Mobility and trade in the past
Mobility is at the heart of past human societies—it connects places and people, spaces and ideas. The scale and speed of mobility has changed extensively in recent centuries with the arrival of trains, cars and planes and of course the internet; the latter, in the past 20 years, has dramatically changed how people communicate worldwide via mouse clicks, messaging apps and video calls. With this ease of contact mobility and effortlessness of travelling, wide-ranged trading has increased. Until the nineteenth century, travelling was a more time-consuming, less-comfortable and often perilous business. Yet, evidence for movement of various distances is abundant in the past, from small hunting parties following game, to marital exchanges of individuals between different groups, to expanding trade networks and the large migrations of peoples.
The reasons to be mobile were manifold, as they are still. Archaeological research trying to uncover the evidence and causes of these mobile people and communities is not new and has inspired many studies in the past. However, many questions remain unanswered and this field is increasingly popular, especially through the integration of ancient DNA and the isotope analyses of human and animal remains as well as the crafted material evidence left behind in diverse places, many far from their place of origin. Ancient trade has always been a core interest for archaeologists, because it can tell us so much about societal structures and their economics as well as the connections between polities. The four books gathered here look at different ways to capture information about mobility, but all try to connect what impact this mobility had then and still has on us today.
ROOTS of routes: mobility and networks between the past and the future delivers a wide range of case studies and new ideas about routes at different times, with some of them still in use. The boundaries of ancient trade: kings, commoners, and the Aksumite salt trade of Ethiopia takes the reader on a fascinating journey along the last caravan salt-trade route and compares it with trade in Aksumite times. The millennium maritime trade revolution, 700–1700: how Asia lost maritime supremacy is an exciting world history from an eastern perspective, filled with astonishing information on the tumultuous times in which Asian maritime trade was far ahead of its European counterparts. From Iceland to New Iceland: an archaeology of migration, continuity and change in the late 19th and early 20th centuries brings together the archaeology and the lifeways of families who stayed in Iceland and those who emigrated to Canada.
This booklet is part of a series produced by the Cluster of Excellence ‘ROOTS Social, Environmental and Cultural Connectivity in Past Societies’ programme, which connects scholars from different fields and has its centre at Kiel University, Germany. ROOTS of routes: mobility and networks between the past and the future is the topic of this edition.
At first glance, it feels like an odd format—20 quite short chapters, plus a preface and conclusion—with a wide temporal range stretching from the Palaeolithic to the twenty-first century with one overarching topic, routes over land and along rivers, with an emphasis on temperate northern Europe, and examples from the Mediterranean and Central Asia. The connecting theme is the longue durée of routes of movement by past human communities. The reasons these routes developed are diverse, ranging from migration to trade and from subsistence to religion. In addition to classic examples such as the silk road (Hilpert & Kneisel), the amber routes (Serbe & Saleem) and barrow roads are more recent discoveries of the trackways beneath the North Sea of late Palaeolithic reindeer hunters (Eriksen & Rabbel) and new perspectives of the origin and spread of wheeled transport (Müller). Each short contribution delivers discussions and results of ongoing research and case studies but they are not integrated in a single overarching narrative.
On second view, this is an inspiring and useful format because the published outputs for these types of large projects are often in-depth and specialised content or short summaries on websites with a limited lifespan. The shorter versions presented in this booklet allow an overview of the projects of this large research programme, making it accessible for a wide audience. In the absence of a compelling narrative, however, it is more interesting for the broader community of archaeologists rather than the general public. While neither a textbook nor a comprehensive synthesis, it delivers invaluable perspectives and case studies and offers plenty of food for thought in a readily digestible format.
Tim Kerig briefly discusses ‘Globalisation’ with a view on the past and outlines it as long-distance trade and exchange between different parts of the world, thus setting the framework for the following contributions. This contemporary resonance is felt in many of the case studies and is refreshing and stimulating as it repeatedly highlights the relevance of archaeological discoveries and research for our understanding of the world today. This is especially so in the chapters ‘Walking on ancient paths—are we still using Celtic trails?’ (Engelbogen) and the ‘Ox trail a millennia old route’ (Kneisel et al.), which look at pathways that are still used, and ‘Entangled mobilities: the interconnection of human routes and animal movement’ (Piezonka & Varkuleviciute) which discusses the importance of animal mobility routes for hunter-gatherers in the past and herders in the present. Long-distance contact and trade is discussed in relation to many objects from the Mesolithic/Neolithic onwards and have led to many models of travel and connectivity. The fascinating little bronze statuette of Buddha that was made in the Swat Valley, now Pakistan, in the sixth century AD and was discovered in an excavation on Helgö, Sweden, in 1956 is used by Jens Schneeweiß as an example of how artefacts arrived there from 6000km away—possibly, he believes, through the Viking silver trade. Jutta Kneisel delivers a surprising but stimulating comparison between the mermaid symbol of the coffee empire Starbucks and urns shaped like faces, boxes or houses in the Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age from northern Germany and Denmark; she demonstrates the meaning of a logo or symbol, as an abbreviation for a concept or company or way of life, and the visible interconnectivity between areas of contact.
