gems, ancient trade, commerce, trade routes, India, Sri Lanka, garnet, pyrope-almandine

Recent archaeological fieldwork and studies in Sri Lanka and South India have opened the way to a re-evaluation of the role of local networks of circulation and trade between South Asia and the Mediterranean. Instead of considering that the Egyptian Greeks or Romans handled the trade by themselves, inaugurating routes and contacts, it appears that they rather followed and re-used networks that were existing locally long before the outburst of exchanges between the Roman Empire and India in the early centuries of the Common Era. As archaeological materials show, Sri Lanka seems to have been trading with western countries through the intermediary of Indian merchantmen before the Common Era and during the first three centuries CE. Then comes a shift in the trade distribution when contacts are redirected towards Sri Lanka in the fourth and fifth centuries CE. We would like to trace the evolution of this pattern from the fifth century BCE to the beginning of the seventh century CE, mainly through the archaeological artefacts.