When did Indian Ocean transform into a trade-lake? Contextualising the archaeological evidence from Pattanam, Kerala, India in the maritime interfaces of the Old World.

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology in the Indian Ocean" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The Indian Ocean with its mighty vastness and probably the largest number of diverse cultures settled across its littoral from South Africa to South China played a defining role in the first transcontinental early historic interfaces. The confluence of the three regional trade systems, based on silk, spices and aroma transformed the Indian Ocean into a trade lake which by 1st c BCE intersected with the Red Sea and Mediterranean. The paper discusses evidence from four contemporary port sites – Putinam in Southwest India, Khor Rori and Hepu sites in Indian Ocean and Berenike site in the Red Sea to reveal the interconnectedness of the Indian-Ocean-trade-lake in the Old World. It pays special attention to the Pattanam archaeological site, the focus of a decade long research endeavour, where evidence exposes the trans-oceanic links of the legendary port of Muziris referred in the classical Tamil, Greek and Latin sources.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• Historical Archaeology in the Indian Ocean

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 863