These and more brief chapters deliver a wealth of ideas and new perspectives from which to consider routes, paths and riverways in the past and how many of these are still connected to communities in the present. The diverse topics are sure to inspire many interested readers and give valuable insights into the multi-faceted ROOTS programme, which one can expect to deliver more stimulating outputs in the future.
Helina Woldekiro has investigated, and even participated in, one of the last economically significant caravan-based trade routes in the world, the salt route between lowlands and highlands in East Africa, still frequented by about a quarter of a million people and pack animals each year. This salt route reaches far back in time and, while the focus here is on the Aksumite kingdom (450 BC–AD 900) located in modern north-east Ethiopia and Eritrea, the author suggests it has earlier origins.
The reason this trade route is still undertaken using camels and donkeys, instead of being replaced by trains or trucks, is that the three routes (approx. 130–220km roundtrip) have extremely challenging climates and rapidly changing altitudes. The salt is mined from Lake Asale, a saline crater lake in the Afar depression (155m below sea level), Ethiopia, which is one of the hottest places on earth—temperatures of 50–55°C are not uncommon. It is then transported to the Tigrai Highlands whose farmlands are up to 3000m above sea level. Research on trade in East Africa has typically focused on elite goods such as gold, emeralds, ivory and incense but this book is solely about the regional salt-trade. As the author points out, little is known of the internal organisation, power relations and economics of this exchange.
The book seeks to challenge the notion of highly centralised and stratified polities in both studies of ancient trade as well as in the Aksumite kingdom. Woldekiro describes how she formed her own caravan of donkeys and camels and walked over 100km together with trading groups, interviewing many of the participants. Furthermore, she conducted excavations of several sites of past salt-trading communities. All this sheds new light on the complexities and diversity of the salt trade, combining anthropological, archaeological and, crucially, ethnoarchaeological methods.
The volume is written in an engaging style, it is well organised and consists of an Introduction, six chapters and a brief Conclusion, followed by an extensive bibliography and a useful set of appendices. Sadly, the figures and especially the maps are not produced to an equally comprehensive standard. The Introduction deals with challenging the dominance of the elite-orientated trade model, then Chapter 2 guides the reader through definitions of the niche economy and markets, which have become widely used as a concept in African archaeology and history. These place the nuanced organisation of production and producers within their social contexts at its heart, which are flexible and much more relevant to the salt trade rather than to Western neo-capitalist concepts. Furthermore, the chapter provides a pan-African overview of salt trade and caravans. Chapter 3 delivers an excellent up-to-date summary of the Aksumite State and its economies and it emphasises the network of towns and cities stretching from Adulis on the Red Sea coast to Aksum in the Tigrai Highlands. The author's fieldwork undertaken between 2009 and 2012 is detailed in Chapters 4 to 6, and it is placed in the context of the archaeology, geography and history of the region.
Chapter 5 is perhaps the most compelling part of the book because it details the experience of joining a caravan of up to 1000 people and 6000 camels and donkeys. The interviews reveal how the caravaners work within a wide network of people participating in the salt trade, such as miners, dealers, tax collectors and sellers. Work in the caravan is a male-only occupation; the men must be related to at least one other person in the trade and they all come from the towns and villages of the region and range in age from 15 to about 65 years. They are fluent in at least three Ethiopian languages, with those in the highlands being mostly Christian and those from Afar being mostly of Muslim faith. It is a highly respected profession but requires strength and endurance to cope with trips that last four to six weeks each, made several times a year.
Turning from the fascinating workings of the modern trade to the Aksumite times, the author undertook small-scale excavations. These included three sites in Agula, a highland traders' town, of a settlement site, a caravan camp and a church, with all sites revealing pre-Aksumite, Aksumite and medieval occupation. There are further excavations of a settlement and camp at Desi'a, a foothill town dating back to at least the medieval period. The excavated evidence, though a little underwhelming, is incorporated into a broader discussion of foodways on trade routes, by analysing different ceramic types and cereal crops. Chapter 7 brings the different strands of evidence, modern and ancient, together and explores the largely heterarchical organisation of this long-distance trade during the Aksumite kingdom.
