This is an online event.
By the later 18th century, international markets and consumption patterns expanded traditional regional trading routes to complex systems encompassing vast areas of the world’s seas. Ottoman control of the Bahr al Ahmar/Red Sea limited European access to Red Sea ports and its products, especially coffee, and maintained a seasonally timed sailing schedule for huge ships that supplied the holy cities of Mecca and Medinah.
These ships, owned and operated by Egyptians, religious foundations, and the Ottoman government, served a community of Arabic-speaking peoples who shared a common cultural background that included Islam. Underwater survey and excavation of the Sadana Island ship provided new information about the high-value return cargoes these ships carried, including coffee beans, coconuts, and even Chinese porcelains. Government correspondence, diaries of explorers, merchant tax receipts and diaries, and the physical remains of the ship and its contents tell a fascinating story of early globalization.
Anna Marguerite McCann and Robert D. Taggart Lectureship in Underwater Archaeology
The AIA is North America's largest and oldest nonprofit organization dedicated to archaeology. The Institute advances awareness, education, fieldwork, preservation, publication, and research of archaeological sites and cultural heritage throughout the world. Your contribution makes a difference.
