Periodic Reporting for period 1 - TRADElam (Trade at the Sea of the Rising Sun: Neo-Elamite commercial involvement in the Persian Gulf network (1000-525 BC))
Período documentado: 2021-10-01 hasta 2023-09-30
The project TRADElam studies 500 years of Persian Gulf history from the perspective of the Neo-Elamite kingdom, one of the early Iron Age regional powers (1000-520 BC). Since direct evidence for large-scale exchange of bulk goods is rather limited in the historical record, scholarly attention has focused on individual regions of the Persian Gulf in the early 1st millennium BC rather than on the Persian Gulf network as an interactive space.
By concentrating on the Elamite commercial interactions with its neighbours at the head of the Persian Gulf space, the TRADElam project presents a case study that challenges the decades-old scholarly assumption of a severely declined commercial Gulf network during the early to mid-1st millennium BC. With an improved understanding of the northern Elamite littoral geography, TRADElam has the potential to deliver key information to change our historical perspective on the commercial interactions in the Persian Gulf during the early to mid-1st millennium BC.
By concentrating on the Elamite commercial interactions with its neighbours at the head of the Persian Gulf space, the TRADElam project presents a case study that challenges the decades-old scholarly assumption of a severely declined commercial Gulf network during the early to mid-1st millennium BC. With an improved understanding of the northern Elamite littoral geography, TRADElam has the potential to deliver key information to change our historical perspective on the commercial interactions in the Persian Gulf during the early to mid-1st millennium BC.
During the initial secondment of the TRADElam project at the L’Orientale University, Naples (Oct.-Dec. 2021), a hybrid one-day specialist workshop “Elam and the Persian Gulf in the early Iron Age (c. 1000-500 BC)” was organised (Dec. 1, 2021) to unite scholars of multiple academic fields working in the Persian Gulf region. I communicated the results on the location of harbours on the Elam-Sealand maritime route. During this secondment, I had the opportunity to work together with S. Kalantar (l’Orientale, Naples), a maritime archaeologist, on vessel types navigating the head of the Persian Gulf in the early to mid-1st millennium BC, combining philological and ethnoarchaeological data. These initial findings we also presented at the workshop.
The initial secondment was followed by archaeological fieldwork in Mleiha, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (Jan. 2022). The amphora studied at the site gave supplementary data for long distance trade. In the Sharjah maritime museum additional data on lagune boats was collected.
A priority at Macquarie University (TC, partner) was knowledge exchange. In collaboration with the Macquarie Centre for Ancient Cultural Heritage and Environment (CACHE), I taught an Akkadian language course, which gave Australian students an unique opportunity to get acquainted with the lingua franca of the ancient Near East (Aug. – Nov. 2022). In exchange, I had the opportunity to attend academic meetings and research seminars with Prof. J. Álvarez-Mon (2022), a renowned art historian specialised in ancient Iran, to collect data on the commodities (mostly animals and precious materials), based on material evidence from Elam (glyptic, rock art, metal ware).
A peer-reviewed article entitled “Don’t let the Boats pass” Neo-Elamite Grain Procurement in Times of Famine and Drought was published in the open access journal Iranian Studies (n. 56.3 2023, pp. 439-456). Herein, the role of the Neo-Elamite state and their collaboration with tribal groups in order to procure Babylonian grain during periods of drought was investigated.
During the outgoing phase, I was invited to present my research to the academic community at conferences (University of Liège), seminars (Macquarie University, University of Sydney) and workshops (L’Orientale, Napels). Occasions to present my research to a broader audience were provided at the Australian Near Eastern Archaeology Foundation (NEAF) Saturday Series and Global Studies Center Talk Series at the Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait. These activities enabled me to enlarge my research network in Australia and beyond.
The initial secondment was followed by archaeological fieldwork in Mleiha, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (Jan. 2022). The amphora studied at the site gave supplementary data for long distance trade. In the Sharjah maritime museum additional data on lagune boats was collected.
A priority at Macquarie University (TC, partner) was knowledge exchange. In collaboration with the Macquarie Centre for Ancient Cultural Heritage and Environment (CACHE), I taught an Akkadian language course, which gave Australian students an unique opportunity to get acquainted with the lingua franca of the ancient Near East (Aug. – Nov. 2022). In exchange, I had the opportunity to attend academic meetings and research seminars with Prof. J. Álvarez-Mon (2022), a renowned art historian specialised in ancient Iran, to collect data on the commodities (mostly animals and precious materials), based on material evidence from Elam (glyptic, rock art, metal ware).
A peer-reviewed article entitled “Don’t let the Boats pass” Neo-Elamite Grain Procurement in Times of Famine and Drought was published in the open access journal Iranian Studies (n. 56.3 2023, pp. 439-456). Herein, the role of the Neo-Elamite state and their collaboration with tribal groups in order to procure Babylonian grain during periods of drought was investigated.
During the outgoing phase, I was invited to present my research to the academic community at conferences (University of Liège), seminars (Macquarie University, University of Sydney) and workshops (L’Orientale, Napels). Occasions to present my research to a broader audience were provided at the Australian Near Eastern Archaeology Foundation (NEAF) Saturday Series and Global Studies Center Talk Series at the Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait. These activities enabled me to enlarge my research network in Australia and beyond.
TRADElam is an important case-study in which a first attempt is made to unite both data and scholars of different academic fields (philology, archaeology, history, art history, geology of ancient Iran, Mesopotamia and Pre-Islamic Arabia) in the (Northern) Persian Gulf area. The creation of this multidisciplinary network is a necessary tool to break down the artificial boundaries between these scholarly fields, which has to enable larger interdisciplinary research projects with a centripetal view on Persian Gulf in the near future.
A better understanding of the early Iron Age networks in the Persian Gulf may not only impact the current state of the art of the Achaemenid, Hellenistic and Roman trading networks, but it will also allow scholars to integrate the early Iron Age Persian Gulf commercial dynamics at the Persian Gulf in a broader trading history of the Ancient World.
A better understanding of the early Iron Age networks in the Persian Gulf may not only impact the current state of the art of the Achaemenid, Hellenistic and Roman trading networks, but it will also allow scholars to integrate the early Iron Age Persian Gulf commercial dynamics at the Persian Gulf in a broader trading history of the Ancient World.