Journal of Indian Ocean

The articles in the present volume have been contributed by scholars from India and abroad. We present here the field reports of excavations and explorations on the Indian coastlands. The final season of excavations by the World Zarathustra Foundation at Sanjan have been reported in thsi volume. Sanjan, a medieval port-site on the western coast of India, has yielded evidence of a dakhma, the traditional ‘tower of silence’ where the Zoroastrian community lays its dead. Sanjan is associated with the migration of Zoroastrians to India during the 8th century AD. Also in this volume is the field report of explorations along the Kanara coast, the littoral tract of peninsular India little known in history. A number of scholars from the Deccan College, Pune and the National Institute of Ocean Technology, Chennai have submitted results of an underwater and coastal survey of the Gulf of Khambhat. There is a report on teh imported ceramics from Kamrej. This Early Historic port-site, excavated by the Indian Archaeological Society in 2003, was reported on in the inaugural issue of the JIOA (2004). In this issue, Roberta Tomber identifies as Aksumite an amphora-like pottery fragment found at Kamrej. Raj Somadeva offers a holistic perspective of early historic contacts between Sri Lanka and South India. Felix Chami seeks to place east Africa within the broader Indian Ocean interaction sphere.