Paper short abstract:

Certain biases, a number of them centred around ideas about ‘civilisation’, currently hamper understanding of the origins of Indian Ocean prehistory. A shift from the still common 18th century conception of ‘Civilisation’ to ‘civilisation in the Maussian/Durkheimian sense holds interesting implications for reconsidering the earliest long-distance seafaring in the Indian Ocean, and suggesting new avenues of investigation.

Paper long abstract:

The Indian Ocean is a maritime body that has long enabled contact, movement and exchange between distant lands and cultures. There is now growing recognition - based, for example, on archaeobotanical, zooarchaeological, linguistic and genetic findings - that some of these movements and contacts have significantly more ancient roots than was formerly appreciated. Nonetheless, certain biases, a number of them centred around ideas about 'civilisation', currently hamper understanding of the origins of Indian Ocean prehistory. In the absence of adequate and evenly distributed datasets, ideas about who was civilized and who was not have tended to colour interpretations of early Indian Ocean contacts and movements. This has led to an emphasis on the activities of state-level societies, a focus on particular types of subsistence over others, and a preoccupation with economic at the expense of other catalysts for seafaring activity. A shift from the still common 18th century conception of 'Civilisation' to 'civilisation in the Maussian/Durkheimian sense holds interesting implications for reconsidering the earliest long-distance seafaring in the Indian Ocean, and suggesting new avenues of investigation.