Ivory Carving

Il libro presenta un’indagine sistematica sui tesori appartenenti agli edifici religiosi della città di Randazzo, in provincia di Catania e nasce dall’esigenza di dare un contributo allo studio della sacra suppellettile in materiale prezioso con particolare riguardo alle tre maggiori chiese. Partendo dal profilo storico del centro etneo, protagonista nei secoli XIV e XV delle vicende siciliane grazie al ruolo di sede estiva della corte regia, vengono descritte le tappe salienti che portarono alla realizzazione delle oreficerie. Lo studio individua caratteri internazionali per le suppellettili medievali, svelando provenienze francesi, toscane, veneziane e nord italiane. Nel periodo che va dal XVI al XIX secolo, la concentrazione di materiale che giunge dai due maggiori centri di produzione siciliana quali Messina e Palermo, unitamente alla presenza degli argentieri di Acireale e Catania, permette di acquisire un valido campionario di marchiature. La seconda parte è dedicata all’illustrazione ed alla descrizione dei singoli oggetti, con lo specifico compito di rilevare la particolare cifra stilistica voluta dalla committenza delle diverse “collezioni” che, nel loro insieme, costituisce una delle più cospicue raccolte di oreficeria sacra all’interno del panorama isolano.
Conclude l’indagine un’appendice documentaria in cui sono trascritti i primi risultati della ricerca avviata presso vari fondi archivistici, riservando grande spazio ad inventari ed atti inediti relativi al tesoro di Santa Maria. In questo modo è possibile percepire la ricchezza delle risorse godute in passato da questa chiesa grazie alla donazione De Quatris, la cui Opera commissiona nel 1561 l’interessante custodia eucaristica all’argentiere palermitano Antonio Cochula.

On 1 January 506, Flavius Areobindus Dagalaifus Areobindus was installed as consul of the city of Constantinople. His appointment maintained an annual tradition that could be traced back one thousand years. His main, indeed his only, duty as consul was to put on seven days of entertainment for the inhabitants of the city. These spectacles were codifi ed three decades later in the Codex Justinianus: a procession on the inauguration of the consul, a day of horse racing, a day of theatrical entertainments, a day of animal combats, a second theatrical day, a second day of racing, and fi nally a solemn ceremony to end the week. The post was entirely concerned with display and spectacle: on the one hand, the wonders and excitements of the games and entertainment offered to the people, and on the other, the ostentatious display of the consul through his wealth and largesse. Although the post was a temporary one, it has left a permanent visual legacy: the magnifi cent ivory diptychs that were commissioned by the consuls to celebrate or commemorate their appointment. For Areobindus, ten leaves from seven different diptychs survive, the largest corpus linked to a single consul in late antiquity. 2 Each leaf measures between 340 and 388 mm in height and between 110 and 137 mm in width (and all are between 8 and 10.5 mm thick). When placed together, they combine to reveal the expense of the consulship. They are substantial pieces of ivory and represent a heavy investment in this rare and valuable commodity, especially when one takes into account the high probability that the surviving diptychs probably represent only a small fraction of the number that were originally commissioned. The relationship between the diptychs and consular display is central to their understanding: the visual languages by which consuls in sixth-century Constantinople paraded their virtues, and the nature of the audiences that they addressed.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century around the Bering Strait, ornate pieces of carved fossil ivory bearing decorations unlike anything previously known from the Eskimo region began appearing in museum collections. These small, deeply patinated artifacts, which originated from ancient village sites across the region and passed from the pockets of Indigenous collectors to American whalers, teachers, traders, and museum curators, were evidence of a distinctive and scarcely known prehistoric maritime culture of northwestern Alaska and neighboring Siberia. Beautifully incised harpoon heads and socket pieces, animated zoomorphic drum and box handles, anthropomorphic figures inscribed with tattoos and body ornaments, and other objects of “unknown use” largely comprised the “high fossil ivory culture” of a society that appeared to have been centered on St. Lawrence Island,
parts of the adjacent Asiatic coast, the Diomede Islands, and portions of the Seward Peninsula of Alaska (Hrdlička 1930:174).

