Incense Trade Research Articles

Supply chain analysis of incense in North Tapanuli Regency

Incense (Styrax sumatranaJ. J. Sm) is a non-timber forest commodity in North Tapanuli Regency. This study aims to map out incense supply chain in North Tapanuli, to analyze the stakeholders who play role, and to determine the added value of incense throughout its supply chain models. Using snowball sampling, this study found different supply chain models and stakeholders who play role, namely farmers, village collectors, large village collectors, sub-district collectors, district collectors, agents, exporters, and consumers. Calculation of the added value of incense for each stakeholder throughout the supply chain was carried out using the Hayami method. The results indicate that farmers who sell their crops to sub-district collectors get the highest added value with R/C ratio of 2.18. Further, the stakeholders were also mapped out into quadrants based on power and interest in incense value chain. Unexpectedly, stakeholders who have high influence and interest are the collectors, while the farmers are only the subjects, namely actors who are high in terms of interest but low in influence. The result of this study is useful for developing of incense trade system that favors its community stakeholder.

Franckincense: traditions rooted in the Sudanese DNA

Frankincense is an ancient produce which continues to be a major commercial product in Sudan. Incense remain an important commodity in everyday customs and a source of income. It serves as a living link between the past and the present that is rich in religious, social, cultural and economic history. Resins are utilised for medicinal, cultural, religious and funerary practices in ancient and present times. Yet, Sudan’s considerable contribution to trade in aromatics has largely been understudied. This study is based on ethnographic research as well as my own and my family’s experiences. The paper examines the use and trade of incense from the ancient past to the present and contemporary usages. The research demonstrates Sudan’s substantial contribution to incense trade through time. The study suggests that there is a need to re-evaluate the role played by this region. This is a pressing issue owing to threats to archaeological sites caused by mega- development and mineral exploration.

The African Incense Trade and Its Impacts in Pharaonic Egypt

Among ancient Egypt’s most prized imports were resins and other aromatics obtained mainly from or through Nubia and Punt, an area that included the African and Arabian shores of the southern Red Sea. Egyptian texts emphasized the association between these places and the imports of aromatics, indicating that the use of incense and other types of aromatics was likely a foreign introduction to ancient Egypt. This paper surveys the Egyptian terminology for specific and general forms of incense and proposed modern identifications. It presents the evidence for Egyptian contact with Punt in the context of the incense trade and shows the importance of African aromatics within several spheres of Egyptian culture from the late Predynastic to Ptolemaic times. Egyptian religious practices embraced incense as a signifier of the divine, and Nubian gods in the Egyptian pantheon were intimately associated with incense. Apart from religion, aromatics played important roles in the political realm, and both the aromatics trade and processing were a state enterprise. We explore the political, economic, and commercial networks that shaped the importation of aromatics in ancient Egypt and the implications for understanding cultural appropriation and intercultural entanglement between Egypt and its southern neighbors.

Unearthing the Wilderness: Studies on the History and Archaeology of the Negev and Edom in the Iron Age

Unearthing the Wilderness: Studies on the History and Archaeology of the Negev and Edom in the Iron Age

Use of Zanzibar copal (Hymenaea verrucosa Gaertn.) as incense at Unguja Ukuu, Tanzania in the 7–8th century CE: chemical insights into trade and Indian Ocean interactions

This study presents the chemical analysis of an amorphous organic residue extracted from a 7th–early 8th century CE brass artefact from the trading port of Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar, Tanzania, hypothesised to be an incense burner. The artefact is a very rare and highly significant find in East Africa, with only one other example being found previously (also at the same site), and likely represents early contact between coastal East Africa and the Indian Ocean world. Chemical analysis of the residue adhering to this artefact was undertaken to confirm its use to burn incense, and to determine whether the resin used was local or exotic to East Africa and thus likely acquired through long-distance trade. The residue extract was analysed by gas chromatography–mass spectroscopy (GC–MS) and identified as Zanzibar copal (Hymenaea verrucosa Gaertn.), a local species that rose to major importance in colonial period trade. The results obtained from this study provide the first direct archaeological evidence for the ancient use of this East African species as an aromatic, suggesting that it might have had a much earlier role in long-distance incense trade than previously demonstrated. This finding also provides insights into local East African engagement with the material culture of the Indian Ocean world.

Camels, Copper and Donkeys in the Early Iron Age of the Southern Levant: Timna Revisited

The camel and equid remains from a copper-smelting site — Site 30 at Timna in the southern Arabah excavated by Rothenberg in the 1970s and recently re-dated to the Iron I/Iron II — are analysed in relation to recently published data on the domestication of the dromedary and on the morphology of the various equid taxa present in the Middle East. It is concluded that camels and donkeys were employed in the distribution of copper from Timna and from mines in the eastern Arabah, prior to the large-scale utilization of camels in the incense trade between the Levant and southern Arabia in Iron II.

