In a class on Indian Ocean commodities, economy, and materiality, every year my students and I come across this scribe’s desk at the...

They are not fish, they are not humans either… they are not of the land, but neither are they unequivocally creatures of the sea...

“When they catch sight of one [a dead whale filled with ambergris], they haul it ashore with iron grapnels attached to stout ropes...