By the mid-1920s anthropological interest in the origins of these Paleo-Eskimo peoples peaked (Collins 1937:iii), resulting in a series of archaeological expeditions to the Bering Strait that continues to the present day. On St. Lawrence Island and the neighboring Chukotka Peninsula of Russia, excavations revealed a succession of closely
related and partially overlapping cultures—Okvik/Old Bering Sea (~50 to 800 CE) and Punuk (800 to 1200 CE)—whose settlements and cemeteries exhibited some of the finest art ever produced by a hunting society.1 Lured to the Bering Strait by vast herds of ivory-bearing sea mammals like walruses and large whales, these maritime peoples from Asia were led by shamans, whaling captains, and notable warriors. Both men and women of these peoples tattooed their bodies and crafted human figurines, or “dolls,” that often displayed ornate and naturalistic personal adornments, including amulet straps, beaded headbands, and permanent body markings that have counterparts in recent history and practice.

EHESS Marseille
Séminaire "La vie politique des marchandises :  ethnographies des circulations transnationales" (première présentation de la recherche avant départ sur le terrain à Hong Kong)
Communication du 28.03.2017, 45 min.

Ce séminaire examine les enjeux théoriques et empiriques d’une anthropologie politique « par le bas » de la globalisation économique, menée à travers des ethnographies comparées portant sur les trajectoires « biographiques » de marchandises (vin, cacao, fromage, textile, café, qât, moto, art contemporain, médicament) connectant des espaces politiques et économiques lointains (Europe, Amérique, Chine et Afrique), et choisies en fonction de l’importance, politique, économique ou symbolique, qu’elles assument pour les acteurs et les sociétés mis en relation. Nous considérons les marchandises comme un biais pour observer avant tout des dynamiques politiques, et tout particulièrement les déplacements politiques provoqués par la transformation de leur production, leur circulation et leur régulation sous l’effet de la libéralisation de l’économie mondiale. Derrière une marchandise, il y a des institutions de régulation, nationales et supranationales, des acteurs économiques individuels ou constitués en réseaux, des formes spécifiques de circulation et de consommation, eux-mêmes reliées à des modèles culturels ou d’organisation sociale. L’analyse de réseaux transnationaux ira de pair avec une réflexion originale sur des lieux de connections. On s’intéressera au rôle émergent de hubs qui s’imposent comme des nœuds incontournables d’échanges du commerce mondial et apparaissent comme des lieux « politiques » caractéristiques de la gouvernance globale. Rattaché à un programme ANR, ce séminaire se veut un lieu de rencontre et de discussion d’enquêtes en cours au croisement de l’anthropologie politique, de l’anthropologie économique et de l’anthropologie des techniques.

de Lisboa (1195-1231), português de nascimento, é um alvo popular deste fervor religioso. O seu culto é um fenómeno popular na Igreja Católica. Para além de celebrações regulares no calendário da igreja, as suas imagens estão em muitos altares de oração e são alvo de cultos festivos. Os missionários portugueses introduziram o catolicismo no Sri Lanka em meados do século XVI. Pode, portanto, presumir-se que a devoção a Santo António de Lisboa neste país foi introduzido juntos dos nativos cristãos pelos missionários portugueses. Esta suposição é suportada pelas crónicas do período da expansão portuguesa, onde Santo António é identificado como o «Santo de Lisboa» e o «Santo português». Há muitas igrejas no Sri Lanka contemporâneo dedicadas a Santo António de Lisboa, o que revela claramente a popularidade deste santo no país. Este estudo pretende traçar os factores históricos adoptados para espalhar a devoção a Santo António de Lisboa, no Sri Lanka, durante os séculos XVI e XVII, o período durante o qual os portugueses evangelizaram as Províncias Marítimas do país, e também tentar compreender o progresso da devoção ao longo das diferentes conquistas temporais e espirituais.

Aufgrund der zahlreichen Elfenbein-und Knocheneinlagen, die in den Räumen R und Y des " Unterstadtpalastes " von Qaṭna gefunden wurden, hat sich schon M. Luciani mit dieser Fundgattung beschäftigt und auf die Möglichkeit eigener, in Qaṭna angesiedelter Elfenbeinwerkstätten hingewiesen, was sich aufgrund der neuesten Funde von Elefantenknochen im Palastbereich zu bestätigen scheint. Unter den Objekten, die aus der Gruft des Königspalastes in Qaṭna geborgen wurden, fanden sich ebenfalls zahlreiche Elfenbein-und Knochen-artefakte. Die meisten dieser Objekte sind aufgrund ihrer einseitigen Bearbeitung als Einlagen anzusprechen. Sie sollen im Folgenden in Gruppen eingeteilt, beschrieben und anschließend auf ihren Fundkontext und ihre Verteilung in der Gruft hin untersucht werden, um zu beleuchten, inwieweit eine Erschließung der genauen Funktion und der etwaigen Zusammengehörigkeit der Funde aus Elfenbein und Knochen möglich ist.

