Following her bestselling Life Along the Silk Road, Susan Whitfield widens her exploration of the great cultural highway with a new captivating portrait focusing on material things. Silk, Slaves, and Stupas tells the stories of ten very different objects, considering their interaction with the peoples and cultures of the Silk Road—those who made them, carried them, received them, used them, sold them, worshipped them, and, in more recent times, bought them, conserved them, and curated them. From a delicate pair of earrings from a steppe tomb to a massive stupa deep in Central Asia, a hoard of Kushan coins stored in an Ethiopian monastery to a Hellenistic glass bowl from a southern Chinese tomb, and a fragment of Byzantine silk wrapping the bones of a French saint to a Bactrian ewer depicting episodes from the Trojan War, these objects show us something of the cultural diversity and interaction along these trading routes of Afro-Eurasia.
Exploring the labor, tools, materials, and rituals behind these various objects, Whitfield infuses her narrative with delightful details as the objects journey through time, space, and meaning. Silk, Slaves, and Stupas is a lively, visual, and tangible way to understand the Silk Road and the cultural, economic, and technical changes of the late antique and medieval worlds.
Author(s): Susan Whitfield
Edition: 1
Publisher: University of California Press
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 376
Tags: Silk Road
Cover
Contents
Note on transliteration an names
Introduction
1. A pair of steppe earrings
The Xiongnu and the steppe
The Xigoupan tombs
Mirrors and belt plaques: trade and exchange
Jade an dragons
Women on the steppe
Recent history
2. A Hellenistic glass bowl
The origins of glass
Scientific analysis
Glass production in Asia
The aesthetic of glass
Tombs of the South
Maritime trade routes
3. A hoard of Kushan coins
The Kushan empire
Kushan coins
Indian Ocean trade
4. Amluk Dara Stupa
Buddhism in the Swat Valley
Reaching to the sky – Stupa architecture
Amluk Dara
Amluk Dara Stupa in the community
Worship at the stupa
Rebuilding and renovations
A millennium of neglect: tenth to twentieth century
The modern period: archaeology and looting
5. A Bactrian ewer
The Trojan war
The Bactrian ewer
The journey to China
6. A Khotanese plaque
The kingdom of Khotan
Buddhism in Khotan
The dappled horse
Maps
7. The Blue Qurʿan
A world of books
Islamic books and the Qurʿan
Making the Blue Qurʿan
Why blue and gold? The perception, aesthetics, and symbolism of color
Breaking the codex
Reunifying the codex
8. A Byzantine hunter silk
The development and transmission of sericulture
Loom technology
Motifs and designs
Silk in diplomacy and religion
The museum piece
9. A Chinese almanac
Calendars, almanacs, and political power
Paper and printing
The journey West
Life in the museum
10. The unknown slave
Becoming a slave
Trading slaves
Slaves for what?
Bibliography
Index
