indian Ocean and the archaeology of exchange

Trade is a basic human activity and a principal agent of change. Being characterized
by the movement and exchange of material objects, it is a longstanding
preoccupation of archaeological research (Oka and Kusimba 2008). Arguably, the
western Indian Ocean was the single most important arena of commercial
integration between different parts of the Old World. Nevertheless, data from the
region have rarely been invoked in general discussions of ancient trade, and with the
notable exception of Beaujard’s (2005, 2012) analyses of Indian Ocean history in
light of world-systems theory, few archaeologists working with the region have
drawn explicitly on models of early exchange developed in other settings. This is all
the more striking as the Indian Ocean plays a major role in the discourse on long-
distance trade in later periods. Reasons for this are not clear, but as outlined in the
Introduction, the relative lack of interest in long-distance trade, which prevailed

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until recently in post-Finley classical studies, and the legitimate program of building
national archaeologies and historiographies in recently independent Indian Ocean
countries might have played a role. Also, with only limited previous research on
which to draw, archaeologists have understandably concentrated on establishing
chronologies, typologies, and connections rather than on the potential theoretical
implications of their work. Concluding this review, I point to some closely
interrelated areas where I believe the archaeology of the western Indian Ocean has a
contribution to make to archaeologists interested in trade and exchange in other
settings, as well as some theoretical perspectives that might enhance our
understanding of Indian Ocean commerce.
My first point is in regard to the scale and nature of trade. Scholars working with
the classical world and inspired by Finley, as well as archaeologists and economic
anthropologists following Polanyi, have tended to downplay the scale and
significance of long-distance trade in the ancient world. As long as little
archaeological evidence was available, the handful of literary sources referring to
the large number of ships sailing for India from Egypt every year (Strabo
Geography 2.5.12, 17.1.45, see Jones 2001) and the drain of currency inflicted on
the Roman Empire as a result of trade with Arabia and India (Pliny Natural History
6.26, 12.41, see Rackham 1997–2001) were easily dismissed as overstatements by
members of a Roman literary elite, writing with no real knowledge of what was
happening on the ground. Such figures cannot indeed be taken at face value. The
collected volume of imported pottery yet recovered from western Indian Ocean
settings would easily fit within a single ancient trading vessel, and we will never be
able to quantify the volume of trade. Nevertheless, there is no doubt anymore that
Indian Ocean commerce was large scale, long-lived, and extensive in terms of the
places, vessels, people, and economic assets involved. It also is clear that Indian
Ocean trade was not limited to luxuries but involved subsistence goods such as
foodstuffs, inexpensive textiles, spices, and aromatics consumed by large numbers
of people for their everyday religious, culinary, and medicinal needs. This has
significant implications: If Indian Ocean trade was important to the people taking
part in it, then it had an impact on the lives of people living all over the ancient
world, from the Mediterranean to Africa, India, and arguably even China.
In a seminal paper almost four decades ago, Renfrew (1975) described trade as
“action at a distance,” thereby underlining the social dimension of exchange. Much
work remains with regard to understanding the role of trade and the social
significance of imported commodities in ancient Indian Ocean societies. Elsewhere
I have argued that imported prestige goods seem to have acted as important status
markers, which local elites on the Indian Ocean rim could apply in political
processes (Seland 2010). That Indian Ocean trade affected the lives and agendas of
elites as well as ordinary people on the Indian Ocean rim highlights their
independent agency. Maritime communities in the western Indian Ocean did not
engage in order to satisfy distant imperial demand for luxuries but for reasons
entirely of their own. On a community level, the processes of change resulting from
trade can be approached in terms of diffusion, hybridization, creolization, and
arguably even proto-globalization of material culture and ideas. On a polity level,
such processes have a clear potential for interpretation within a second important

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paradigm introduced by Renfrew (1986), namely, that of “peer-polity interaction.”