Indeed, the walls of the Porzellanzimmer, directly adjacent to the Millionenzimmer, are lined with equally remarkable and securely attributed imperial creations: chinoiserie compositions by the Emperor Franz Joseph, the Archduchess Maria Christine, her husband Albert of Sachsen-Teschen, and Isabella of Parma, wife of Archduke Joseph . Blue gouache on white Dutch paper emulates the visual effects of porcelain, from which the room takes its name. The 212 sheets were framed and mounted into vertical columns separated by chinoiserie plaster garlands. The result is a witty conceit simulating an imperial porcelain cabinet despite the absence of a single piece of actual porcelain.

http://mnk.pl/sklep/produkt/rozprawy-muzeum-narodowego-w-krakowie-tom-x
Medieval ivory carvings are very rare in museum collections in Poland and haven’t been the subject of detailed studies so far. There are only a few pieces made from this precious material in Krakow, including a small appliqué showing enthroned Virgin with a Child, attached to a cover of a Latin Bible from the Princes Czartoryski Museum in Krakow. The figurine was mainly attributed to the French circle and dated to the 2nd half of the 14th century. However, the analysis of the form may indicate that the appliqué was made in a German circle as an “offspring” of the so‑called
Kremsmünster workshop. This rather non‑French atelier was under the influence of the French and Cologne monumental, but also smaller, wooden sculpture. These doubts concerning the appliqué show that it is quite necessary to look into the provenance of the ivories still preserved in Krakow.

Global demand for ivory has caused a decimation of two endangered species: the African elephant and the Indian elephant. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, ivory was a popular materiał for the production of everyday objects. Appreciated for its physical properties (durability, flexibility, malleability), this valuable material obtained from elephant tusks was widely used in the production of billiard balls, piano keytops, cutlery handles, buttons, and jewellery, defining the materiał culture also outside the areas of elephants' natural habitats. It was not until plastic entered mass production that ivory was replaced as a bourgeois materiał for daily use. This historical insight into the transition from killing elephants for 'white gołd' to the boom of the plastic age prompts a materially oriented analysis of the Anthropocene through the prism of human-animal relationships, colonial exploitation of natural resources, and the origins of Western consumer culture. Forming multiple links between nature and culture, ivory emerges as the ultimate artefact of the Anthropocene.


PL: Globalny popyt na kość słoniową przyczynia się do dziesiątkowania populacji słoni afrykańskich i indyjskich, gatunków zagrożonych wymarciem. Na przełomie XIX i XX wieku kość słoniowa stanowiła popularny materiał do wyrobu przedmiotów codziennego użytku. Ze względu na swoje właściwości fizyczne, takie jak wytrzymałość, elastyczność i łatwość w obróbce, ten cenny surowiec pozyskiwany z ciosów słoni był powszechnie wykorzystywany do produkcji kul bilardowych, powłoki klawiszy fortepianowych, rękojeści sztućców, guzików czy wyrobów jubilerskich, kształtując kulturę materialną poza obszarami występowania tych zwierząt. Dopiero wprowadzenie do masowej produkcji tworzyw sztucznych wyparło kość słoniową jako materiał burżuazyjnej codzienności. Spojrzenie wstecz na moment, w którym odejście od morderczego procederu pozyskiwania „białego złota” oznaczało rozpoczęcie epoki plastiku, staje się przyczynkiem do zorientowanej na materialność analizy pojęcia antropocenu w kontekście relacji ludzko-zwierzęcych, kolonialnej eksploatacji zasobów naturalnych oraz początków zachodniej kultury konsumpcyjnej. Splatając naturę i kulturę na różne sposoby, kość słoniowa stanowi modelowy artefakt epoki antropocenu.

The paper analyses all the historical sources which refers to the Grado chair, to verify their reliability and when, apparently, the chair was dismantled and the awareness of its existence disappeared, till the moment of Graeven’s hypothesis about the common provenance of the ivories with St. Marks’ history (1899)

Amsterdam became a centre of trade and craft from the end of the 16th century onwards. Many of the craft activities in the 17th and 18th centuries remain largely unknown. By using an interdisciplinary approach more information can be obtained about these crafts and their craftsmen. Knife making was not a large-scale industry, but was still an important craft within the city. Although individual differences existed, most knife makers or haft makers belonged to the middle-class. A large proportion of the blades were imported. An essential part of this craft was the manufacture of knife handles. These were made of organic materials, such as wood, ivory, bone, horn, antler and tortoiseshell. A shift in the use of raw materials is visible, which was caused by increasing trading activities.