The study shows not only the deep cultural heritage of this salt trade but also the importance of approaching trade in the past from a broader perspective. It is not simply to be understood as an elite-controlled and top-down system but rather a network of co-operation, interdependence and power that spanned communities of lowland pastoralists, highland farmers and urban salt merchants. This highly recommended book will appeal to a wider audience interested in ancient states, trade communities and modern ethnoarchaeology. Woldekiro also uncovers fascinating insights into the life and experience of the hardy caravaners who still travel the same routes as their distant ancestors.
Nick Collins's book is a follow-up to the well-received How maritime trade and the Indian subcontinent shaped the world (2021) and both books feature the author's thesis that maritime trade largely drives world history. It is repeatedly highlighted how maritime trade promotes economic growth as well as intellectual and technological innovations, whether experimenting with new ideas in shipbuilding, nurturing commerce or encouraging competition between merchants. Refreshingly, this is a global history that does not centre around European successes and failures but provides a primary viewpoint from Asia looking towards Europe. From this perspective, the importance of maritime dominance and economic trade of Asia in the millennium between 700 and 1700 is revealed and it helps explain the changes that led to the subsequent European resurgence from the fifteenth century onwards.
The narrative starts in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea, when trade between the Arabian Gulf, East Africa, India, China and Southeast Asia rapidly evolved, and ends with the establishment of European expansion across Asia and the Americas. This broad temporal and spatial frame is dealt with in 40 small chapters, all dealing chronologically with different regions on the topics of trade and growth that pivots between Asian and European worlds. The author is interested in the practicalities of how trade was done, and by whom, and is less engaged with academic theories. Food supply made up the main part of the trade, the essentials such as grain, salt and fish, and the desirables such as fruit, nuts and spices. Of further importance is the exchange of precious objects, exotica and raw materials including metals, textiles and ceramics. Slaves were traded widely in each region and by almost everyone. Historical sources and to a lesser extent archaeological evidence are combined to evaluate maritime movement, economics and the impact on broader societies. Many useful maps detailing port locations are used to support the arguments made. The text provides an exceptionally rich array of case studies with many fascinating details of what was traded and how merchants and communities operated across time; some examples are summarised here.
Already by the mid-eighth century in China the port of Guangzhou, on the south-east coast, was home to an estimated 200 000 merchants from around the Indian Ocean, such as Persians, Arabs, Malays and Indians, a huge number of foreign traders especially when compared with the tiny trade emporia in the West, such as Lundenwic (London). Such prosperity, however, also aroused resentment and xenophobia in the region and in AD 878 the rebel leader Huang Cho sacked the city and slaughtered the majority of its foreign inhabitants. In an underlying theme of the book, such massacres and wars simply led to trade shifting to other regions and ports, rather than its elimination. Also dating to the eighth century is a shipwreck found in 2013 from Phanom Surin, south of Bangkok, which encapsulated this Indian Ocean world in its cargo, with widespread types of ceramics and goods from Mesopotamia to China. Collins identifies that the beginning of the decline of the Asian maritime trade supremacy began with the closing of China under the first Ming Emperor Hongwu who, in 1372, banned foreign travel and foreign private trade. The famous voyages of the vast fleets commanded by Chinese admiral Zheng He in the early fifteenth century were more concerned with the projection of the Ming dynasty's power rather than with the rebuilding of trade systems. Collins shows how the, in European scholarship, much-discussed arrival of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean and East Asia should be seen as only a minor player within the still thriving networks of sixteenth-century Asian maritime trade. The Portuguese ships though are soon followed by the rise of the European seafaring merchant companies from Amsterdam, London and elsewhere and the global shift in maritime power from east to west.
Despite the many interesting facts gathered in the case studies, this work is a thematic synthesis rather than an in-depth analysis; for instance, there is no systematic evaluation of economic trends or trade volumes etc. The author comes from a background both in history and a successful career in the freight shipping industry. For him, maritime trade is at the core of societal prosperity and progress and it is demonstrated throughout the book that when such activities are restricted, kingdoms and empires decline. Collins also finds a fundamental difference between Continental and Maritime societies with the former being conservative, poorer and hierarchical in contrast to the latter which are innovative, richer and more inclusive. A further counterpoint is highlighted between merchants and monarchs, with the merchants seeking to create prosperity across political and religious boundaries. Monarchs instead pursue power through military conquest, religious persecution and hefty taxation as well as keeping people within borders. The case studies emphasise these points and are deftly combined into a lively narrative. This is an engaging, well-written story of the supremacy of maritime trade in shaping world history, which incorporates an astonishing amount of information.
