Abstract
Invented in the 19th century as an allegory for large-scale human interaction across Eurasia, the idea of “the Silk Road” continues to shape archaeological investigations of trade, travel, cultural exchange, and mobility in the region between the Near East and East Asia. Though long used to refer to trade between the ancient and late medieval periods, the framework of the Silk Road has grown increasingly popular and is used to orient research on mobilities of much earlier periods, as well as to frame movement and exchange at the molecular level, including of human genes. This article reviews the shared challenges confronted by Silk Road archaeologists and explores the narratives about human culture that have been tied up in the Silk Road metaphor from the beginning. Through a review of recent work on and along the Silk Road, I trace common narratives and shared scalar challenges across archaeologies of landscape, material culture, gender, mobile lifeways, and isotopic and genetic assemblages, and examine tensions between globality and locality within Silk Road cultural heritage and the implications of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
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Acknowledgments
First, thanks to JARE for prompting me to read all this rich and provocative work, and to the editors for their patience and valuable feedback. I must thank Indu Prasad, in conversation with whom I have had to organize many of my thoughts, as well as the students in my Silk Road seminar at Birkbeck. I have also had incredibly helpful conversations about themes in this piece: in London with Mudit Trivedi, Julia Lovell, and Susan Whitfield, and about the genetic aspects with Dr. Ray Franklin. Thanks also to all my colleagues who have processed these questions with me in workshops, at the conference bar, and through correspondence, and especially to the seven reviewers who provided thoughtful and generous comments on the first draft. I want to especially thank Tekla Schmaus, Jim Johnson, and Rob Spengler for long chats over zoom and for more than a decade as fellow travelers in Eurasian archaeology.
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Franklin, K. Archaeology of the Silk Road: Challenges of Scale and Storytelling. J Archaeol Res 32, 263–308 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-023-09188-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-023-09188-w