The Indian Ocean: A Cultural Bow

Abstract: adopting a maritime as well as a coastal landscape perspective, this short note seeks to address questions of continuity, change and identity over centuries. More specifically, the mechanisms and technologies of trade and maritime activities, and the nature of settlements outside of the towns. There is further scope, also, for developing the manner in which interaction between land and sea has fashioned the histories of many societies and civilizations, and on the significance of trans-oceanic links between these maritime societies. Similar ecologies around the Indian Ocean, and the monsoon system that dominated the region, have developed into a great deal of similarities in the social and cultural fields, giving rise to intercultural connected land and maritime societies.