Archaeology of the Silk Road

The coasts of southern India have historically been the center of an important commercial network that brought the West (and the Mediterranean) into contact with the Far East. After the fall of the Roman Empire, other commercial actors came into play and Arab and Jewish merchants began to travel the ‘Western’ routes, as attested by written sources at least starting from the IX century d.C. In this context, the typological-formal and scientific analysis of some pottery samples coming from the last archaeological surveying campaign, conducted in Madayipara (Kannur District, Kerala) can give a preliminary interpretation of the main components active in commercial traffic starting from the early Middle Age

Gorgian dynasty of Shoushtar in Safavid Era
(1042-1144/1634-1732)
M.Valiarab
A.Bahranipour
Abstract
The history of Gorgian dynasty of Shoushtar city goes back to Shah
Safi period. One of the member of Shah Safi’s house deserved the
governmant,i.e Vakhashtu khan The enterence of this man to
Shoushtar city was a launching point of great davelopment. He
promotad in Bigler bege status. Vakhashtu khan and his brothers were
promoted in safavi dynasty by means of loyality to safavi dynasty.
Vakhashtu khan was appainted in Shoushtar region and his brother,i.e
Zolfaghar khan was appainted at Ghanedhar region.This dynasty
couldy reserve Shoushtar. Gorgian government lasted 102 years. Nader
shah declied the government. In this study,we intend to take in to
cansideration socio – political situation of Shoushtar at Vakhashtu
khan and his dolefui.

La “Route de la soie” et sa symbolique ont été créées au XIXe siècle à l'époque où le “Grand Jeu” entre Russes et Britanniques est à son apogée. La révision critique de ce concept aujourd’hui ne remet toutefois pas en cause l’une des caractéristiques essentielles de l’Asie centrale : celle d’être un carrefour vers lequel tout converge et d’où tout diverge, une plaque tournante de transferts de natures diverses, dans toutes les directions, un creuset exceptionnel d’influences lointaines observables au niveau des religions, des mœurs, des arts et des techniques.
Cette “grande” Asie centrale, qui chapeaute ici l’ensemble des anciennes républiques soviétiques centrasiatiques et les territoires avoisinants du Xinjiang, de la Mongolie, de l’Inde, de l’Afghanistan, de l’Iran, du Caucase et de la Turquie, offre, dans la très longue durée, de l’époque néolithique à nos jours, un terrain d’étude exceptionnel aussi bien pour les archéologues que pour les historiens ou les anthropologues. Que l’on considère les contacts d’Alexandre le Grand avec les Bactriens et les Scythes, des Sogdiens avec les Chinois ou les Arabes, ou encore les contacts entre les peuples modernes, comme ceux des Ouzbeks avec les Tadjiks ou les Persans, puis avec la Russie, on a affaire à une stratification extrêmement complexe de transferts culturels aussi bien synchroniques que diachroniques.
En décloisonnant la manière traditionnelle – plutôt européocentriste – d’approcher ces cultures, le présent ouvrage examine l’efficacité de la théorie des transferts culturels afin de faire découvrir ce centre du monde mythique qui a depuis des siècles fasciné voyageurs et savants.
Comptes rendus: Gaïdz Minassian, in Le Monde, 2016 ; Felix de Montety, in Abstracta Iranica, vol. 34-35-36, 2016 ; Felix de Montety, in Abstracta Iranica [En ligne], Volume 34-35-36 | 2016, document 1, mis en ligne le 15 juillet 2016 ; Guy Lecuyot, in Archicube, n° 21, décembre 2016, p. 165-166 ; Henri Marchal, in Académie des sciences d’outre-mer, mis en ligne le 19 mars 2017 (http://www.defnat.com/e-RDN/e-recensions-detail.php?cid=252); Emmanuel Lincot, in Monde Chinois, nouvelle Asie, 2015, n° 44

Excavations at the Main Square (Grote Markt) of Malines (Mechelen, Belgium) have unearthed the building remains of a tower, arguably identifiable as the former town prison: Het Steen. When this assumption is followed, the contents of the fills of two cesspits dug out in the cellars of the building illustrate aspects of daily life within the early 14th-century prison. An integrated approach of all find categories, together with the historical context available, illuminates aspects of the material culture of the users of the cesspits, their consumption ...