P. James, I. J. Thorpe, N. Kokkinos, R. Morkot & J. Frankish, Centuries of Darkness: A challenge to the conventional chronology of Old World archaeology (London: Jonathan Cape 1991/New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 1993). With a Foreword by Colin Renfrew.

Publishers’ Blurb
The Old World has confronted archaeologists with many riddles, perhaps the most tantalising of which is the Dark Age, an economic and cultural recession so devastating it lasted for 400 years from 1200 to 800 BC. Or did it? The dates for the Near East and Mediterranean are derived from the highly regarded chronology of ancient Egypt, but could not that itself have been miscalculated? This is the pioneering theory proposed by Peter James in an intricate piece of scholarly detective work. Deciphering the clues from papyri and pottery, he and his team of experts search layer by layer through the excavated treasures of a vast area from Spain to Iran and from Denmark to Sudan, until they reach Egypt, the root of the labyrinthine riddle. It is here that they unearth 250 years of ‘ghost history’.
    Once these are eliminated, fresh perspective is thrown not only on the reality of the Dark Age, but also on the Trojan War, the foundation of Rome, the origin of the Greek alphabet and the Golden Age of King Solomon. Centuries of Darkness is a masterpiece of archaeological reasoning which will revolutionise our view of the ancient world.

This book, presented as Ph.D dissertation at the University of Turin, studies the ivory decorating the royal furniture discovered by the François Thureau-Dangin in 1928 on the site Arslan Tash, in northern Syria, including the pieces later appeared on the art market and coming from the same site. The collections are today shared between different museums: Musée du Louvre, Archaeological Museum of Alep, Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe, Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Metropolitan Museum New York, Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem and Ecole Biblique Jerusalem.
The book discusses the history of ivory studies, methodologies, the story of Arslan Tash excavations and ivory collections, and proposes a reconstruction of the ancient ivory production cycle, tools and techiques.
A detailed catalogue with 305 entries is completed by color pictures of the ivories' rectos and versoes taken in daylight and ultraviolet light and technical drawings.

Gedruckt mit freundlicher Unterstützung der Fritz Thyssen Stiftung für Wissenschaftsförderung Umschlagabbildung: Grafik © Hannah Meyer, 2017 Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Dieses Werk sowie einzelne Teile desselben sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung in anderen als den gesetzlich zugelassenen Fällen ist ohne vorherige schriftliche Zustimmung des Verlags nicht zulässig.

SUMMARY: Lecture 15 provides coverage on the art, architecture, state, administration, and economy of the Late Bronze Age Mycenaeans, and a discussion of the presumed Mycenaean takeover or domination of Crete (Minoans); the Minoan initially influenced mainland Greece, while the Mycenaeans later influenced Crete. This lecture is designed mainly as an educational resource for college students (i.e., normally posted only on my institution's course website), the public (e.g., people auditing my course), and interested colleagues from other disciplines (to whom I provide copies privately).  I am posting it here, both as a broader access, educational tool, and especially to promote the study of this region and its past societies.  For further knowledge about this region and period, I refer interested parties to the textbooks and other sources from which the materials were extracted (see syllabus), and/or the bibliographies in these works and my online resource guides (see other files in my academia folders).  The lecture summarizes the pertinent materials in the course textbook(s), adding in other data, and furnishing numerous images to clarify information encountered within the textbook(s).  Some generic imagery (usually indicated as such) is posted to aid in transmitting various concepts visually, and/or when a specific image remains not located (temporarily).  I update and revise such lectures each time, with such elective courses normally being taught once every two years.  I try to cover the most current, mainstream views, and usually place summary notes at the end of each lecture alongside some of the key sources used for compiling the ppt.  Over time, each lecture is improved, errors rectified, and additional data placed within the lecture.  These ppt. lectures take many hours to compile, but they have proved useful to many of my more serious students and I hope they can be of benefit to others as well.  My apologies for any errors I may have made, and my liberal usage of educational imagery from professional sources and vetted internet sources. REVISED: March 2024, new formatting, slides, and text, with some text modifications, also adding a Late Minoan IIIC (1200-1100 BCE) summary section at the end, and additional sources.

