Indo-Roman Trade - (Debates in Archaeology) by Roberta Tomber (Paperback)

About the Book

Features the archaeological findings from key ports throughout the Indian Ocean - the Red Sea, South Arabia, the Gulf and India - to offer a picture of the relations between East and West. This work focuses on ordinary artefacts that uncover a network of Romans, Arabs, Sasanians and Indians who participated in the trade.

Book Synopsis

This book brings together for the first time archaeological findings from key ports throughout the Indian Ocean - the Red Sea, South Arabia, the Gulf and India - 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 that uncover a network of Romans, Arabs, Sasanians and Indians who participated in the trade. The evidence from ceramics, especially, shows the interplay between these different ethnic groups, where they lived, when the trade was active, and even how it was organised.

The book is arranged geographically, drawing on new evidence from 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.

Review Quotes

"The book provides a way in to literature which would be unknown to most students and even specialists of Roman archaeology and more than two-thirds of which has been published since the 1990s. The book also offers an excellent case for teaching long-distance trade studies methodology and theory." --Journal of Roman Studies 100 (2010)

"The title, Indo-Roman trade, understates the scope of this book, which serves the very valuable purpose of drawing attention to the wealth of archaeological information emerging from surveys and excavations in the Red Sea, East Africa, southern Arabia, the Persian Gulf and India." --Journal of Roman Archaeology

"This book is a model piece of work." --Journal of Nautical Archaeology

About the Author

Roberta Tomber is Visiting Fellow in the Department of Conservation, Documentation and Science at the British Museum. She specialises in Roman and Indian Ocean pottery and is co-author of The National Roman Fabric Reference Collection (1998). She was awarded the Antiquity 2007 prize forher article 'Rome and Mesopotamia - importers into India in the first millennium AD'.