Choosing a type of product or artifact in one of the categories that we've been discussing and explain the ways in which studying it can contribute to our understanding of Asia in the preindustrial period (c. 800-1800). You may choose to focus on the product or artifact whose role in Asian history you are planning to trace in your first formal paper. In addition, you may choose to limit yourself to a shorter period of time than the thousand years that Chaudhuri has chosen for his study. Be careful to think about the sorts of information that the product or artifact can reveal about the past, which you can think of on two levels. First, what aspects of life in the past does the product or artifact tell us about: economics, social relations, or politics. Second, what level of history does the product allow us to reach, those levels of which people are conscious, those of which they are not so aware, or both. This paper should be on the order of two pages, double-spaced and you may use books beyond Chaudhuri in order to do it. Approach this paper as a preparation for the formal paper.