The Other Side of Sheba

In contrast to the arid interior of Arabia, the Yemen highlands are remarkably well watered and verdant. Despite these advantages, until the 1990s this vast area of mountains and intermontane basins had largely escaped the attention of archaeologists, because attention was primarily focussed upon the desert fringe oases where a series of well populated and opulent settlements developed along the incense route linking Dhofar (Oman) to the Levant and the eastern Mediterranean. For most Near Eastern archaeologists, southwest Arabia remains rather problematic, in part because the civilization of the Sabaeans, which developed in the early 1st millennium BC, occurred chronologically rather late. This compares with, for example Dynastic Egypt, Canaan, and Mesopotamia, that all saw their fluorescence in the later 4th and 3rd millennia BC. Even Oman, located in relatively arid south east Arabia, is now known to have actively participated in the “world system” of the third millennium BC. In contrast, Yemen and adjacent parts of Arabia apparently stood aloof from these developments; that is, until the states along the fringe of the southern Arabian deserts grew dramatically during the first millennium BC, mainly as a result of the growth in the incense trade.

Southwest Arabia During the Holocene: Recent Archaeological Developments

Recent fieldwork has considerably increased our knowledge of early Holocene settlement in Southwest Arabia. Neolithic settlement occurred within an environmental context of increased monsoonal moisture that continued during the mid-Holocene. A now well-attested Bronze Age exemplified by village- and town-scale settlements occupied by sedentary farmers developed toward the end of the mid-Holocene moist interval. The high plateau of Yemen was an early focus for the development of Bronze Age complex society, the economy of which relied upon terraced rain-fed and runoff agriculture. On the fringes of the Arabian desert, the precursors of the Sabaean literate civilization have been traced back to between 3600 and 2800 B.P., and even earlier, so that a virtually continuous archaeological record can now be described for parts of Yemen. In contrast to the highlands these societies relied upon food production from large-scale irrigation systems dependent upon capricious wadi floods. Bronze Age settlement, while showing some links with the southern Levant, now shows equal or stronger linkages with the Horn of Africa across the Red Sea. Although some regions of Yemen show breaks in occupation, others show continuity into the Sabaean period when a series of major towns grew up in response to the incense trade with the north. It is now clear that these civilizations grew up on the foundations of earlier Bronze Age complex societies.

INCENSE, CAMELS AND COLLARED RIM JARS: DESERT TRADE ROUTES AND MARITIME OUTLETS IN THE SECOND MILLENNIUM

Summary. The camel‐borne incense trade, from Arabia to the Levant, was an important element in the economy of the eastern Mediterranean region in the first millennium BC. This paper suggests that its origins can be traced back to the Late Bronze Age, and that the junction of overland and maritime routes explains the wealth of coastal sites such as Tel Nami, Israel. The occurrence there of Collared Rim Jars in contexts dating to the thirteenth century BC suggests that the form began as a transport container, capable of being carried on board ship or on land by camels.

Forebears of Menes in Nubia: Myth or Reality?

Previous articleNext article No AccessForebears of Menes in Nubia: Myth or Reality?Bruce WilliamsBruce Williams Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Near Eastern Studies Volume 46, Number 1Jan., 1987 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/373213 Views: 17Total views on this site Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1987 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Ernest K. Bankas African States and the Practice of State Immunity, (Jun 2022): 199–246.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-64043-2_7Pearce Paul Creasman, Kei Yamamoto The African Incense Trade and Its Impacts in Pharaonic Egypt, African Archaeological Review 36, no.33 (Aug 2019): 347–365.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-019-09348-8Steven H. Newton An Updated Working Chronology of Predynastic and Archaic Kemet, Journal of Black Studies 23, no.33 (Jul 2016): 403–415.https://doi.org/10.1177/002193479302300308

Frankincense and Myrrh in Ancient South Arabia

UNTII THE EARI Y nineteenth century, our knowledge of frankincense and myrrh and of their role in the economy of ancient South Arabia was wholly based on references in the Bible and GrecoRoman literature. Biblical writers made it clear that incense trade was one of the pillars of South Arabian economy, and to this general picture, classical authors added a wealth of information, as we shall see below. Unhappily their testimonies are not equally reliable and often conflict owing to the fact that their sources contained legendary material and were received secondor third-hand and these conflicts could not be rcsolved until new data had been brought to light. Important evidence bearing on the production and distribution of incense was discovered by a number of explorers and investigators in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although a nber of scholars touched on various aspects of this material, the first thorough-going evaluation of the ancient sources in the light of modern data was made by Adolf Grohmann, and his study, which appeared in two parts in 1922 and 1933,1 remains the standard work in this field. Since that time, new information has come to light which enables us to correct some earlier mistakes and to lay the groundwork -for a new synthesis. All problems are by no means solved, and some questions must remain unanswered until more evidence is forthcoming.