The large volume of combined trade in prestige and subsistence goods as well as
bullion also would have represented an attractive source of revenue to rulers on the
Indian Ocean rim, evident, for instance, in the special 25% tax called the tetarte
(“fourth”) levied by Roman authorities on Indian Ocean trade, a rate unparalleled
elsewhere in the ancient world. Nevertheless, early Indian Ocean polities have thus
far been all but absent from key debates on the emergence of complex societies
(Feinman and Marcus 1998; Yoffee 2005), and this is a field where Indian Ocean
archaeology has much to offer as well as much to learn.
As a second point, Indian Ocean archaeology, especially by means of epigraphic finds
and ceramic studies but also increasingly by way of archaeobotany, has highlighted the
great degree of connectivity and mobility in the ancient world. In their seminal volume,
The Corrupting Sea, Horden and Purcell (2000) draw a picture of the Mediterranean
world as consisting of microregions connected by innumerable everyday ties, short-
distance contacts between neighboring societies taking prevalence over long-distance
travel and exchange. Such ties were without doubt of great significance also in the
western Indian Ocean world, but nevertheless I would argue that Horden and Purcell’s
model of Mediterranean connectivity does not transfer well to the region. Larger
distances, significant ecological differences between microregions connected by the sea,
scattered habitation along many coasts, and the regularity of the monsoon system caused
a lot of people to spend significant portions of their lives in locations far from the place
they were born. This did not include only merchants and sailors but also artisans, guards,
mercenaries, and adventurers—rich and poor, free and slave.
These people would have brought with them culinary habits (e.g., crops),
technologies (shipbuilding, glassmaking, weaving traditions), and ideas (symbols
and religions), making the ocean and its coasts an area of cultural integration and
diffusion. The western Indian Ocean is thus well suited for studies of cross-cultural
encounters and interaction, including processes resembling those of modern
globalization. In that respect Braudel’s (1966) La Méditerranée and Kristiansen’s
(2000) Europe before History might actually be more suitable models for macrolevel
interpretations of ancient Indian Ocean trade.
Studying connectivity by archeological proxies is challenging. That objects
produced in a certain region, e.g., India, are recovered in a different setting, e.g., the
Persian Gulf, give limited insight into how they were moved. Patterns of movement
determined by seasonal variation and climatic conditions as documented in
ethnographic accounts might be one place to start. A different approach is offered
by the recent resurgence of network analysis in archaeology (Brughmans 2010,
2013; Knappett 2011, 2013). While network analyses of land-based flows of
commodities are hampered by the fact that people are known to often choose an
apparently suboptimal route of travel for reasons of safety or transaction costs
(Seland 2012a), maritime networks can more readily be reconstructed based on
concepts such as centrality, gravity, and proximal point analysis (Knappett et al.
2008; Rivers et al. 2013). Network analysis might be a way to address long-standing
questions in western Indian archaeology on the relationship between long-distance
cross-ocean navigation and short-distance coastal cabotage.

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This anticipates my final point, namely, that Indian Ocean archaeology has great
potential to shed light on the human side of ancient trade. How did Indian Ocean
societies cope with the organizational challenges of establishing trust, social cohesion,
and security in situations of asymmetrical power, imperfect information, and divergent
institutional frameworks? Curtin’s (1984) much used model of the trading diaspora—
groups of merchants settled on foreign ground, acting as brokers between home and
guest culture—at first sight seems well suited to the setting of the monsoon trade.
Recently, however, it has come under criticism with regard to early modern trade on the
grounds that it presupposes the existence of a homeland that is lacking in the Jewish,
Armenian, and Islamic networks operating in the same region in later history (Aslanian
2011). Questions of the ethnic identity of ancient Indian Ocean merchants have been
contentious but have over time led to a nuanced understanding of the agents involved.
Recent sociological and anthropological scholarship, however, is rapidly moving
beyond ethnicity as a prime identity marker and also tries to address other kinds of
“groupness” (Brubaker 2005, 2009). Indian Ocean archaeology could benefit from and
contribute to this theoretical discourse and thus partly escape the problem of connecting
pots with people. Merchant communities in the western Indian Ocean arguably also
seem to have organized according to other variables in addition to ethnicity, including
language (Ray 2006), geographical origin, and religion (Seland 2013). Comparative
studies of material from the fair number of contemporary port sites now available might
offer insights that will have interest far beyond the coasts of the Indian Ocean.
In summary, while recent studies have led to major breakthroughs in our
understanding of the chronology as well as the extent and substance of ancient Indian
Ocean exchange, there is clearly a great potential for interdisciplinary, cross-period, and
comparative studies in the field, which has thus far been only partially realized. Most of
the publications cited above are products of solid regional traditions of archaeology.
This will and should remain so, but arguably many sites on the Indian Ocean rim make
equal or, in some cases, even more sense when approached from a maritime perspective
compared with a hinterland point of view. The research described above makes it clear
that well-worn labels such as “Indo-Roman trade” or “Rome’s trade with the East”
allow us to grasp only a fraction of what ancient Indian Ocean exchange was about. The
challenge still remains, however, of contextualizing evidence from regional settings
against an Indian Ocean backdrop and bringing data from Indian Ocean archaeology
into dialogue with wider debates on the nature, mechanisms, and organization of
premodern trade within archaeology, anthropology, and history.

Acknowledgments A number of colleagues have generously provided access to publications and

information on results of ongoing work and research projects. Thanks are due to Dionisius A. Agius,
Marie-Françoise Boussac, Deborah Carlson, Felix Chami, Kristoffer Damgaard, Sunil Gupta, Randi
Håland, Derek Kennet, Himanshu P. Ray, Alexander V. Sedov, St John Simpson, Steven E. Sidebotham,
Roberta Tomber, Jean-Baptiste Yon, Paul Yule, Jonathan R. Walz, and Chiara Zazzaro. Senior librarian
Kari Normo, Bergen University Library, provided invaluable help in getting swift access to publications
not at hand in Bergen. Finally, I am grateful to the editors and anonymous peer reviewers of JARE for
their constructive and specific advice and criticism.

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License
which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and
the source are credited.

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