Navigating the Indian Ocean and Its Inlets: The Red Sea in the First Millennium C.E., session at the ASOR 2022 Annual Meeting, Virtual, October 19–23, 2022 & Boston, November 16–19, 2022

The ancient kingdoms of South Arabia, Aksūm and Nubia were among the greatest civilizations of the first millennium CE. This session aims to investigate their connections with a wider Indian Ocean world by highlighting an attested exchange of goods and ideas in these regions during the first millennium CE. We will look closely at archaeological finds and epigraphic texts suggestive of contact with other distant cultures and practices. In doing so, this session aims to provide a fresh perspective on late antiquity highlighting relationships between the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, and maritime routes of the western Indian Ocean. Participants will emphasize interactions between the various cultures that populated the fluid Afro-Eurasian world of the first millennium by focusing on themes such as religion, ethnicity, slavery, trade, and mobility, without resorting to a reductive West-East dichotomy.

Session chairs Valentina A. Grasso (ISAW, NYU) and Divya Kumar-Dumas (ISAW, NYU) invite paper abstracts and workshop presentation proposals.

All paper, workshop, and poster abstracts must be submitted through ASOR’s Online Abstract Management System.