This book explores how globalization and transculturality are useful theoretical tools for studying pre-modern societies and their long-distance connections. Among the themes explored are how these concepts can enhance our understanding of trade networks, the spread of religions, the diffusion of global fashions, the migration of technologies, public and private initiatives, and wider cultural changes.
In this book, archaeologists and ancient historians demonstrate how in diverse contexts – from the Bronze Age to colonial times – humanity displayed an urge and an incredible capacity to connect with distant lands and people. Adopting and modifying approaches originally developed for the study of contemporary societies, it is possible to enhance our understanding of the human past, not only in economic terms, but also the cultural significance of such interconnections.
This book provides both the wider public and the specialist reader with a fresh point of view on global issues relating to the past; in turn, allowing us to look anew at developments in the contemporary world. Its large chronological and geographical scope should prove appealing to those who want more than mere Eurocentric history. Teachers and students of world history and archaeology will find this book a useful resource.
List of figures and table; List of contributors; Preface and acknowledgements; Introduction: utilizing globalization and transculturailty for the study of the pre-modern world; Section I: Theory and methodology— Chapter 1: From the field to the globe: the archaeology of globalization; Chapter 2: Globalization, the highest stage of modernization?; Section II: Bronze age globalization– Chapter 3: Bronzization, the globalization of the Bronze Age in Afro-Eurasia; Chapter 4: Agencement, matter flows and itinerary of object in the Bronze Age East Mediterranean: a new materialities approach to globalization; Chapter 5: Dragon divers and clamorous fishermen: Bronzization and transcultural marine spaces in the Japanese archipelago; Section III: Globalization in the early historic Indian Ocean— Chapter 6: Archaeology of globalization: a retrospective view of the Indian Ocean world and implications for the present (500 BCE – 300 CE); Chapter 7: Oikoumenisation and the Ptolemaic beginnings of the Indian Ocean trade; Chapter 8: Mediterranean goods in an Indian context: the use of transcultural theory for the study of the ancient Indian Ocean world; Chapter 9: The Indian figurine from Pompeii as an emblem of East-West trade in the early Roman Imperial era; Section IV: Global studies in complex historical contexts— Chapter 10: A universal dhamma: Buddhism and globalization at the time of Aśoka; Chapter 11: Globalization and Gandhāra art; Chapter 12: Glocalization as a key to understanding cultural change in São Paulo’s colonial ceramics; Index
Dr. Serena Autiero is a researcher at the Center for Religious Studies (CERES), Ruhr-Universität Bochum and honorary professor of archaeology at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. She is interested in cultural exchange in Eurasia in antiquity, Silk Road studies, ancient globalizations, with a special focus on the Indian Ocean World. She has authored a number of publications in international journals and her monograph on early globalization in the Western Indian Ocean will be published in Spring 2022. Dr. Matthew Adam Cobb is a lecturer in ancient history at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. His research focuses on Mediterranean integration into wider Indian Ocean networks of trade during Antiquity. Among other publications, he is the author of Rome and the Indian Ocean Trade from Augustus to the Early Third Century CE (2018) and the edited book, The Indian Ocean Trade in Antiquity: Political, Cultural and Economic Impacts (2019).
