From Atlantic to Pacific, delimiting the southern boundaries of the entire Old World, the beaches of the Indian Ocean stretch in a golden arc. On the lands adjoining this ocean and its inlets, almost every variety of human adaptation is or has been represented, as has the interactions between them. Societies of fishermen and pirates, hunters and gatherers, herdsmen and agrarian farmers, states and urban civilizations based on farming or trade, have all flourished here. Yet while much has been written about the Indian Ocean during the medieval and modern periods, studies of its earlier history have been more fragmented. Studies of the systems of the Indian Ocean before the spread of Islam remain in their infancy. This book, which arises from a conference on the Indian Ocean in antiquity convened at the British Museum, bring together an international group of leading scholars to present the current state of research on their areas. The 27 papers in this volume should provide a scientific basis for understanding a region of huge importance in world history, both past and future. The papers are grouped into the broad categories of The Environment and Natural Resources, the Early Civilizations, the Classical Period and Between Africa and China, and include studies of sea-levels and other factors affecting coastal settlement, contact between Mesopotamia and the Indus as evidenced by seals, the Parthian presence in the Arabian Gulf, Roman interests in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, the archaeology of the early settlement of Madagascar and the ethnographic evidence for long-distance contacts between Oceania and East Africa and recent discoveries of Christian and Hindu remains in Quanzhou.