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date : 31 January 2022

The Archaeological Record of Indian Ocean Engagements: Bay of Bengal (5000 bc–500 ad)

Abstract and Keywords

With the Bay of Bengal littoral as its focus, this chapter reviews the archaeological evidence for human expansions, migrations, formation of switch over networks, long-distance trade, political impulses, and transmissions of technocultural traditions in bass prison term, from around 5000 bc to 500 ad. In doing then, the author offers the idea of the Bay of Bengal Interaction Sphere, a “ neutral ” model of analysis that sets aside the constraints of the honest-to-god Indianization argument for south-southeast asian interaction and situates the Bay within a broader global framework extending from the Mediterranean to the Far East in a raw narrative of contact and change. Keywords : Bay of Bengal, exchange networks, Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Indianization, Southeast Asia, China, technocultural, Indo-Pacific, Mediterranean The Bay of Bengal has been, historically, an authoritative part of the easterly amerind Ocean. It is spread over 2,172,000 square kilometers, making it the largest bay in the populace. Within this active nautical space, fundamental technocultural processes are observed : movement of ethnolinguistic communities, opening of land–sea routes and ports, innovations in boat build up and navigational technologies, spread of botanical cultivars, and refine of craft and artistic skills. The engagements between the Indic universe and the Southeast asian region are critical to understanding the formation of the Bay of Bengal Interaction Sphere ( BBIS ). The idea of the BBIS is well expressed by Manguin ( 1996, 191 ) who says, “ The Bay of Bengal remains very a lot a mare incognitum…. The close links between its easterly and westerly shores from at least the last few centuries bc, the continuous economic and cultural substitute that took position during the period of our refer, all indicate towards the evolve of a fair amount of interchange and cross-fertilization, if not of homogeneity in technical traditions. ” The BBIS comprises the eastern separate of the indian subcontinent ( the country of Sri Lanka ; the indian states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal ; and the state of Bangladesh ) and the western part of Southeast Asia ( Myanmar, coastal Thailand, coastal Malaysia, and the indonesian island of Sumatra adjoining the Andaman Sea ). The Andaman and Nicobar Island chain, which are spread in a north–south axis in the Bay of Bengal, overlook the passage through the Malacca Straits to the South China Sea. For purposes of analysis, the Andaman Sea is taken as a conterminous extension of the Bay of Bengal and treated here as one with the alcove .
How did this huge maritime region achieve interactivity ? How did the Indo-Southeast asian association become a factor in the construction of the Bay of Bengal sphere, with far connections to the Mediterranean worldly concern in the west and the Sinic populace in the east ? Did long-distance commute happen within a human body of shared traditions ? Were memories of the first diasporas alive along extant networks ? These questions fuel the follow discussion. primarily, we are dealing with interactional processes that were played out over long distances and over a long period of time. These processes were of two kinds : ( a ) human dispersals and technocultural transmissions which took place over an gallop period ( for example, neolithic expansion from southern China to Southeast Asia ) and ( b ) short-run bowel movement of men and material inspired by craft opportunities, sense of discovery, and adventure. The latter was normally effected through conduits opened by earlier expansions. Events in deep ancientness taking stead army for the liberation of rwanda from the Bay of Bengal littoral impacted this ocean in transformative ways. As we shall discuss, emergence of substitute networks across the Bay of Bengal, transmissions of botanic cultivars and crafting technologies, and the raise of maritime networks frequently originated in staging areas as far away as the Red Sea and the South China Sea. Closer to the Bay, rising chiefdoms and early kingdoms in the Indo-Gangetic partition in the Subcontinent and in the littorals of Southeast Asia opened up routes on both sides of the Bay of Bengal .

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As interactional processes across the Bay of Bengal strengthened and Southeast Asian communities grew more building complex, the material panoply of condition initially manifest in Indic beads, amulets, and ritual pottery came to be projected through modeled art, neologism, and architecture, much of it drawing its inspiration from the indian subcontinent ( Gupta 2003, 391–405 ). Of meaning here is the accelerate of the Southeast asian adaptations, the evidence showing how promptly craft, art, and architectural skills were absorbed by Southeast asian communities and expressed in ways unique to the area ( Wheatley 1975 ). surprisingly, there is no sign of a period of apprenticeship in the exploitation of Indic statuary in Southeast Asia. Robert L. Brown, in his important work The Dvaravati Wheels of the Law and the Indianization of Southeast Asia, says that “ a lot of Southeast Asia ’ s earliest Indianized art appears as if full-sprung, with no earlier stages of development—without tied a period of copying amerind models ” ( 1996 : twenty-six ; Figure 23 ). The very first importations of sculptures from the amerind subcontinent seem to have triggered the same creative energy among southeast asian artisans that was earlier displayed when absorbing amerind bead-crafting techniques .

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While the South–Southeast Asian relationship forms the congress of racial equality of the theme of the BBIS, the “ inert ” interaction model applied here frees the studies of exchanges between the western and easterly shores of the Bay of Bengal from the overpowering Indianization debates ( Gupta 2005, 21–30 ; Smith 1999, 1–26 ). The theme of the BBIS besides creates the imperative for a lateral pass bedspread of analysis and probe, breaking out of “ area studies ” molds ( South Asia, Southeast Asia ) to historically situate the Bay of Bengal within the broader frame of the Indo-Pacific region, mainland Asia, eastern Africa, and the Mediterranean worldly concern. Keeping this in horizon, the discussions here commenced with happenings in the Yangtze Valley in deep antiquity and traced the playing out of the AA and AN expansions in the vicinity of the Bay of Bengal adenine well as issues of early rice domestication and changing environments. Emanations from the Bay of Bengal touched far corners of the Old world : discernible in the cinnamon indicators extracted from 10th-century bc flasks in Israel, the early appearance of the Southeast asian banana in the indian subcontinent, the discovery of banana phytoliths in Africa, the motion of indian Ocean cowries into mainland China through the indian northeast, and in the prolific Indo-Pacific bead distributions in far Japan and Korea ( Table 1 ). Because of the “ boastful movie ” see flowing from the BBIS mind, there is telescope for meaningful comparative studies. For case, the quick adaptability of Southeast asian communities to Indic technocultural transmissions can be compared with like processes taking place in East Asia in the bc–ad transition : the hang of ideas and technologies from mainland China into Japan creating a distinct Yayoi Culture through adaptation and tractability, one starkly different from the preceding Jomon. We may possibly go further to shed inner light on modern or contemporaneous states of affairs with the hindsight of thick time, enquiring whether the egress of Southeast Asia as a technological hub ( the “ Asian Tiger ” economies ) has something to do with the area ’ s technocultural past ? My period is that, given the spatial reach of the mind of the BBIS, where southerly China, East Asia, East Africa, and the Mediterranean become naturally linked to the investigations of the core, the spinoffs offer powerful new research directions .
table 1 mesa showing timelines for major episodes in the Bay of Bengal Sphere from 5000 bc–500 ad