Introduction, Bridging the Gulf: Maritime Cultural Heritage of the Western Indian Ocean, Manohar, New Delhi, 2016: 17-52. (original) (raw)
Related papers
BRIDGING THE GULF: MARITIME CULTURAL HERITAGE OF THE WESTERN INDIAN OCEAN
The book presents papers by archaeologists, anthropologists, historians and heritage specialists and highlights the multi-layered meaning of maritime cultural landscapes. The authors shift the emphasis from understanding heritage in its local context to discussing it across the waters of the Arabian Sea. The relationship between the sea and the land underlines the centrality of the coast; the communities who inhabited the space between the ocean and the hinterland; their histories and attempts at constructing their cultural environment. An important component of this cultural landscape is monumental architecture and archaeological sites, as also their inter-linkage with travelling groups who moved both across the sea, as well as on routes into the interior. A common concern that all papers share is with definitions of maritime heritage; different articulations of social and political power; and regional and local nautical traditions. One of the objectives of this volume is to underscore the important role of World Heritage, especially sites and monuments located along the coasts that have already been identified as national treasures by individual Nation States. The objective is to bring these coastal monuments and structures into dialogue with those located across the Ocean for a holistic understanding of maritime cultural heritage of the western Indian Ocean. It is suggested that this dialogue across the seas, would help in the protection and preservation of a maritime heritage known for its ‘outstanding universal value’.
Project Mausam: Maritime Cultural Landscapes Across the Indian Ocean
‘Mausam’ or Arabic ‘Mawsim’ refers to the season when ships could sail safely in the Indian Ocean and these seasonal monsoon winds underwrote both a shared culture in the past, as also the continued survival of maritime regions into the present. ‘Maritime cultural landscape’ was used by Olof Hasslof, the Swedish maritime ethnologist in the 1950s to indicate an understanding of the use of the sea by humans and included attendant coastal structures and cultural identifiers. The papers in this book examine the development of coastal settlements and architectural remains from the third millennium BCE Bronze Age to almost the present across a large part of the Indian Ocean extending from Arabia to Vietnam. A second objective of the book is to relate this understanding of the past with that of the present and to highlight the extent to which indicators of historical cultural networks provide building blocks for contemporary societies, as they work towards universal values and trans-border groupings – both of which underwrite UNESCO’s 1972 World Heritage Convention. The Convention encourages the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity, thereby focussing on the universal, rather than the local or regional. The book will appeal to readers of maritime history, as well as those involved in heritage studies.
Maritime Archaeology of the Indian Ocean
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History
The interface between the sea and the land and the communities that have historically traversed the Indian Ocean form the focus of this article. Maritime communities have been sustained by a variety of occupations associated with the sea, such as fishing and harvesting other marine resources, pearling, salt making, sailing, trade, shipbuilding, piracy, and more. The communities of the sea negotiate land-based issues through a variety of strategies, which are evident in the archaeological record. Fishing as an adaptation dates to the prehistoric period, and fish remains have been found in abundance at several coastal prosites dating from the 5th millennium BCE. In eastern Saudi Arabia, for example, they constitute 85 percent of the total faunal inventory at some sites. A significant factor facilitating the integrative potential of these communities was their large cargo-carrying vessels, which not only facilitated transformation of the local settlements into centers of commerce and production, but also linked the local groups into regional and trans-regional networks. Underwater archaeology has contributed to an understanding of the boat-building traditions of the Indian Ocean, further supplemented by ethnographic studies of contemporary boat-building communities. Monumental architecture along the coasts served dual functions. Not only did they provide spaces for the interaction of inland routes with those across the ocean, but the structures themselves were also used as major orientation points by watercraft while approaching land. The larger issue addressed underscores the need to include coastal structures such as wharfs, forts, shrines, and archaeological sites as a part of the maritime heritage and to aid in their preservation for posterity.
