ABSTRACT
This chapter wants to move beyond the question of trade, although that is undeniably important, and examine meaning and value beyond the purely economic – that of the social lives of the objects traded. It compares archaeological data from published excavation reports from three sites – Arikamedu, India; Tissamaharama, Sri Lanka; and Berenike, Egypt. The chapter also examines three categories of artefacts – ceramics, coins and beads – and by tracing long term trends in this cross-cultural dataset and reconstructs a section of the western Indian Ocean network, identifying temporal and spatial patterns that reflect changing emphases and frequencies of interaction in the movement of individuals or communities, in cultural exchange and trade. The chapter represents a preliminary attempt to formulate frameworks for diachronic and synchronic comparative cross-cultural and interdisciplinary research that historicises linkages and disjunctures, porousness and rigidity and the nature of connectedness in the premodern Indian Ocean.