The calm serenity of the gods featured on the narrow upper frieze of the chryselephantine couche found in the chamber of Philipp'II tomb is in marked contrast to the impassioned movement of the more active mortals on the front of the wide frieze immediately below.  Here, against a gilded backdrop, fourteen male figures, rendered in rather high relief, move on foot and on horseback. The limbs and the faces of the figures are of ivory, the other parts were of carved wood, gilded and painted, which for the most part has been eroded and lost. As revealed by the gestures of the figures, and the composition of the scene overall these men were not engaged in combat with each other but were in pursuit of animals.
The hunters wore sleeved or sleeveless short tunics, capes, boots and, as deduced from the way in which the heads of all were cut at the top, hats resembling wide berets, the characteristic Mace-donian kausies. The absence of heroic nudity and the presence of typical Macedonian attire for the time reveal unequivocally the disposition for realism that dominates the modelling of the figures themselves.
Ten of the fourteen small heads are preserved in very good condition. Worked with absolute precision and meticulous attention, by the hand of an accomplished artist, these heads, of momentous importance despite their miniature size, are without doubt among the most remarkable studies of the human figure known from ancient art. The artist’s conscious intention in rendering each of these faces with specific individualised features, which depart markedly from the strictures of the generalised idealised types, is i think obvious, notwithstanding the stylistic unity apparent in the figures, as a personalised stamp of the artist.
if we accept that ancient artworks exist which can rightly be awarded the title of portrait, then we have here some of the most characteristic of these. Philip, his young heir alexander, and one dozen other kinsmen and companions of the king are portrayed in a particularly realistic manner on this couch, but in the absence of other comparanda, it is not easy to put to the faces the names we know from the sources and so to identify them.

Ivory carving, which is thought to enter Anatolia as a result of highly advanced commercial and cultural relations of the 1st Millennia BC, spread to a wider area and every region created their own school once it became a tradable product. The ivory artefacts found in Urartian settlements such as Altıntepe, Toprakkale and Karmir Blur suggest that Urartu was not indifferent to ‘Ivory Artefact Carving’, which is also known to exist in the 1st Millennia BC in Syria, Iran, Assyria, Phoenicia, Phrygia, and some of the Neo-Hittite Kingdoms. Technical competence seen in these artefacts brings up the question of whether they came to the Urartian lands via commercial activities such as import and export between these small states or it was Urartu’s own development of turning this art into local production.

"The megalithic tomb at Montelirio is off the scale in more ways than one. As well as being the largest example of its type known in Spain, the burial goods secreted in its subterranean chambers are unsurpassed in both quantity and quality. Leonardo García Sanjuán reveals what the dead of Montelirio can tell us about Copper Age society."

Simpson, E., ed. The Adventure of the Illustrious Scholar: Papers Presented to Oscar White Muscarella. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

The Adventure of the Illustrious Scholar: Papers Presented to Oscar White Muscarella, edited by Elizabeth Simpson, is a Festschrift celebrating the career of one of the foremost archaeologists of the ancient Near East. Oscar Muscarella is a former curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a formidable scholar who has excavated at sites in Turkey, Iran, and the United States. He has published eight books and nearly 200 articles, excavation reports, and reviews on topics ranging from the arts of antiquity and the importance of connoisseurship, to the difficulties of dating and the problems of forgeries, the looting of ancient sites, and the antiquities trade. The forty-seven contributors are experts in the areas of Muscarella's interests and are major scholars in their fields. This volume constitutes an unusual, important, and timely addition to the archaeological and art historical literature.

Among the objects from Mughal India (1526-1858), a small group of luxury priming flasks stand out. Some of them can be traced to the seventeenth century in inventories of European royal collections.
Some 85 such flasks have been published. The flasks can be organised into groups based on carving style, iconography or decoration structure. It is now possible to see that they were subject to a stylistic evolution. The individual flasks and the groups of flasks can also be arranged to propose a clear chronology of their production and link them to the imperial mughal workshops under Akbar

The “Begram ivories” are widely considered to be miniature masterpieces of Indian art and are one of the largest archaeological collections of ancient ivories. They were excavated at the site of Begram, in northern Afghanistan, in 1937 and 1939 and belong to a period when Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern India were united under rulers of the Kushan dynasty. Divided soon afterwards between the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul and the Musée national des arts asiatiques–Guimet in Paris, the collection in Kabul suffered a disaster during the civil war which ravaged the country during the early 1990s. Some of the pieces were successfully concealed by museum staff but most were stolen, hundreds have since been reported in different collections and very few have yet been recovered. In 2011 a group of twenty bone and ivory plaques was generously acquired for the National Museum of Afghanistan by a private individual. These were scientifically analysed, conserved and exhibited at th...

