India and the Indian Ocean: Material Perspectives on Global Antiquity

About the Talk:

What can materials tell us about India’s place in the interconnected world of global antiquity? This lecture addresses the question by tracing the movement, use, and transformation of objects and raw materials across the Indian Ocean, with particular attention to India’s Konkan region, the Western Ghats, and the Deccan. Presenting new archaeological data and visual evidence, the lecture follows the circulation of cotton, ivory, fine woods, metals, and ceramics between coastal ports and inland centers, while examining the roles played by Indian production centers and Buddhist religious institutions within these networks. Indian textiles found at Berenike on the Red Sea coast, imported vessels recovered in western India, Indian ivory circulating throughout the Roman Empire, and Roman bronzes discovered in Maharashtra document the movement of commodities and people, as well as the transmission of technologies and visual models. By considering the circulation, use, reuse, and adaptation of these materials and related visual sources, the talk reconstructs connections that are only partially documented in written sources. Viewed through the lens of materiality, global antiquity emerges as a history of interrelations in which India occupied a central place within the networks of exchange that shaped the premodern Indian Ocean world and beyond.

About the Speaker:  

Pia Brancaccio is Professor of South Asian Art and Archaeology at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” and Professor Emerita at Drexel University in Philadelphia, where she taught from 2003 to 2025 and directed the Art History Program. Her scholarship examines Buddhist art and architecture, cross-cultural exchange, and long-distance networks connecting South Asia with the wider ancient world. She is the author of The Buddhist Caves at Aurangabad: Transformations in Art and Religion and the editor of Living Rock: Buddhist, Hindu and Jain Cave Temples of the Western Deccan. Her current work focuses on the Buddhist landscape of the Konkan coast, particularly the ancient port of Sopara, the Kanheri Caves and connections with Indian Ocean trade. She directs the MAK-Mapping Ancient Kṛṣṇagiri project at Kanheri, combining archaeological fieldwork and architectural documentation with archival and epigraphic research.

About Carl Sheppard Memorial Lecture:

The Carl Sheppard Memorial Lecture in Medieval Art History is an annual lecture in honor of the late Carl Sheppard, former University of Minnesota professor of medieval European art history. Begun in 2012 and held every fall, the Carl Sheppard Memorial Lecture in Medieval Art History celebrates the richness and diversity of global medieval art by inviting an internationally-renowned scholar to the University of Minnesota. The event is open to the University community and the general public. 

If you would like to make a gift, you can contribute to the Carl Sheppard Memorial Fund through the University of Minnesota Foundation. 

Cosponsors: 

The James Ford Bell Library