Littoral Market Landscapes in Early Historic South India: An Archaeo-Literary Reconstruction of Coastal Economies and Ritual Ecologies

Prity Rawat* and Anindya Sanyal

This paper aims to reconstruct the coastal markets of Early Historic South India to understand the socio-ecological systems through an integrated analysis of literary corpus and excavation findings to decipher the complex social network in the early historic period. Moving beyond the Indo-Roman trade simplification, the study explores the adaptive littoral landscapes linking maritime trade, artisanal production, socio-cultural fabric, and hinterland networks. It integrates primary literary sources like Silappadikaram and Manimekhlai to refer the material culture, spatial distribution of the markets, socio- economic structure of the market, ritual beliefs along with the port geography and network systems. The textual representations are critically correlated with stratified archaeological datasets from the excavations at Arikamedu, Kaveripattinam, Korkai, etc. The elaborate variety of material culture excavated range from local and foreign ceramic types, beads, debitage, shell objects, terracotta objects, faunal assemblages, etc. The analysis of activity in the area demonstrates a rich ecosystem of local shell working, bead production, and salt making coupled with urban trading layouts. Studies of geography of the ports and shorelines presents functionality and technical settlement strategies to engage in maximized utilization of resources and geography. These coastal markets functioned as adaptive socio- spatial systems linking maritime trade, artisanal specialisation, advanced trading networks, economic exchange and ritualistic symbolism. The integration of textual spatial imagery with material remains and archaeological antiquities tries reframing the Early Historic Tamil littoral Markets to reconstruct cultural landscapes shaped by ecological and socio-economic factors.