Taken from: The Ceramics from Ras Hafun in Somalia (Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, 1988) by Henry T Wright

Conclusions:

The geographic origin of the Ceramics from Ras Hafun (West side excavation - North Bay of Ras Hafun) in Somalia are diverse. The substantial quantity of hand-built crude vessels could have been made locally. The next most common element are most similar to vessels from Mesopotamia and Iran. The next most common are vessels from the Eastern Mediterranean and the amphorae and bowls from the Nile. Least common are the jars, which seem to be of South Asia (India). These vessels in no way indicate the identity of these mariners, who prepared their meals on this beach, but they do suggest that they regularly provisioned at ports under Ptolemaic and Roman control, as well as with Gulf ports.

The amphorae and small bowls indicates a date sometime in the first century BC or first century AD. Two other items from that period found are a badly eroded fragment of a Geek lamp and the sherds of a painted Hellenistic lagynos (wine-decanter). It seems likely that the relatively short occupation of the Hafun West Site was during the first century BC, a century or more before the Periplus was written. The limited number of Indian ceramics might indicate that those who ventured down the African coast were not directly tied to the Indian trade (in the way that the author of the Periplus, by separating his account of the African voyage from that of the Indian voyage, might be read).

The suggested geographical origins for Ras Hafun (Main side excavation - South Bay of Ras Hafun): The most common origins for vessels during the site’s earlier occupations (second-third century) are South Asian (India) or Mesopotamian-Iranian. The vessels do not indicate the identity of the mariners whose meals were prepared on this beach on Hafun South Bay, but they do suggest that they regularly provisioned at ports in India and Iran perhaps near the mouth of the Gulf. Later, sometime during the third to fifth centuries, few if any vessels of India were found, suggesting that the triangular relationship between the Gulf, India and the Horn of Africa had become two-sided between the Gulf and the Horn.