Serica – Da Qin. Studies in Archaeology, Philology and History of Sino-Western Relations (Selected Problems) Gościwit Malinowski, Aleksander Paroń, Bartłomiej Sz. Szmoniewski (eds.) Wrocław ‚ƒ2012
Cultural relations between the Central Kingdom and Europe is a topic well set in the world academic literature (less well set in Polish); nevertheless, one can still 6nd new and inspiring meaning in it. The evidence of it are the texts collected in this volume. They exemplify such contacts and show the still growing interest of scholars representing various disciplines in China and their impact on other cultures. The increasing popularity of such studies is a fully understandable phenomenon. Globalisation and accompanying phenomena caused the world to have grown considerably smaller in the perception of a modern man. Communing with things alien, foreign
and exotic has become an element of our everyday life. Experience obtained during such contacts also determine the questions we pose concerning the past. The need for reflection on the nature of relations between the countries of the West with the Far East in the old, preindustrial epoch is becoming obvious. Such an idea motivated the organisers of the interdisciplinary conference entitled Serica-Da Qin. Over 2000 years of Sino-Western relations. The meeting was held from  21ƒ to 23 October 2009, in Wrocław, and was organised by the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Classical, Mediterranean and Oriental Studies of the University of Wrocław, and the Confucius Institute of the University of Wrocław.

The Tang Dynasty (AD 618–907), China’s Golden Age, was a flourishing period teeming with fascinating cultural phenomena. At the centre of this cosmopolitan empire lay the capital city of Chang’an – one of the largest metropolises of its time and now hidden below present-day Xi’an.
Aristocrats as protagonists of courtly life shaped the character of the city, their luxurious everyday life equally reflected in lavishly furnished tombs. Nowadays, most of these tombs are found robbed. Evidence of the former splendour of these subterranean chambers only survives in the form of marvellous wall paintings and clay figurines disregarded by the grave robbers.
The undisturbed tomb of Li Chui who had died in AD 736, a descendant of emperor Gaozu, was excavated in Xi’an in 2001. It took a German-Chinese team six years to restore the intricate grave furnishings. For the first time, it was possible to reconstruct the opulent jewellery assemblage of a Tang period noblewoman. In conjunction with the results of scientific analyses by a team of specialists from various disciplines it was possible to obtain new insights into Tang period burial culture. This is the first time that these results are presented to a wider English-speaking public. Richly-illustrated appendices throughout the text provide further insights into Tang period everyday life.

Yatsenko S.A., Avizova А.К, Torgoev A.I., Saipov A., Kulish A.V., Kitov E.P., Rogozhinskii A.E., Smagulov E.A., Erzhigitova A.A., Torezhanova N.Zh., Tur S.S., Ivanov S.S. Archaeology and History of Cangju State / Ed. by Sergey A. Yatsenko. Shymkent: Әlem, 2020, 216 pp + 112 pls. (in Russian).  ISBN 978-9965-19-600-3.

You can also DOWNLOAD the book in my post box: https://cloud.mail.ru/publc/45au/37gyXDKV6 , ca 48 mbt.

SUMMARY:
by the editor
The collective book is the first big special international study devoted to the little-studied Kangju / Kanga /康居"nomadic empire". Its heyday was in the 80 – 230 CE and the center located in the Middle Syr Darya Basin. That time Kangju was the most powerful state in the West of the Central Asia. The heyday of Kangju coincided with the great time of antiquity – with the simultaneous heyday of the Roman Empire, the Han Dynasty China, the Parthian Iran and the Kushan Empire. The role of Kangju was crucial in the emergence of the "Northern Road" from 20 BCE - an important route of the newly emerged Silk Road. At the same time, Kangju was the only state in the western part of Central Asia that consistently opposed China. It was a long-lived state with almost 5-century history (ca 130 BCE – 350 CE). The history of this state is closely related to the early fate of the famous peoples of the past – the Alans and the southern Huns (Chionites). The history of Kangju is an important part of the history of peoples in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, the Russian Steppe zone to the east from Volga, some parts of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
The Kangju early state emerged as a socio-cultural synthesis of nomads and settled farmers, groups that migrated from the East and descendants of the ancient population of Transoxiana. The Kangju peoples were the first to create a series of fortified settlements on vast territories in the northernmost oases of the Syr Darya Basin and Northern Tien Shan Mountains, including several cities, and laid roads here. Kangju successfully manipulated by the certain groups of nomadic Sarmatians, Alans, Wusun, and Xiongnu to increase its power.
However, paradoxically, today we know much less about the Kangju state than, for example, about the Saka of Semirechye / Jetytu, the tribes of the Pazyryk Culture, the Eastern groups of Sarmatians and other ancient inhabitants of Kazakhstan in antiquity. Different aspects of the life of this ancient state have not yet been practically studied. This is why our book looks to the future in many ways. We did not try to create a solid generalizing work on Kangju. Such generalizations have been made several times in the past on very limited material and have not been very successful.
The book was prepared as the part of Kazakhstan President scientific programm BR05233709 “The History and Culture of the the Great Steppe”. The main idea of this collection of papers was proposed in February 2020 by Prof. Sergey A. Yatsenko (the editor, RSUH, Moscow) and Dr. Asan I. Torgoev (Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg). The chapters of the book present new, unpublished materials, give new interpretations of already known facts, or summarize the materials of field research of previous years. The opinions expressed in various chapters reflect the positions of thier 12 authors. This collection was devoted to one of the co-authors who died in October 2019 – Erbulat A. Smagulov (Almaty).