Includes copies of articles co-authored by the author during the preparation of this thesis. / Bibliography: leaves 159-177. / xviii, 185 [16] leaves : ill. (some col.) ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / The overall aim of this research was to better understand pre- and post-harvest factors affecting yield, colour and/or pungency of Capsicum spices for the selected cultivars (Capsicum annuum L.) available in Australia, in order to develop suitable procedures for growing, harvesting and post-harvest handling for the Capsicum spice industry. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Adelaide University, Dept. of Horticulture, Viticulture and Oenology, 2001

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This dissertation draws inspiration from one of most iconic exchanges across the Indian Ocean in antiquity: that of Indian spices for Roman gold coins on the Periyar River in Malabar. While previous scholarship has outlined how these goods arrived at various entrepots like that on the Periyar, the larger impacts of Indian Ocean imports within new socio-cultural environments have yet to be explored. "Beyond the Periyar" articulates these impacts from a new perspective, the commodities themselves and the rippling patterns of consumption and industries that contribute to or arise from their importation. Roman coins changed functions as they changed hands, and surviving specimens often show the multiple stages of their long lives as objects through physical adaptations by Indian consumers. Their superficial design further held aesthetic value, provided useful idioms for Indian die-cutters, and inspired an industry of high-quality imitations. Indian spices like black pepper, cinnamon leaf, and ginger contributed to Roman culinary and cosmetic practices, as attested by Roman authors and associated utensils. These products have been discussed in the context of notions of “luxury” in reactionary texts—however, such critiques must be balanced against larger considerations of literary genre and known economic factors like prices vis-à-vis real wages. A hive of human activity throughout the Indian Ocean world underpinned these acts of consumption, which often stands behind the veil of consumer apathy. Human agents range from the investors financing transoceanic ventures and the traders manning oceangoing vessels, to state interests and regional security personnel, to the processors, craftsmen, and vendors who marketed these products to consumers. When we look beyond the Periyar, the consumption of long-distance imports appears not as a marginal force, but as a transformative component of ancient economies and societies with a far wider reach than previously assumed.

This dissertation is a study of early Islamicate commerce in natural luxuries of the tropical Indian Ocean and Western Pacific Rim, such as spices, ambergris and pearls, between the ninth and eleventh centuries C.E. I approach this topic by looking at a wide array of textual sources, from geographies, anecdotes, travel narratives, inscriptions, and the records of embassies, to materia medica and the oldest surviving Islamicate cookbook. I analyze these sources alongside material culture, archeological evidence from ports in Iran, Oman, and Southeast Asia, and newly-discovered shipwrecks from the Java Sea. Adapting the work of environmental scientists to the thesis, I locate this early Islamicate commerce within a bio-geographical space, the tropical "Indo-Pacific." I argue that desires for the tropical luxuries of the environmentally-distinct Indo-Pacific helped to define the cosmopolitan culture of early Islamicate societies, from Iran and Iraq to Egypt and Spain. These desires promoted an expanding Islamicate maritime commerce across the Indo-Pacific, which led to the flourishing of port-cities in southern Iran and Oman. This maritime trade expanded Islamicate geographical horizons, as reflected in the evolving "wonders" and geographical literature of the era. It also led to early contacts between the Islamic world and the peoples of the tropical Pacific Rim, a phenomenon that contributed, in time, to the formation of Islamicate societies in maritime Southeast Asia. / Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Since the fifteenth century the rise of capitalism and the expansion of global trade networks have ensured that a wide range of consumer goods has become available to people from all walks of life. Paralleling these developments, our attitudes and beliefs about consumer goods have also changed: goods that were once considered luxuries have become commonplace in domestic households. This study celebrates the diversity of this material culture and the variety of symbolic meanings people attach to it. The US – China trade, as a facet of the Spice Trade, is inextricably linked to the development of capitalism and long-distance shipping that ensured the movement of consumer goods to markets around the world. Inevitably, many of these ships sank and archaeologically their cargoes and the artifacts associated with their crew provide an opportunity to glimpse the development of our modern world. This thesis uses the shipwreck Frolic (1850) as a case study to discuss how those involved in, and those who were supplied through, this trade used a range of consumer goods to construct distinct identities for themselves and those around them. This study also draws on a wide variety of source material, including material culture (museum collections and archaeological assemblages), images and documentary sources (courtesy literature and newspapers) to paint a broader picture of the US – China trade and consumer society than any one source is capable of doing itself. This study ultimately argues that the range in consumer goods associated with the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century US – China trade is symptomatic of the increasing complexity of consumer markets able to facilitate the establishment and maintenance of a wide array of consumer identities, necessary under the many new social, economic and ideological relationships constructed under capitalism.

The ceramic trade throughout Medieval Southeast Asia was prolific. Terrestrial sites have yielded massive amounts of ceramic material and the archaeological reports of shipwreck cargoes corroborate the versatile and extensive qualities of trade ceramics in the region. The sheer quantity of ceramic artefacts found in shipwreck assemblages, paired with a well-researched framework of the aesthetic, demonstrates that we rely heavily on ceramic data to date wrecks and establish regional trading patterns. While ceramics typically represent the bulk of the recovered material in these instances, many other types of material are present in the various assemblages. Yet these "lesser" materials suffer from a lack of investigation and, therefore, play virtually no role in the archaeological and historical assessment of the ship, its cargo, and its relationship to the maritime economy of the period. While ceramic studies may provide a general overview, a consideration of the other material provides subtlety and nuance to the analysis. This case study focuses on the non-ceramic assemblages for six shipwrecks from the 14th and 15th Centuries of Southeast Asia (three Chinese-built and three Southeast Asian-styled junks). The typological study of the metallurgical, organic and geological material from these wrecks can complement much of the work surrounding existing trade models as well as reveal new concepts of crew life, belief systems and culture. These facets come together to offer a more holistic narrative as well as stimulating the need within the region for more study regarding the locations where past peoples mined and manufactured raw metals. The thesis will also consider the motivations behind the excavators of these projects and what role this plays in the interpretation of the non-ceramic material. One wreck was excavated by treasure hunters, one was done by an amateur archaeologist and a curator, and a third was excavated by a governmental organization. Two excavations were conducted by a non-profit foundation in conjunction with a National Museum and a final one was a purely academic excavation. Each party brings their own experiences and motivations to the excavation and therefore the systems of collection, curation, and conservation weigh heavily and are varied. These factors can determine what priorities each excavator brings to the analysis of excavated objects and the extent to which this effects the subsequent interpretation of the shipwreck.