Volume 2 Number 1 June 2004 “The Bridge between Eastern and Western cultures” From the Editor In This Issue • Bronze Age Steppe Archaeology When did the “Silk Road” begin? To silk made its way to the Medi- a considerable degree, the answer terranean world by Han and Roman • The Antiquity of the Yurt depends on how we interpret the times were hardly unique. In short, archaeological evidence about Inner what we see here is a conscious • The Burial Rite in Sogdiana Asian nomads and their relations effort to argue for “globalization” with sedentary peoples. Long- before the advent of the modern • The Caravan City of Palmyra accepted views about the Silk Road global economy. • The Tea and Horse Road in China situate its origins in the interaction between the Han and the Xiongnu Michael Frachetti’s contribution to • Klavdiia Antipina, Ethnographer beginning in the second century BCE, this issue suggests that in learning of the Kyrgyz as related in the first instance in the about the world of nomads, we might Han histories. As the stimulating best start by thinking about local • Mongolia Today recent book by Nicola Di Cosmo networks, not migrations over long reminds us though, if we are to gain distances. Of particular interest here • The Khotan Symposium in London an Inner Asian perspective on the is the possibility that patterns of development of nomadic power we short-distance migration from need to distinguish carefully lowland winter settlements to pastures in the mountains can be Next Issue between the picture drawn from those written sources and what the documented from the archaeological 1 record for earlier millennia. The • Stride, Padwa and Kansa on archaeological evidence reveals. project described by Frachetti also the GIS Atlas of Ancient Although this is not the direct concern Bactria of Di Cosmo’s book, others with an reminds us of how much the new Inner Asian perspective argue that interpretations of archaeological • Dr. Alexander Leskov on the we really should think of the “Silk material depend on the application Maikop Treasure Road” as part of a continuum of of modern technologies ranging from nomadic movement and interaction GIS (Geographic Information • Reviews of new books on the across Eurasia dating from much Systems) mapping to microscopic Silk Road 3 earlier times.2 analysis of pollen. We have come a long way from the days of the And more.... It is possible, of course, that an pioneer of Silk Road archaeology, Inner Asian perspective risks reading Aurel Stein, who has just been back in time too much from what we celebrated in an attractively About know about the best documented produced new book by Susan and unquestionably most extensive Whitfield.4 Inner Asian empire, that of the The Silk Road is a publication of the Mongols. That is, the dramatic and When we think of nomadic culture, Silkroad Foundation. The Silk Road can rapid expansion by the Mongols in one of the first images that comes to also be viewed online at the thirteenth century, which mind is the tent or yurt. Yurts are http://www.silkroadfoundation.org unquestionably facilitated the ephemeral, even if their design has movement of the products of other a long history. Not surprisingly then, Please feel free to contact us with any cultures into and across Central David Stronach relies on historically questions or contributions. See the datable images of yurts to revise Guidelines for Contributors at the back Eurasia, is a tempting model to of this issue. explain how cowrie shells or Persian what we know about the earliest motifs find their way millennia earlier dates for which the yurt’s existence. The Silkroad Foundation into early nomadic tombs. Indeed we By asking new questions of evidence P.O. Box 2275 might reasonably conclude from the which has been known for some time, Saratoga, CA 95070 material evidence that there was he plausibly adds nearly a millennium perhaps regular commerce and to the documented history of the Editor: Daniel C. Waugh interaction with distant places. Thus yurt, pushing its origins back to ca. [email protected] 600 BCE. Guitty Azarpay’s reinterpre- Editorial Assistant: Lance Jenott the developments by which Chinese © 2004 Silkroad Foundation tation of a well-known mural from of the region that embraces the history and culture which is so lacking Panjikent nicely complements upper Yangtze valley.6 As in the case in those who guide both domestic Stronach’s article by reinforcing for us of so many other regions, the routes and international politics. Alas, at the the importance of examining images of trade and cultural exchange which beginning of the twenty-first century, for the information they may contain Yang can document from written the prognosis for any number of about the interaction between evidence only at some late stage in countries along the historic Silk Road nomadic and sedentary cultures. their existence in fact have a much is far