Transformation of the Late Sasanian/Early Islamic Maritime Economy in the Persian Gulf and Western Indian Ocean: Quantitative Evidence from Ceramic Trade

Seth M.N. Priestman supervised by

The broad social and economic impact of Indian Ocean maritime trade across much of the Old World is evident, yet the volume and quality of historical detail for this period is limited. One of the most visible and direct indicators of the Abbasid trade boom phenomenon is the wide distribution of trade ceramics originating within the Persian Gulf and deposited at littoral sites scattered from southern Japan to South Africa. Much documentation of this material has been undertaken, yet we still know relatively little about the changing proportions of trade ceramics from different sources through a major period of transition and realignment from the decline of Indo-Roman trade via the Red Sea around the 2nd/3rd century AD, to the panicle of Abbasid trade operating out of the Persian Gulf in the 9th/10th centuries.

In terms of relative value, ceramics may always have been economically marginal. However, as is well known, ceramics provide one of the few materials that is routinely used and broken, which consistently survives, and which is rarely removed from the archaeological record by processes such as recycling. In a period where no comprehensive or detailed economic history survives, ceramics provide a unique and unparalleled source for measuring the scale and intensity of past human activity, including crucially, patterns of commercial exchange. This paper will outline and methodology being used to unlock a crucial resource for understanding long-term patterns of economic change in the pre-modern era. It will provide an introduction to some of the evidence that has been collected from the excavated finds from the early medieval port site of Siraf in southern Iran held in the British Museum, and from recent fieldwork in the Lamu archipelago in Kenya. Finally, some preliminary analysis will be presented in illustrate the potential of the approach and directions for the remainder of the study.