RICERCA ITALIANA     

Along the aroma and spice routes. The port of Sumhuram and the trade between the Mediterranean, Arabia and India in preislamic times in the light of recent archaeological, historical-literary, palaeo-environmental and archaeometric data.

Università di Pisa

Abstract

A University of Pisa mission directed by the coordinator of this project Alessandra Avanzini has been working on the site of the ancient city of Sumhuram, in the territory of Khor Rori (southern Oman), since ancient times a region famed for the excellence of the frankincense it produced.
The recent discoveries made by IMTO (Italian Mission to Oman) setting the foundation of Sumhuram back to the early 3rd Century B.C., have cast doubt over a concept which up to now had been generally accepted by scholars, namely that all the seaports along the southern coast of Arabia were established at the beginning of the 1st Century A.D. after the Roman conquest of Egypt and consequent to the development of navigation between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Sumhuram is therefore the first seaport on the Arabian coast to be studied archaeologically, and it can be set with certainty in the phase of development of long-distance traffic between the Mediterranean and India.
The scope of the project is to reconstruct the history of the city, its palaeo-environment and the ancient trade routes that linked the Mediterranean with India by way of the Red Sea and the coasts of Arabia. The multidisciplinary character of the investigation which will involve scholars from the Universities of Pisa, Tuscia and Florence (Departments of Plant Biology and Earth Science) will enable the situation to be tackled in terms of archaeology, history, literature, palaeo-environment and archaeometry.

Principal Investigator

Alessandra Avanzini Università degli Studi di PISA

Research Objectives

The project has two main aims:
1. to increase knowledge about the ancient south Arabian city of Sumhuram (fourth Century B.C. – fifth Century A.D.), a seaport in Dhofar in the region of frankincense.
2. to increase knowledge of the trade routes which crossed the Indian Ocean from the last Centuries B.C. up to the early centuries of our era.

The first objective will be pursued through a multi-disciplinary approach. Archaeological excavation will continue in various areas of the city in order to arrive at a better understanding of the architectural structure of the city and the building techniques used. The excavations conducted in the area of the storerooms will be of particular interest; from the excavations conducted there, the structure of the area leads to the belief that it was restricted with an access point closely controlled by the city authorities.
The excavation of the settlements in the area adjacent to the city will shed light on the social and economic structure of the inhabitants of the Dhofar region and their relationship with the city. Particular attention will be focused on studying materials. Metallurgical materials, in particular significant metallic discoveries, will be subjected to on-site archaeo-metallurgical examination. Defining the stratigraphical distribution of the materials found will be of special interest for identifying potential evolutions of the types of production over time.
A study the coins which >>>

First Results

The multi-discipline investigations performed on site in Sumhuram will reconstruct the role of the city within the framework of the trade routes that linked the Mediterranean with India by way of the Red Sea and the coasts of Arabia.
The research conducted by IMTO in Sumhuram in recent years has led to a new dating of its foundation, now set at the end of the fourth Century B.C. Further investigation towards understanding the role and the identity of Sumhuram as a seaport active in such ancient times will contribute to retracing the framework of trade between the Mediterranean and India in the pre-Christian world, and much earlier than the great flourishing of maritime trade in Roman times. In particular, the most significant novelty in this field of study will emerge from studying Sumhuram in relation to other seaports of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean which have been recently dated to the same period and which were therefore contemporary with it: Berenice in Egypt and Arikamedu in India. Furthermore, the investigations scheduled for these two years of the project might confirm a hypothesis which has only recently been put forward and which is therefore completely new in studies, namely that Sumhuram, which probably had close links with India even as early as ancient times, was not a stopping-off point for Roman ships en route to India but, instead for ships coming from India en route westwards.
The various research units involved in the project will conduct >>>

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

The results achieved by the Italian mission to Oman (IMTO) which has been working in the area of Khor Rori (Dhofar, Sultanate of Oman) since 1996 are the basis for this project. To date, the IMTO has published two reports: Avanzini (ed.) 2002 and Avanzini (ed.) 2007.
A series of multimedia tools has also been created in these years (http://arabiantica.humnet.unipi.it).
A United States archaeological mission (American Foundation for the Study of Man) worked in the area in the ’Fifties (Albright 1982); the Transarabic Expedition (Zarins 2001) and the German Archaeological Expedition to Oman (Yule, Kevran 1993) carried out some important surface surveys in the area.
The need to re-think the economic dynamics of the links between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean emerges from many studies that have been published since the ’Nineties (Salles 1993, Read 1996) and the relationship between Arabia and India in particular has been examined under a new light in very recent years (Gupta 2007).
The domestic history of the south Arabian kingdoms and their connection with trade has been further clarified by a historical and epigraphic study of documentation from the port of Sumhuram.
Many recent studies have shown that Roman trade which developed after the Roman conquest of Egypt exploited segments of maritime trade that had existed in previous centuries. A study conducted on possible alternative routes in the Persian Gulf area to those preferred by >>>