Dr. Lloyd Weeks

Yes, I think you'd have to say that was the case, Tristan.

There are peaks and troughs, of course, in our evidence and what we know about the scale of trade at this time.

But absolutely, it was a period where things were really happening during the Bronze Age.

I think if we start in Mesopotamia, we can see trade routes extending down through the Gulf, past Bahrain and Southeastern Arabia, all the way over to South Asia, to modern-day India and Pakistan.

The Indus Valley civilization certainly would have been reached through the Gulf, but the Gulf would also have allowed southern Mesopotamia to reach, perhaps more easily, communities in southeastern Iran as well.

If we're thinking about the Bronze Age in its broadest sense, then we're beginning probably in the middle of the fourth millennium BC, maybe 3500 BC.

We're going down for a little over 2000 years to the end of the second millennium BC, somewhere around about 13 or 1200 BC.

Well, I should probably let Stefan answer this because he's written more directly about it.

But I would say, I mean, our textual record is incredibly important, but it's also very fragmentary.

And I think, to be honest, this has come out very clearly in some of Stefan's work, that the scribes and the institutions they worked for weren't that interested in recording international trade.

They had other things they were worried about, the local situation, the movement of goods and materials into and out of their economies.

What we know about international trade is often found out

as it's mentioned, on the sidelines of what's more important to these scribes who are recording this information.

Would you agree, Stefan?

Absolutely.

It's part of the joy of working in this area at this time period that you get to employ both of these sources of evidence.

And when you're doing that, there's always a tension.

Sometimes the sources are in clear alignment.

The archaeological evidence kind of maps onto what we might be hearing from the textual sources.

Sometimes they're not so much in alignment.