The Silk Roads retain a persistent place in our notions of intercultural exchanges and the exotic. But while stories of these realms relate great details of monks and merchants traversing the continent, the communities and cultures of Central Asia have too often been deemed mere highways of powers at the edges of Eurasia, defined solely through their interactions with, and intrusions from, the civilizations of China, Persia, and the Mediterranean. Through a series of case study cities and material arts, this course aims to give greater agency to those at the heart of the continent, and discuss the ways in which they shaped the spread and development of technologies, religions and modes of art in an increasingly globalized pre-modern world. Students will explore the character and contexts of long-distance trade goods, hybrid luxury items, palaces of multi-cultural rulers, and monuments of Buddhism and Islam. As this course also carries a Museum Studies credit, students will assess the history and curation of 'Silk Roads' art objects in museums, and use objects from the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology and the UM Museum of Art to conduct hands-on analyses and comparative studies of objects of art.

HISTART Concentration Distributions: A. The Middle East, C. Asia, 1. Ancient, 2. Medieval

Texts (available on-line or on-reserve):
Susan Whitfield (2019) Silk Roads: Peoples, Cultures, Landscapes; Valerie Hansen (2012) The Silk Road: A New History; Treasures from the Oxus (Vidale 2017); After Alexander: Central Asia before Islam (Cribb and Herrmann 2007); The Hellenistic Far East (Mairs); Silk: Trade and Exchange Along the Silk Roads Between Rome and China in Antiquity (Hildebrandt 2017); Legends, Tales and Fables in the Art of Sogdiana (Marshak 2002); see also International Dunhuang Project http://idp.bl.uk/idp.a4d

Exhibition catalogues:
Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures (Hierbert & Cambon 2008); The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith (Whitfield & Sims-Williams 2004); Monks and Merchants: Silk Road Treasures from Northwest China (Juliano & Lerner 2001); Along the Ancient Silk Routes (O'Niell 1982); When Silk Was Gold (Watt & Wardwell 1998); Secrets of the Silk Road (Mair 2010); The Art of Gandhara (Behrendt 2007)