AHA Session 82
Friday, January 9, 2026: 10:30 AM-12:00 PM
(Field Museum, 1400 S. Dusable Lake Shore Drive)
Chair:
Paula R. Curtis, University of California, Los Angeles
Participants:
Gary Feinman, Field Museum of Natural History
Lisa C. Niziolek, Field Museum of Natural History
Lisa C. Niziolek, Field Museum of Natural History
This session will take place offsite at the Field Museum of Natural History; location details will be announced online. The session will be accompanied by a special display of artifacts from the Java Sea Shipwreck collection.
Papers:
Comment:
Jonathan Brack, Northwestern University
Session Abstract
This experimental session will bring together scholars of economic and material history, cultural and religious exchange, anthropology, art history, and archaeology offsite at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History to examine a unique display of shipwreck artifacts from the Java Sea. A panel of historians of China, Southeast Asia, Mongol-dominated Eurasia,, and the medieval Islamicate world will consider how a multi-disciplinary and multi-regional approach can illuminate the premodern history of Inter-Asian trade. Objects recovered from the twelfth-thirteenth century Java Sea Shipwreck will be on special display for the session and will serve as the centerpiece of reflection and discussion. Each presentation will use the lens of materiality to investigate connections between ports, trade routes, and societies spanning premodern Inter-Asia and trace the circulations of trade objects and material practices on land and sea. Individual panelists will address cultural and commercial maritime activity in the Southeast Asian port cities of the Gulf of Siam and Melaka Straits, shipwreck evidence for the transmission and transformation of bronze mirror production between China and the medieval Islamic world, inscriptions on shipwreck ceramics, and diverse numeric systems that were used simultaneously by merchants across the diverse Indian Ocean maritime trade routes. A Commentator will highlight connections and ruptures between the presentations and initiate an engaged discussion with the audience and panelists on patterns of Inter-Asian trade and consumption between the ninth through early fifteenth centuries. Conference-goers will benefit from a one-of-a kind, close-up viewing of shipwreck artifacts from the premodern trade routes that are normally locked in the museum’s collections storage, out of view. The session will appeal to historians of Asia, Islam, maritime trade, art, and museums.
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