North America was the ‘promised land’ for many families from Europe emigrating in the nineteenth and early twentieth century in search for a better life, with the hope of a more secure lifestyle and the chance of wealth and prosperity. Iceland joined this long-lasting wave of emigration quite late in the nineteenth century, with 1875 seeing the establishment of ‘New Iceland’ on the shores of Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba. This area was given to Icelandic settlers by the Canadian government, which also aided the immigrants financially, in an attempt to encourage the settlement of white Europeans in the west of the continent. The Icelandic migration and the different way of life the people created in the new colony is the topic of Ágústa Edwald Maxwell's doctoral thesis and the book is the outcome of this research. The main sources of the study are the excavations of two farmsteads, one in Hornbrekka, Iceland and one in Víðivellir, Canada, as well as historical documents and interviews of descendants, centring on a timeframe from 1874–1914. Estimates show that in these years, 20 per cent of the population left Iceland.
The Introduction delivers a well-written framework and overview of methodologies and chapters, to grant easy access to this so far less treated subject. Chapter 1 summarises the history of research on Icelandic emigration then critically reviews the often-romanticised ‘grand narrative’ and highlights the need to look more deeply into the sources rather than just accepting the well-rehearsed and repeated story. Edwald Maxwell draws together existing work on the topic including contemporaneous descriptions and personal correspondences. The author highlights the archaeological research lacuna of Icelandic emigration evidence as well as the less, relative to other periods, archaeologically studied nineteenth-century Iceland. The chapter finishes with some thoughts on ideologies of improvement and capitalism and how these have influenced previous works on the subject. Chapter 2 explains the theoretical approach applied in this research, centred around the interpretative perspective of “continuity through change”, which enables finer nuances of people's lives in the past. The author delves deep to explain this approach and to highlight the different results this can achieve, especially while applying the concept of skill being at the heart of tradition and interpreting changes through the lens of ‘becoming’. In Chapter 3, the excavations of the two homesteads are detailed and the families who dwelled there introduced because the archaeology of the homes can only be fully understood when combining them with the lifeways and choices of the inhabitants. The chapter also places these families and their homes in the wider background of nineteenth-century Iceland and the new colony in Manitoba. The detailed personal accounts of the two families from different social backgrounds who both emigrated from Iceland—one living on the small farm of Hornbrekka and the other on the farm of Víðivellir—leave no doubt of the hardships people faced before they emigrated as well as after. It is essential to connect the archaeological sites with the life stories of the people who lived there to assist the contextualisation of the finds and their interpretation.
Each following chapter (4–7) addresses a certain topic, such as ethnicity or wealth, which are viewed under the aspect of ‘becoming’—as in becoming Canadian, becoming wealthy, becoming refined and becoming modern—to avoid a limited binary identification (e.g. poor/wealthy). To survive in the new environment the Icelandic settlers had to improve their skills, such as fishing techniques. Most were used to fishing in the sea not in a lake, and fishing under ice in winter had to be learnt with some help from First Nation people. New tools and technologies from other communities had to be adapted. Yet the settlers kept their Icelandic community and language guarded and strong, despite being proclaimed traitors by the nationalists in Iceland they kept in contact with their families and friends there. The author concludes that “by becoming ‘Canadian’ they remained ‘Icelandic’ ” (p.42). In ‘Becoming wealthy’ (Chapter 5), the material remains over the time of occupation of the two farmsteads—such as buildings, ceramics and animal bones—are compared to reveal aspects of prosperity and life quality. The material is further examined and interpreted to shed light on different ways of improvements and modernisation in the households through time, with special focus on the architecture.
To sum up, this study succeeds in its task to challenge the grand narrative of the rise of the poor Icelandic families who left their homeland impoverished and found riches and a new identity in their Canadian New Iceland. Edwald Maxwell deftly weaves the diverse strands of historical evidence and archaeological remains together to deliver the nuanced ‘becomings’ of the Icelandic families at the heart of this research. It becomes obvious that the broad picture does not apply to all immigrants or even to most. Personal crises and choices are more prominent than political reasons in leading to different lifeways, formed by combining traditions and skills with new technologies and habits and intercultural exchanges, while retaining a strong bond to their Icelandic origins. This book is an excellent example for historical archaeology which brings the actors, the Icelandic-Canadian families, back to life, as well as connecting their lives to our modern world through facing the same challenges of mobility, migration and integration.
This list includes all books received between 1 May 2024 and 30 June 2024. Those featuring at the beginning of New Book Chronicle, however, have not been duplicated in this list. The listing of a book here does not preclude its subsequent review in Antiquity.
