Globalization and Transculturality from Antiquity to the Pre-Modern World

This book explores how globalization and transculturality are useful theoretical tools for studying pre-modern societies and their long-distance connections. Among the themes explored are how these concepts can enhance our understanding of trade networks, the spread of religions, the diffusion of global fashions, the migration of technologies, public and private initiatives, and wider cultural changes.

In this book, archaeologists and ancient historians demonstrate how in diverse contexts – from the Bronze Age to colonial times – humanity displayed an urge and an incredible capacity to connect with distant lands and people. Adopting and modifying approaches originally developed for the study of contemporary societies, it is possible to enhance our understanding of the human past, not only in economic terms, but also the cultural significance of such interconnections.

This book provides both the wider public and the specialist reader with a fresh point of view on global issues relating to the past; in turn, allowing us to look anew at developments in the contemporary world. Its large chronological and geographical scope should prove appealing to those who want more than mere Eurocentric history. Teachers and students of world history and archaeology will find this book a useful resource.

Dr. Serena Autiero is a researcher at the Center for Religious Studies (CERES), Ruhr-Universität Bochum and honorary professor of archaeology at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. She is interested in cultural exchange in Eurasia in antiquity, Silk Road studies, ancient globalizations, with a special focus on the Indian Ocean World. She has authored a number of publications in international journals and her monograph on early globalization in the Western Indian Ocean will be published in Spring 2022.

Dr. Matthew Adam Cobb is a lecturer in ancient history at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. His research focuses on Mediterranean integration into wider Indian Ocean networks of trade during Antiquity. Among other publications, he is the author of Rome and the Indian Ocean Trade from Augustus to the Early Third Century CE (2018) and the edited book, The Indian Ocean Trade in Antiquity: Political, Cultural and Economic Impacts (2019).