IPPA Congress Session: Maritime Silk Road

Sealinks team members will chair a session at the 20th Congress of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association, in Seam Reap (Angkor), Cambodia, to be held Sunday 12 to Saturday 18 January 2014.  Dr. Alison Crowther and Dr. Nicole Boivin are jointly organising the session, entitled “Biological, cultural and material exchange along the Maritime Silk Road.  Please contact them if you would like to participate.

 

Biological, cultural and material exchange along the Maritime Silk Road

Nicole Boivin & Alison Crowther

The Maritime Silk Road or the Maritime Spice Route, as it is variably known, was a network of mainly sea routes that linked up the ancient world from the Mediterranean to the South China Sea.  This web of connections drew a myriad of people, objects, and species into new relationships, transforming societies and ecosystems in a variety of ways.  This session will explore these emerging maritime connectivities and their implications at a variety of scales from the local to the ‘global’.  Papers will explore the place of local communities and environments in wider networks, as well as the large-scale patterns and processes that shaped local dynamics.  Breaking down traditional boundaries between study of the cultural and biological impacts of early maritime activities, the session will offer a diverse range of perspectives on the extraordinary conduits that maritime transport opened up across the ancient world.

 

If you are interested in participating, please contact:

Nicole Boivin (Nicole.boivin@rlaha.ox.ac.uk)

Alison Crowther (Alison.crowther@rlaha.ox.ac.uk)