This volume is a collection of papers presented at the International Seminar on ‘Techno-archaeological Perspectives of Seafaring in the Indian Ocean’ covering the period from the fourth century B.C. to the fifteenth century A.D. The two broad themes covered include archaeological evidence of maritime links, and technological studies of watercraft involved in trade and communication. This inter-disciplinary dialogue provides new insights on early seafaring in the Indian Ocean and questions several existing theories that have continued to be repeated in archaeological and historical writing.
Trade did not cease with the decline of empires; instead there were relocations in routes and changes in the participants involved. The focus of traditions of shipbuilding and navigation for a study of maritime contacts emphasises the role of innovation and technological change vis-a-vis tradition and continuity. This addition to the corpus of research on Indian Ocean studies would be useful to the archaeologist, the historian, and ethaeologists, investigating the evolution of maritime technologies.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Himanshu Prabha Ray
Himanshu Prabha Ray is associate Professor at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, where she has taught since 1980. Her publications include Monastery and Guild: Commerce under the Satavahanas, Oxford University Press, 1986; The Winds Change: Buddhism and the Maritime Links of Early south Asia, Oxford University Press, 1994 (reissued as Oxford India Paperbacks, 1998); The Archaeology off Seafariing in Ancient South Asia, Cambridge University Press, 2003. In 1996, she jointly edited with Jean-Ffrancois Salles a volume titled, Tradition and Archaeology: Early Maritime Contacts in the Indian Ocean, Manohar, 1996. another volume Archaeology of Seafaring: The Indian Ocean in the ancient Period, was published in the Indian Council of Historical Research Monograph Series I, New Delhi, 1999.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jean-Francois Salles
J.-F. Salles is Research Director, French National Centre for Scientific Research and is now in-charge of the Jordan Branch of the French Institute for Near East (IFPO, Amman). He was Director of Maison de I’Orient Mediterraneen, Lyon until 1999 and in-charge of the French Mission at Mahasthangarh in Bangladesh until December 2004. He has specialized in the archaeology of the Gulf, especially from the mid-first millennium BC to the mid-first millennium AD. His publications include excavation reports on archaeological sites in the Gulf, as also contributions to major international journals.
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