Urban Demographics along the Asian Maritime Silk Road: Archaeological Small Finds and Settlement Patterns at Premodern Port-Settlements of the Malay Region

As a series of commercial networks and routes, the Maritime Silk Road has provided a common body of material culture that has been traded across different economic zones and markets. However, for port-cities, their society and economy may be impacted by such factors as geography, politics and ethnicity, resulting in unique characteristics that may be elucidated from the variations in archaeologically recovered material cultural remains. Over the last three decades, substantial archaeological data of ceramics have been accrued from early second millennium AD settlement sites in the Malacca Straits Region. Through the use of this information, this paper seeks to identify the social status, demographic differences and cultural identity-traits both between and within contemporaneous port-cities in this region.