Archaeology of the Silk Road

Much has been said and written about “The Silk Road” since Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen coined the phrase in 1877. Fostered by spectacular discoveries by so-called “explorers” such as Sir Aurel Stein, Paul Pelliot, Sven Hedin and others, the Silk Road soon became the subject of countless articles, books, museum exhibitions, and even legends. In times when almost any location – virtual or real – is but one mouse click away, the catchphrase Silk Road has not lost any of its original appeal. On the contrary, the term is almost ubiquitous in all kinds of media. Yet, it is never quite clear what exactly the Silk Road concept really entails. When was it established? Was it even formally established? What was its purpose? Was there but one function? And, more importantly, how useful is it as an analytical concept in the first place?
These are the main questions this article seeks to answer. Its arguments are based on an analysis of the earliest available sources: archaeological finds from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, indigenous documents written in Kharosthi script, and early Chinese historiography. The article will argue that the history of the early Silk Road (and its so-called pre-history) was considerably more complex than it is generally claimed. For instance, we can certainly not pinpoint a fixed date on which the Silk Road was established; neither were the intercontinental land routes primarily traveled (and populated) by traders. China’s initial forays into Central Asia in the second century BCE were politically motivated and had little to do with silk trade. The exchange of the famed fabric was at best a corollary of political interactions between the Western and Eastern Han Empires and powerful steppe nomads such as the Xiongnu. The latter extorted copious amounts of luxury goods from the former and redistributed them throughout Central Asia and Eurasia. Thus, this article claims that the Silk Road as an analytical concept does not do justice to the intricacies of pre-historical and historical realities. It therefore introduces the concept of movement as a heuristic tool to analyze cross-cultural interactions.

This is a working report, which was originally presented at the Ashgabat Silk Roads coordination meeting in May 2011, and formed the basis of the Silk Roads transboundary serial nomination strategy. It was subsequently updated using feedback from State Parties. A fuller version of this report, with all the underpinning GIS data, will be published in 2014.

An examination of silks from Qinghai and in the collections of the National Silk Museum in China, along with evidence from murals, documents the popularity and spread of textiles produced in Central Asia into the Trans-Himalayan regions in the second half of the first millennium CE.

Today the preservation and commemoration of cultural heritage in Asia occupies a complex place in an increasingly integrated and interconnected region. In comparison to ten years ago we are seeing a significant growth in the level of international hostility concerning the past and its remembrance. Histories of conflict, for example, are the source of ongoing tension in East Asia at a time of escalating militarisation. The diplomatic tensions between Japan, Korea and China concerning the events of World War 2 are being further exacerbated by the approach of museums in the region and attempts to have remnants ‒ whether it be buildings, letters or landscapes ‒ recognised by international heritage agencies. At the same time, however, we are also seeing major growth in the scale and scope of international cooperation between countries across Asia regarding the preservation of the past. Heritage conservation is fast emerging as an important component of the intra-regional economic and political ties that are binding states
and populations in the region. In the coming decade one initiative in particular will take this heritage diplomacy to a whole new level, China’s One Belt One Road.

The interlocking of the maritime basin network that took place with the development of the
Maritime Silk Roads by the late first millennium bc led to major cultural transfers. This
research investigates Southeast Asia’s cultural integration and takes into consideration
what I call a South China Sea network culture, a result of long-established and extensive
connectivity of its populations. The assumption is that this cultural matrix also laid the
ground for socio-political practices hypothesized to be at the core of identity building and
cultural transfers. These issues are investigated through the technological analysis of hybrid
ornament industries in a recently excavated early city-port of the South China Sea which
developed with the Maritime Silk Roads that thrived from the fourth to the first centuries
bc. This enclosed cosmopolitan settlement hosting populations from various Asian horizons
was structured by socio-professional quarters. This node concentrated various craft centres
where artisans of different origins made culturally hybrid products with what were then
the most advanced technologies. The chronological sequence allows characterization of the
evolution of these industries along with the socio-political strategies which they may have
served and how otherness was handled in the construction of social identity.

""The common understanding of early Chinese diplomacy largely is informed by the term 'tributary system:' during the Han period, foreign entities mainly engaged with the Chinese empire in order to secure economic profit. This view is based on the assumption that the rendition of tribute (gòng 貢) usually was reciprocated with 'counter-gifts' by the court. Accordingly, to the eyes of all foreigners, delivering tribute was only a 'cloak for trade' devoid of any notion of submission. On the other hand, the Chinese court is believed to have silently tolerated this kind of 'economic exchange' because receiving tribute was equalled with at least nominal acceptance of Chinese suzerainty and as a manifestation of its claim to universal power.
The situation as it is depicted in the transmitted sources, however, is far more complex. By retracing different methods of diplomatic interaction to Chunqiu and Zhanguo times, I shall demonstrate that Han diplomacy was far from having been an ideological exercise. I am also going to show that the Han court continued to use established strategies of diplomatic interaction by adapting them to the necessities of the time.""

