LANDSCAPES AND LINKAGES: LINEAGES OF TRADE AND CONTACT IN THE INDIAN OCEAN

LANDSCAPES AND LINKAGES: LINEAGES OF TRADE AND CONTACT IN THE INDIAN OCEAN

Kerry Ward

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

In concert with the aims of WAC4 and invoking the spirit of Pliny’s maxim that “there is always something new out of Africa”, this symposium brings together diverse scholarship on Africa in the Indian Ocean world. It seeks to generate debates around the geneology of trading networks in the Indian Ocean. New scholarship reinforces the dynamic interation between African societies on the Indian Ocean coast with traders from Europe, India and Asia. With scholars whose interests range from Graeco-Roman trade with East Africa, to the export of live ostriches from the Cape of Good Hope to Edo Japan, this symposium underlines the variety and longevity of trading networks in the Indian Ocean. Participants will be encouraged to consider a number of general issues as applicable to their own research sites:

How does one account for the waxing and waning of these trade routes?
What different theoretical and methodological approaches illuminate specific trading communities?
What is their material and historical legacy?
Is the concept of an “Indian Ocean trading world” valid?

papers:
Author 1 Author 2 Title
Cox Eighteenth century Capetonians, immigrants and slaves: isotopic analysis of skeletons from the Cobern Street Cemetery, Cape Town, South Africa
Fawcett Uneven development, colonialism, and African states: Views from smaller Swahili towns in coastal Tanzania.
LaViolette The Archaeology of Pujini, Pemba Island, Tanzania in a 15th-16th Century Swahili context
Saitowitz Early Indian Ocean Trade Between Southern Africa, Egypt and Southeast Asia