from sanguine. Azarpay and Stronach exercise longer history. Mountainous terrain admirable caution in drawing and swiftly flowing rivers did not Daniel Waugh conclusions about cultural exchange necessarily isolate people. As Department of History involving the nomads. Would that students of the Silk Road and its University of Washington (Seattle) anthropologist Jack Weatherford, many feeder routes, we should be [email protected] who advances ahistorical general- as interested in their recent history izations about the impact of the as in the question of when they Notes Mongols on world history in his began, if for no other reason than to recently published self-indulgent gain some appreciation for what 1. Nicola Di Cosmo, Ancient China and popularization, had shown even a travel along those routes may have Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic fraction of their good judgment.5 been like in an earlier era. A case in Power in East Asian History (Cam- Stronach’s article, in which key point is the Tea and Horse Road, bridge, etc.: Cambridge University evidence comes from Iran, and Albert which arguably experienced in World Press, 2002). Dien’s article on the Syrian caravan War II the peak period of its traffic city of Palmyra, underscore the fact thanks to the exigencies of the war. 2. A good summary of such argu- that any history of the Silk Road ments is in David Christian, “Silk The tragic events of the twentieth Roads or Steppe Roads: The Silk needs to give Western Asia equal century have, of course, affected time with Eastern and Central Asia. Roads in World History,” Journal of directly the lives of scholars who work World History, 11/1 (2000): 1-26. Given the paucity of concrete on the areas of Inner Asia that documentation about the individuals interest us, as the history of Klavdiia 3. Another project illuminating early involved in the Eurasian trade, the Antipina, movingly recounted by John inscriptions at Palmyra offer at least Inner Asian nomadic culture and Sommer, attests. This is certainly not using GIS technology is “Altay: Joint a good start for reconstructing the the first instance where exile created organization of the caravan trade Mongolian/American/Russian Project” the circumstances in which a scholar (http://www.uoregon.edu/~altay), which shaped the city’s fate. Yet the could contribute substantially to limits of that evidence are also quite which is carefully mapping petro- knowledge of a region and culture glyphs, ritual sites and other surface apparent. We learn about only one that she otherwise would likely never of what must have been many evidence over a very large territory have studied. Yet the constraints on the Altai Mountains. routes converging on the city. Much imposed by Soviet system seriously about the social history of the limited the degree to which most caravan leaders is conjectural. At 4. Susan Whitfield, Aurel Stein on the scholars could interact with their Silk Road (Chicago: Serindia, 2004). very least we can appreciate that the foreign colleagues or even become Silk Road was not just a line con- acquainted with their work. While 5. Jack Weatherford, Genghis Khan necting two great cities, Chang’an scholarship today is still not free from and Rome, but a path with multiple and the Making of the Modern World constraints imposed by politics, at (New York: Crown, 2004). branches involving many intermediary least the mechanisms for com- centers and local networks. munication across international 6. I have in mind the material It is only by discarding pre- boundaries now make possible the exhibited in Ancient Sichuan: Trea- conceptions about levels of culture kind of cutting-edge scholarly sures from a Lost Civilization, ed. which tend to privilege a few centers exchange such as the Khotan Robert Bagley (Seattle: Seattle Art that we will be able to appreciate the Symposium in London on which Museum; Princeton: Princeton Uni- complexity of our subject. The Richard Salomon reports for this versity Press, 2001). importance of a very different set of issue. regional networks is clear fromYang Whether the twenty-first century * * * Fuquan’s article on the “Tea and will be as kind to the countries of the Horse Road” in southwest China and Silk Road as to scholarship on its Special thanks to Ruth and Frank Tibet, the story of which is absent ancient history is quite another Harold for providing their excellent from histories of the Silk Road. matter. One cannot but be alarmed photographs of Palmyra. Other pho- Spectacular archaeological discov- by Morris Rossabi’s report about the tos of theirs from travels along the eries in Sichuan in recent years have current situation in Mongolia, Silk Road may be viewed at http:// forced scholars to reassess the observations informed by the kind of www.depts.washington.edu/uwch/ “remoteness” and “backwardness” deep understanding of that country’s silkroad/cities/cities.html.