Archaeologists across all fields of research make generous use of the concepts ‘prestige’ and ‘prestige goods.’ In the process, prestige and social status are usually conflated. It follows that discussions of prestige goods solely focus on their active use in the struggle for social dominance. This article will argue, however, that prestige is not equal to social status. Instead, prestige is one of several contributing factors to status. More precisely, prestige is akin to the German noun Ansehen, which expresses the notion of looking up to someone due to certain qualities. This has serious ramifications for the traditional understanding of prestige goods. Fixating on their active role as socially structuring agents misses the point. In order to really grasp genuine prestige goods in the archaeological record, it is necessary to look beyond the motives of individual signalers or signaling groups and instead focus on the responder(s) to whom such behavior was addressed.  Instances of emulation in mortuary contexts reflect the perspective of the recipient(s). Imitations of objects and associated behavior are tangible manifestations of Ansehen / prestige. They convey that the original items were more than luxury products or status symbols. To be sure, such artifacts were most likely of high relative value, but they operated on a deeper social level as they highlight interpersonal relationships rather than general social mechanisms. An in-depth analysis of various silk fabrics and imitations of warp-faced compound tabby weaves (jin 錦) from second to early fifth century CE burials in the Tarim Basin in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, PR China along with a brief survey of Byzantine solidi and their imitations from early sixth to mid-eighth century CE tombs in northern China will serve as the basis on which I develop a method to identify genuine prestige goods.

More and more foreigners, who were usually called as Hu people by Chinese, started to migrate along the Silk Road and eventually live in Central Plain area after the 2nd century BC. The exotic culture coming with Hu people had continuous influences towards ancient Chinese society, relative historical discussion has always been the hotspot in the study of Chinese early medieval history. After the discovery of Yuhong's tomb in 1999, together with the excavation of Lidan, Kangye, Anjia, Shijun and Anbei's tombs in the following years, our knowledge of Hu people's lives in ancient China had been widely extended. All the tomb occupants' burial dates and foreign immigrant identities were clearly recorded by their epitaphs. These new archaeological materials, especially the exquisite line carvings or reliefs decorated on their funerary furnishings (stone coffin, couch or house-shaped sarcophagus) set in the tomb chambers, had rapidly opened another new field of medieval Hu people study, especially the iconographic analysis. In this paper I will focus on other details reflected by their epitaphs and contexts, try to synthesize them and reconstruct the operation of their funerals, which will eventually achieve some new interpretation of the mortuary activities of Hu people in late 6th century. Comparing with the contemporary Chinese tombs, two biggest discrepancies of the six aforementioned tombs, especially the four ones of Northern Dynasties (Lidan, Anjia, Kangye and Shijun), could be also observed in the absence of conventional wooden coffin and pottery figures, suggesting huge ideological and practical difference in the funeral rites. The lack of wooden inner coffin indicates the possible fact that the sponsors of the foreigners' funeral, likely their descendants who were the second or third generation of foreign immigrants, were probably still sticking to their own funerary traditions. Judging from the archaeological evidence of later period, traditional funerary rites had already been carried out during foreign immigrants' funerals at least from the beginning of Tang dynasty (7th AD), wooden coffin and pottery figures were widely accepted and used in their tombs. Therefore, the time from Northern Qi (550-577 AD) and Northern Zhou (557-581 AD) till Sui dynasty (581-618 AD) should be a crucial period for the assimilation of foreign immigrants in China. Fire altar, whether Zoroastrian or not, was actually the only visual evidence to define the deceased as Zoroastrians. In the same time, there is no reliable trace indicating once they carried out Zoroastrian funerary practices. This self-contradiction was really perplexing, therefore, the eclectic style of their religion suggests that what they believed was at least not the orthodox Zoroastrianism from ancient Persia any more. I prefer to consider the whole scene presented on the stone funerary furniture is some kind of recreation , which assembled existing themes provided by widely spread pattern book, the limited information of the occupants' life experience was just taken as the initial basis during carving the represented scene. Along with emphasizing on the relative relationship and similarities among them, despite accepting official award from the central government sometimes, we also cannot ignore the fact that most of the funerals were personalized and private. The tomb complexes were the relics of the contradictions which reflected Hu people's attempts of trying to integrate into the Chinese mainstream society, in the same time, still keeping the obscure memories of their variable religion and homelands. After the finish of their institutionalization in the Tang dynasty (618-907 AD), also because of the reinforced control of the management of funerals from the central government, these few number of isolated cultural islands were rapidly flooded by the ocean of local traditions.