Debates on Fatimid ivory production have traditionally focused on Egypt: many of the artefacts considered as Fatimid have been ascribed to 11th-12th century Cairo, while attributions of provenance often oscillate between Egypt and Southern Italy. This paper aims to question and to broaden this geographical and chronological frame, focusing on two ivory caskets which have been often excluded by these narratives. One casket, preserved in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid, features an inscription pointing to al-Manṣūriyya (current Tunisia) as a place of production and to a date in the reign of the caliph al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allah (952-975 CE). A second box is preserved in the Museo Diocesano Francesco Gonzaga in Mantua, and its attribution has often been debated by scholars. Previous and recent scholarship on the two caskets are surveyed, while a detailed analysis of their technology of manufacture and decoration brings to light strong similarities, suggesting that they were produced in the same place. Comparisons with a wide range of ivory boxes from and beyond the medieval Mediterranean reveal technical variety, help us to identify interesting parallels, and define the uniqueness of the Madrid and the Mantua caskets, which thus emerge as key-artefacts in the panorama of Fatimid Ifrīqiyan artistic production. A similar case is given by ivories attributed to Fatimid Egypt. In this article I will briefly outline what has been included in or excluded from the main studies touching upon Fatimid ivories. A quick survey dedicated to archaeological finds will examine the material evidence of "Fatimid" ivory artefacts recovered in the Cairo/Fustat area. I will then focus on two objects that were often overlooked within these scholarly debates, and that are nonetheless crucial for the understanding of ivory production in Fatimid Ifrīqiya. These two artefacts will be approached not only from a historical perspective and through a traditional formal analysis. In fact, detailed description of methods of production and decorative techniques, based on both first-hand examination of the objects themselves and study of high resolution photos, forms the basis of this study. Only this kind of approach allows us to identify crucial similarities between the two caskets, confirming a common provenance and chronology. The focus will then be enlarged through comparing a variety of other caskets, in order to investigate the diffusion of construction techniques within and beyond the medieval Mediterranean, as well as to reveal the distinctive features and close relationship between the two caskets that constitute the focus of the present article.

In 1590, Domingo de Salazar, the first Bishop of Manila, wrote to Philip II about the skillful ivory carving of the local Chinese immigrant population, claiming: “with their ability to replicate those images that come from Spain, I understand that it should not be long when even those made in Flanders will not be missed.” Centered on objects – figural ivory sculptures made in the Philippines in the seventeenth century – this essay locates and reanimates the interlocking routes and relations of exchange embodied in the production, patronage and export of these ivories, placing new emphasis on the artistic ingenuity, material and commercial innovations of these sculptures.  Tracing the multiple geographic trajectories embedded within Hispano-Philippine ivories also exposes key methodological issues in the study of early modern global mobility.

Worlds Apart Trading Together sets out to replace the outdated notion of ‘Indo-Roman trade’ with a more informed perspective integrating the new findings of the last 30 years. In order to accomplish this, a perspective focusing on concrete demand from the ground up is adopted, also shedding light on the role of the market in long-distance exchange. Accordingly, the analysis conducted demonstrates that an economically highly substantial trade took place between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean in the 1st–6th cen. CE, altering patterns of consumption and modes of production in both India, South Arabia and the Roman Empire. Significantly, it can be documented that this trade was organised at the centres of demand and supply, in Rome and India, respectively, by comparable urban associations, the transport in-between being handled by equally well-organised private networks and diasporas of seagoing merchants. Consequently, this study concludes that the institution of the market in Antiquity was able to facilitate trade over very long distances, acting on a scale which had a characteristic impact on the economies of the societies involved, their economic structures converging by adapting to trade and the market.
NB: See uploaded addenda in paper below 'Worlds Apart Trading Together – addenda'
Available reviews:
—J. Simmons in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2018.09.59 (http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2018/2018-09-59.html).
—R. Tomber in Journal of Roman Archaeology 31, II (2018): 948–52.