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Author Archives: Susan Whitfield
New Book: Silk Roads: Peoples, Cultures, Landscapes
CONTENTS EXCERPT FROM INTRODUCTION There was no ‘Silk Road’. It is a modern label in widespread use only since the late 20th century and used since then to refer to trade and interaction across Afro-Eurasia from roughly 200 BE to … Continue reading
Posted in Silk Road art and history
Tagged archaeology, architecture, art, Buddhism, sericulture, Silk Road
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The Rectification of Names: Caves, Grottos or Rock-Cut Temples?
“If the names are not correct, language is without an object.” Confucius, Translated by Simon Leys. The Analects of Confucius: London and New York: W. W. Norton 1997: 13, 3. In her 2013 essay, Phyllis Granoff argued that the term … Continue reading
Posted in Rectification of names, Silk Road art and history
Tagged Ajanta, Buddhist, cave, Dunhuang, grotto, rock-cut temple
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Lost in the Desert: Stein at Dura-Europos
Aurel Stein at Dura-Europos, 1929. The British Library, Photo 392/42* Over the winter of 1928-9, the city of Dura-Europos on the Euphrates was being excavated by a team led by Maurice Pillet (1881-1964), which included a Yale academic, Clark Hopkins … Continue reading
Posted in Aurel Stein
Tagged aerial surveys, archaeology, dura europos, Silk Road, Stein
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Silk Road Summer School
4-day Silk Road course in central London Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged archaeology, art, lecture, Silk Road, Stein, summer school
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Early Exhibitions of the Collections of Aurel Stein: Part 2: 1911: The Festival of Empire
The Festival of Empire opened at the Crystal Palace in north London on 12 May 1911 to celebrate the coronation of George V (r. 1910–1936). The Indian pavilion was one among the many exhibition spaces built to celebrate British imperial … Continue reading
Posted in Exhibitions, Uncategorized
Tagged archaeology, British Museum, Dunhuang, Exhibitions, Laurence Binyon, Marc Aurel Stein, Silk Road, Stein
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Slaves on the Silk Road
Slaves, like silks, were Silk Road goods, to be bought, used and sold for profit, and often transported long distances by land and sea to trade in foreign markets. While no slaves from this time survive to tell their story … Continue reading
The Mozac Hunter Silk
Although several scholars have tried to displace silk from its key role in trade assumed by the term Silk Road and have argued for the equal if not greater influence of other goods, the importance of silk is not so … Continue reading
Amluk Dara Stupa
Once rising almost as high as the Pantheon in Rome, the large stupa of Amluk Dara in the Swat valley, Pakistan, is still an imposing building. Yet it is was only one among many such Buddhist structures built in Udyāna, … Continue reading
Posted in Silk, Slaves and Stupas
Tagged Alexander the Great, Aornos, archaeology, architecture, Buddhism, Gandhara, Pakistan, Stein, stupa, Swat
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Feeble Silkworms and Flightless Moths
Female moths of the Bombyx mori (left) and Bombyx mandarina (right). Credit: Markus Knaden, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. The Bombyx mori moth is well-known as producer of the silk cultivated in China for thousands of years whose technology … Continue reading
Early Exhibitions of the Collections of Aurel Stein: Part 1: 1910
his is the first of a series of posts to list twentieth century exhibitions which have included Central Asian manuscripts, paintings, coins and other artefacts from the collections of the archaeologist M. Aurel Stein (1862–1943). Continue reading
Posted in Exhibitions
Tagged British Museum, Dunhuang, Exhibitions, Laurence Binyon, Marc Aurel Stein, Silk Road, Sydney Colvin
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