Around the year 700 travelling Radhanites (later known as Jewish merchants) from Khazaria had founded Kiev (Turkish for “beach settlement”) at the Dnieper River. The place was during the 700s and 800s an outpost for the Khazar Kha- ganate.
As Kiev became an important station on the trade route for the Gotlandic mer- chants on their way from the Baltic Sea to Miklagarðr (Istanbul), the Varangians took Kiev from the Khazarians in 882 and appointed one of their own, Oleg, as ruler. Archaeological excavations show that a line of strong-holds was esta- blished in the Kiev area along the Dnjepr in the last two decades of the 800s. Tax collection was probably a motivation for establishing these strongholds. From Arabic sources we know that one of the al-Rus’ trade routes ended in Miklagarðr where they sold furs and swords.
Garðaríki (Kievan Rus’) was after that ruled by a resident Varangian nobility, that became the nucleus of the Kievan Rus’ polity, whose ‘Golden Age’ was from late 800s to mid 1200s, when it disintegrated after the Mongol invasion. (1237– 1240).
They are referred to as Kievan Rus’ and Garðaríki.

In contrast to the author’s last paper published in the previous volume of JWBC which introduced the visual syntax of the Buddhist mural paintings of the ancient Kucha Kingdom, this paper rather focuses on another aspect of these mural paintings as the visual witness of the particular historical, socio-cultural conditions of the region. The specific type of decorative pattern on the monks’ robes depicted in the narrative paintings of a particular style in Kucha is worth special attention.
This paper consists of two main sections. The first section charts the geographical and chronological distribution of the depiction of textiles bearing this specific type of decorative pattern. They appear intensively in the Buddhist art in oasis towns from Gansu Province in the east to Bamiyan in the west, which are dated approximately from the middle of the fifth century to the middle of the six century. The second section analyzes the historical, social and ritual background of these depictions. The archaeological find of the textile fragment excavated from the Boma grave and the textual evidence found in the Turfan manuscripts leads to the supposition that these textiles are most probably portrayal of the actual textiles called “Kucha Silk (Qiuci-Jin)” at that time. The reason why textiles with such an outstanding geometric pattern could be accepted in the monastic environment may have to do with the local interpretation of the prescription in the Vinaya that the appropriate robes of monks should look like “the field of Magadha”. The unusually detailed depictions of the monks’ robes made of local textiles in the narrative paintings may have been intended to commemorate and guarantee of the merit of laymen, who donated these valuable textiles to the monastery at particular ritual occasions like kaṭhina.

The pax mongolica of the thirteenth century instituted after the conquests
of Genghis Khan reopened the Silk Road and provided a
locus for the exchange—or, better, the importation into the imagination
of medieval Armenia —of a number of notions and artistic
expressions from China. The study is devoted to a close analysis
of this cultural contact with East Asia by examining in depth a number
of oriental motifs only casually described in earlier literature.

This study contributes to the history of paper in Central Asia during the first millennium C.E. and aims to create a typology of paper based on a systematic study of Chinese manuscript collections found along the Silk Roads. The further aspect of this study aims to improve our knowledge of archaeometric research considered with the revision and test of scientific methodology which can then be used for historical and philological scholarship. By using fibre analysis and the technological study of paper combined with codicological and textual information, research has aimed to explore the possibilities for dating these materials, and fingerprinting their places of origin. The fact that many of Chinese manuscripts being studied (which are the oldest preserved and dated artefacts from Central Asia) are fixed in time by dates mentioned in colophons makes them valuable and reliable references for building a typology of paper and for comparative study of any yet to be discovered papers from that region.
A sample of studied manuscripts comprises a total of 182 Chinese manuscripts selected from the Dunhuang Collection in the British Library in London, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris (BnF), the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St. Petersburg, and the Turfan collection in the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (BBAW) and the Berlin State Library (StaBi).

Данная монография является сборником научных статей А.С. Скрипкина по истории, археологии, периодизации и хронологии сарматов. Некоторые статьи посвящены аланской проблематике, истории Великого шелкового пути, связям с Китаем и другими районами Центральной Азии.