Local Networks and Long-distance Trade: The Role of the Exchanges between Sri Lanka and India during the Mediterranean Trade

Recent archaeological fieldwork and studies in Sri Lanka and South India have opened the way to a re-evaluation of the role of local networks of circulation and trade between South Asia and the Mediterranean. Instead of considering that the Egyptian Greeks or Romans handled the trade by themselves, inaugurating routes and contacts, it appears that they rather followed and re-used networks that were existing locally long before the outburst of exchanges between the Roman Empire and India in the early centuries of the Common Era.