Banbhore the Medieval Port City: History, Archaeology and Folklore, Proceedings of the 2023 Banbhore Conference.

The Italian-Pakistani joint historical-archaeological project at Banbhore has been working at the site of Banbhore since 2017 thanks to a MoU agreement signed between the Culture, Tourism, Antiquities, and Archives Department - Government of Sindh (Pakistan) and the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan (Italy). The research work has concentrated on two areas, associated with two main occupation phases. Trenches 12 and 13 in the artisans’ quarter located outside the fortified town, just north of it, were mainly occupied between the 8th-9th and the early 11th century CE. Trench 9 is in the central-southern part of the fortified town; here the last excavations revealed a phase of the 11th century and a later one of the 12th-early 13th century CE, coinciding with the last occupation of the fortified town. Besides the archaeological excavations, a fundamental part of the research work is dedicated to the study of the materials. This paper specifically focuses on the preliminary results of the study conducted on ceramics and animal bones from both excavated areas, inside and outside the fortified town. This brief presentation shows how the data cross-matching of two very different research fields could provide useful information on social aspects, culinary habits and diet, palaeoenvironment, domestication, land uses, economic issues, technology, and continuity of traditions.