Reconfiguring the Silk Road: New Research on East-West Exchange in Antiquity

by Colin Renfrew (Author), Colin Renfrew (Author), Victor H. Mair (Author), Jane Hickman (Author)

New
Illustrated
2014
$61.09

From the Bronze Age through the Middle Ages, a network of trade and migration routes brought people from across Eurasia into contact. Their commerce included political, social, and artistic ideas, as well as material goods such as metals and textiles. Reconfiguring the Silk Road offers new research on the earliest trade and cultural interactions along these routes, mapping the spread and influence of Silk Road economies and social structures over time. This volume features contributions by renowned scholars uncovering new discoveries related to populations that lived in the Tarim Basin, the advanced state of textile manufacturing in the region, and the diffusion of domesticated grains across Inner Asia. Other chapters include an analysis of the dispersal of languages across the Eurasian Steppe and a detailed examination of the domestication of the horse in the region. Contextualized with a foreword by Colin Renfrew and introduction by Victor Mair, Reconfiguring the Silk Road provides a new assessment of the intercultural evolution along the steppes and beyond.

Contributors: David W. Anthony, Elizabeth Wayland Barber, Dorcas R. Brown, Peter Brown, Michael D. Frachetti, Jane Hickman, Philip L. Kohl, Victor H. Mair, J. P. Mallory, Joseph G. Manning, Colin Renfrew.

Synopsis

From the Bronze Age through the Middle Ages, a network of trade and migration routes brought people from across Eurasia into contact. Their commerce included political, social, and artistic ideas, as well as material goods such as metals and textiles. Reconfiguring the Silk Road offers new research on the earliest trade and cultural interactions along these routes, mapping the spread and influence of Silk Road economies and social structures over time. This volume features contributions by renowned scholars uncovering new discoveries related to populations that lived in the Tarim Basin, the advanced state of textile manufacturing in the region, and the diffusion of domesticated grains across Inner Asia. Other chapters include an analysis of the dispersal of languages across the Eurasian Steppe and a detailed examination of the domestication of the horse in the region. Contextualized with a foreword by Colin Renfrew and introduction by Victor Mair, Reconfiguring the Silk Road provides a new assessment of the intercultural evolution along the steppes and beyond.

Contributors: David W. Anthony, Elizabeth Wayland Barber, Dorcas R. Brown, Peter Brown, Michael D. Frachetti, Jane Hickman, Philip L. Kohl, Victor H. Mair, J. P. Mallory, Joseph G. Manning, Colin Renfrew.

$61.09

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More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 136
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Published: 05 Aug 2014
ISBN 10: 1934536687
ISBN 13: 9781934536681

Media Reviews

Concise and enlightening essays, . . . Collectively they paint a complex picture of the prehistory and early history of the areas covered by the Silk Roads, where grains, textiles, horses, and even languages were constantly moving. . . . All contributors are established scholars in their respective fields, so the articles serve not only to advance new ideas but also to summarize existing research. -Journal of Asian Studies

Author Bio

Victor H. Mair is Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania and editor of the University of Pennsylvania Press Encounters with Asia series. Jane Hickman is editor of Expedition magazine and Special Assistant for Museum Programs at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Colin Renfrew is Disney Professor Emeritus of Archaeology and former Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.