***Graphic resource. Keywords: Central Asian motives, Scythian, Budddhist sculpture of Gandhara and Mathura, Khotan paintings, early Christian art of Armenia, Georgia, Caucasian Albania, Tarim Basin, Ferghana, Chinese Turkestan (Xinjiang), Transcaucasia and Central Asian nomads, Soghdia/Sogdia, Eastern Turkestan in the Roman and Buddhist periods, Greek influence, Uygurs.

Contact and exchange in the ancient world / edited by Victor H. Mair.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

See Introduction (pdf).
Contents: Kinesis versus stasis: interaction versus independent invention / Victor H. Mair -- Beyond modernocentrism: toward fresh visions of the global past / Jeffrey H. Bentley -- The trans-Eurasian exchange: the prehistory of Chinese relations with the West / Andrew Sherratt -- The queen mother of the West: a study of the influence of Western prototypes on the iconography of the Taoist deity / Elfriede R. Knauer -- Natural history and cultural history: the circulation of hunting leopards in Eurasia, seventh-seventeenth centuries / Thomas T. Allsen -- Some thoughts on the origins of the Turks and the shaping of the Turkic peoples / Peter B. Golden -- Early loan words in western Central Asia: indications of substrate populations, migrations, and trade relations / Michael Witzel -- Textiles as a medium of exchange in Third Millennium B.C.E. Western Asia / Irene Good -- Cultural and political control in north China: style and use of the bronzes of Yan at Liulihe during the early Western Zhou / Yan Sun -- Biological evidence for pre-Columbian transoceanic voyages / John L. Sorenson and Carl L. Johannessen.

Reconfiguring the Silk Road : new research on East-West exchange in antiquity / edited by Victor H. Mair and Jane Hickman.

"The papers of a symposium held at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, March 19, 2011."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Foreword: The Silk Roads before silk / Colin Renfrew -- Introduction: Reconceptualizing the Silk Roads / Victor H. Mair -- At the limits : long-distance trade in the time of Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic kings / J.G. Manning -- The Silk Road in late antiquity / Peter Brown -- The Northern Cemetery : epigone or progenitor of Small River Cemetery No. 5? / Victor H. Mair -- More light on the Xinjiang textiles / Elizabeth Wayland Barber -- Seeds for the soul : ideology and diffusion of domesticated grains across Inner Asia / Michael D. Frachetti -- Horseback riding and Bronze Age pastoralism in the Eurasian Steppes / David W. Anthony and Dorcas R. Brown -- Indo-European dispersals and the Eurasian Steppe / J.P. Mallory -- Concluding comments: Reconfiguring the Silk Road, or When does the Silk Road emerge and how does it qualitatively change over time? / Philip L. Kohl.

From the Bronze Age through the Middle Ages, a network of trade and migration routes brought people from across Eurasia into contact. Their commerce included political, social, and artistic ideas, as well as material goods such as metals and textiles. Reconfiguring the Silk Road offers new research on the earliest trade and cultural interactions along these routes, mapping the spread and influence of Silk Road economies and social structures over time. This volume features contributions by renowned scholars uncovering new discoveries related to populations that lived in the Tarim Basin, the advanced state of textile manufacturing in the region, and the diffusion of domesticated grains across Inner Asia. Other chapters include an analysis of the dispersal of languages across the Eurasian Steppe and a detailed examination of the domestication of the horse in the region. Contextualized with a foreword by Colin Renfrew and introduction by Victor Mair, Reconfiguring the Silk Road provides a new assessment of the intercultural evolution along the steppes and beyond. Contributors: David W. Anthony, Elizabeth Wayland Barber, Dorcas R. Brown, Peter Brown, Michael D. Frachetti, Jane Hickman, Philip L. Kohl, Victor H. Mair, J.P. Mallory, Joseph G. Manning, Colin Renfrew.

The prehistory of the Silk Road / E.E. Kuzmina ; edited by Victor H. Mair.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [207]-242) and index.

The dynamics of the Eurasian steppe ecology -- Economic developments in the Ponto-Caspian steppe -- The first stage of the food-producing economy -- The second stage of the food-producing economy -- The domestication and early use of the horse -- The development of the pit-grave cultural community -- The spread of wheeled transport: a prerequisite to the opening of the Great Silk Road routes -- The Eurasian steppe in the Bronze Age -- Proto-urban culture in the Urals -- The chariots of the Eurasian steppe -- The crisis of complex economy, the development of nomadism in the Eurasian steppe, and the origins of the Great Silk Road routes -- The origin and spread of the Bactrian camel -- Archaeological cultures of southern Central Asia -- Southern Turkmenistan -- The lower and middle part of Transoxiana -- Ferghana -- Kirghizstan -- Relations between eastern and western Central Asia -- Contacts of the Xinjiang people with the West in the Copper Age, and the Tocharian question -- Contacts of the Xinjiang people with the West in the Bronze Age.

"The majority of the Silk Road routes passed through the Eurasian Steppe, whose nomadic peoples were participants and mediators in its economic and cultural exchanges. Until now, the origins of these routes and relationships have not been examined in great detail. In The Prehistory of the Silk Road, E.E. Kuzmina, renowned Russian archaeologist, looks at the history of this crucial area before the formal establishment of Silk Road trade and diplomacy. From the late Neolithic period to the early Bronze Age, Kuzmina traces the evolution of the material culture of the Steppe and the contact between civilizations that proved critical to the development of the widespread trade that would follow, including nomadic migrations, the domestication and use of the horse and the camel, and the spread of wheeled transport."

"The Prehistory of the Silk Road combines detailed research in archaeology with evidence from physical anthropology, linguistics, and other fields, incorporating both primary and secondary sources from a range of languages, including a vast accumulation of Russian-language scholarship largely untapped in the West. The book is complemented by an extensive bibliography that will be of great use to scholars."--Jacket.

L:ocal access dig.pdf. [Prehistory of the Silk Road.pdf]