Forgotten Islands of the Past: The Archaeology of the Northern Coast of the Arabian Sea
Island Studies Journal, 2023
The Indus Delta plays an important role in the archaeology of the northern coast of the Arabian Sea. Little was known of this region until a few decades ago. The first surveys were carried out in the 1970s and were resumed by the present author in the 2010s. They have shown the great potential of the area for the interpretation of sea-level rise and its related human settlement between the beginning of the Holocene and the Hellenistic period. In this territory, several limestone terraces rise from the alluvial plain of the River Indus, which were islands in prehistoric and early historic times. Many archaeological artefacts, along with marine and mangrove shells, have been recovered from their surface and radiocarbon dated. These discoveries help us to follow the events that took place in the region in well-defined periods and interpret some aspects of the prehistoric coastal settlement in relation to the advance of the Indus Fan and the retreat of the Arabian Sea. The following questions are addressed in this paper: who settled these islands, when and why? During which prehistoric periods were mangrove and marine environments exploited? And what were the cultural characteristics of the communities that seasonally or permanently settled some of the present 'rocky outcrops'?
Society of Architectural Historians, 76th Annual International Conference, 2023
Good Morning and welcome to the session “Port of Call: The Indian Ocean’s Early Modern Coastal Landscapes.” My name is Sidh Losa Mendiratta, and co-chairing this session with me is Marta Oliveira. As far as we know, this is the first time within the S.A.H. annual conferences that a session engages with the Indian Ocean world as an analytical space for exploring histories of the built environment and landscapes. Scholarship on the built environment and landscapes of the Indian Ocean region developed in the 1960s with works like Auguste Toussaint’s “History of the Indian Ocean” and the later works of Kirti Chauduri, Michael Pearson and Edward Alpers among others. This scholarship departed from earlier European-centric and colonialist frameworks that were often influenced by the formal reality of European colonial empires of the 19th and 20th centuries, and that tended to perceive Early Modern European administered port settlements as self-contained devices of colonial power, cordoned-off from their surrounding landscapes and hinterlands. While the concept of cultural landscape has evolved, the study of such environments necessarily requires an interdisciplinary approach. Coastal landscapes often present dense and multi-layered histories, impacted by the circulation of people, plants, commodities and ideas. The Indian Ocean’s coastal landscapes are often marked by the dynamics of change and permanence, of innovation and tradition. In proposing this session, we address some of the themes and methods developed by the PORTofCALL research project, which began in January 2022. This project aims at studying the relation between African-Asian-European encounters during the Early Modern period and the cultural heritage of the Indian Ocean’s port settlements with a Portuguese influence. By researching how African-Asian-European cultural encounters and negotiation impacted and shaped the built environments and landscapes of the Estado da Índia’s network of port settlements, and their respective hinterlands. Looking at aspects such as indigenous agency, settlement patterns, building technologies, spatial traditions, arts, and agrarian customs, the project will propose new readings for cultural heritage in the Indian Ocean rim.
Culture and Diplomacy: Maritime Cultural Heritage of the Western Indian Ocean
India Quarterly, 2020
The article argues that UNESCO's 1972 World Heritage Convention provides a global platform for projecting not only India's maritime cultural heritage but also building bridges and collaborative networks with other Indian Ocean littoral countries for the promotion of shared cultural practices and traditional knowledge systems of the Indian Ocean. Unfortunately, this collaborative research aspect of the World Heritage Convention has yet to be tapped for nominating and inscribing transnational heritage or cultural routes across the Ocean. This is despite the fact that India was the founder member of the intergovernmental organisation, Indian Ocean Rim Association, one of whose thrust areas relates to promoting cultural heritage on the UNESCO platform. Given India's rich maritime past, there is an urgent need to implement measures to establish academic networks with littoral countries for not only creating awareness of the maritime cultural heritage of the Indian Ocean but also harnessing linkages between maritime communities for building a culturally diverse but harmonious future.
India's Forgotten Coastal Monuments; The Case for Kanara.pdf
Vasant J. Sheth Memorial Foundation, 2019
This lecture addresses the theme of India’s coastal monuments from two perspectives: one, from the point of view of history and archaeology; and second relating to their survival and preservation as ‘heritage’. Is there a disconnect between the two? The issue is significant if a holistic understanding of the country’s maritime heritage is to be brought into focus and saved for future generations.