 Purchase this book from amazon.co.uk Roberta Tomber is a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Conservation and Scientific Research at the British Museum. She specialises in Roman and Indian Ocean pottery and has published widely on the subject. She was awarded the Antiquity 2007 prize for her article 'Rome and Mesopotamia - importers into India in the first millennium AD'. | Indo-Roman Trade
From Pots to PepperRoberta Tomber This book brings together for the first time archaeological findings from key ports throughout the Indian Ocean - the Red Sea, South Arabia, the Gulf, India and Sri Lanka - to build up a balanced picture of relations between East and West. Combined evidence from artefacts and documents reveals a complex situation whereby ordinary goods were carried alongside the more costly items - such as pepper, aromatics and gems - that drove the trade. Here the focus is on ordinary artefacts used by Romans, Africans, South Arabians, Sasanians and Indians who participated in the trade. The evidence from ceramics, especially, reveals the interplay between these different ethnic groups, where they lived, when the trade was active, and even how it was organised. The account is arranged geographically, drawing on new evidence from the author's experience of archaeological sites and materials on the Red Sea and in India. A final chapter sketches the changing fortunes of trade between the first century BC and the seventh century AD in the light of these important new archaeological discoveries. Duckworth Debates in Archaeology
Editor: Richard Hodges This series of short volumes, each devoted to a theme which is the subject of contemporary debate in archaeology, will range from issues in theory and method to aspects of world archaeology. It is designed to be accessible to students and serious scholars alike. |
