Expedition magazine - Silk Road Issue

SILK ROADS IN HISTORY

MUMMIES OF EAST CENTRAL ASIA

TEXTILES FROM THE SILK ROAD

LANGUAGES OF THE TARIM BASIN

®

WINTER 2010VOLUME 52 , NUMBER 3

THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY

WWW.PENN.MUSEUM/EXPEDITION

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We welcome letters to the Editor.Please send them to: ExpeditionPenn Museum 3260 South StreetPhiladelphia, PA 19104-6324 Email: [email protected]

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features

THE SILK ROADS IN HISTORY

By Daniel C. Waugh

THE MUMMIES OF EAST CENTRAL ASIA

By Victor H. Mair

TEXTILES FROM THE SILK ROAD: INTERCULTURAL EXCHANGES AMONG NOMADS, TRADERS, AND AGRICULTURALISTS

By Angela Sheng

BRONZE AGE LANGUAGES OF THE TARIM BASIN

By J.P. Mallory

departments

From the Editor

From the Director

Portrait—Dr. Elfriede R. (Kezia) Knauer

What in the World— Ancient and Modern Foods from the Tarim Basin

Research Notes—The Luohan that Came from Afar

Museum Mosaic—People, Places, Projects

Book News & Reviews—Before the Silk Road

Index for Volume 52

on the cover: Yingpan Man, excavated from Yingpan, Yuli (Lop Nur) County, dates to the 3rd to 4th century CE. His cloth-ing is finely made, and his painted mask is decorated with gold leaf. (Photo credit: Xinjiang Institute of Archaeology Collection)

contentswinter 2010

V O L U M E 5 2 , N U M B E R 3

Expedition® (ISSN 0014-4738) is published three times a year by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 3260 South St., Philadelphia, PA 19104-6324. ©2010 University of Pennsylvania. All rights reserved. Expedition is a registered trademark of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. All editorial inquiries should be addressed to the Editor at the above address or by email to [email protected]. Subscription price: $35.00 per subscription per year. International subscribers: add $15.00 per subscription per year. Subscription, back issue, and advertising queries to Maureen Goldsmith at [email protected] or (215)898-4050. Subscription forms may be faxed to (215)573-9369. Please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery.

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2 volume 52 , number 3 expedition

t h e w i l l i a m s d i r e c t o r

Richard Hodges, Ph.D.

w i l l i a m s d i r e c t o r s e m e r i t u s

Robert H. Dyson, Jr., Ph.D.Jeremy A. Sabloff, Ph.D.

d e p u t y d i r e c t o r

C. Brian Rose, Ph.D.

c h i e f o p e r a t i n g o f f i c e r

Melissa P. Smith, CFA

c h i e f o f s t a f f t o t h e w i l l i a m s d i r e c t o r

James R. Mathieu, Ph.D.

d i r e c t o r o f d e v e l o p m e n t

Amanda Mitchell-Boyask

m e l l o n a s s o c i a t e d e p u t y d i r e c t o r

Loa P. Traxler, Ph.D.

m e r l e - s m i t h d i r e c t o r o f c o m m u n i t y e n g a g e m e n t

Jean Byrne

d i r e c t o r o f e x h i b i t i o n s

Kathleen Quinn

d i r e c t o r o f m a r k e t i n g a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n s

Suzette Sherman

a s s o c i a t e d i r e c t o r f o r a d m i n i s t r a t i o n

Alan Waldt

expedition staff

e d i t o r

Jane Hickman, Ph.D.

a s s o c i a t e e d i t o r

Jennifer Quick

a s s i s t a n t e d i t o r

Emily B. Toner

s u b s c r i p t i o n s m a n a g e r

Maureen Goldsmith

e d i t o r i a l a d v i s o r y b o a r d Fran Barg, Ph.D.Clark L. Erickson, Ph.D.James R. Mathieu, Ph.D.Naomi F. Miller, Ph.D.Janet M. Monge, Ph.D.Theodore G. Schurr, Ph.D.Robert L. Schuyler, Ph.D.

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Anne Marie KaneImogen Designwww.imogendesign.com

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Travel the silk road with the Penn Museum in this special

expanded edition of Expedition magazine. This issue was created

to compliment Secrets of the Silk Road, a significant new exhibi-

tion that opens on February 5 and runs through June 5, 2011.

Penn Museum is the only East Coast venue for this remarkable

collection of artifacts from East Central Asia. The Museum also has many excit-

ing programs planned for the duration of the exhibition including lectures, fam-

ily days, special weekend programs, and a major scholarly symposium. Check

the Penn Museum website for further information: www.penn.museum.

What follows is a collection of articles by experts in the field of Central Asian

archaeology, art history, and linguistics. In our first feature article, “The Silk

Roads in History,” Dan Waugh provides an overview of the famous trade routes

that made up the legendary Silk Road, and the traders who traveled these routes.

This is followed by Victor Mair’s fascinating look at some of the most note-

worthy mummies discovered in the Tarim Basin, including those you will see

in Secrets of the Silk Road. We then move to an article by Angela Sheng on the

well-preserved textiles in the exhibition; Angela’s analysis reveals the cultural

exchanges that took place among various groups that lived in this region. Our

fourth article, by J.P. Mallory, discusses the linguistic complexity of the Tarim

Basin; where did the people who lived there come from, and what languages

might they have spoken?

Several short articles round out this issue. E.N. Anderson writes on the

preserved foods in the exhibition, and Nancy Steinhardt recounts the mystery

behind a Luohan statue in the Museum’s Asian collection. Mandy Chan reviews

a book on the prehistory of the Silk Road, the period before the establishment of

the famed trade routes. We also include a portrait of Dr. Elfriede Knauer, who

passed away this past summer. Kezia, as she was known to her friends, traveled

the Silk Road for over 30 years, becoming an authority on this part of the world.

This special Silk Road issue of Expedition would not have been possible with-

out the assistance of Victor Mair—professor at Penn, curatorial consultant to

the exhibition, and a scholar whose on-going interest in the burials of the Tarim

Basin made Secrets of the Silk Road possible. Victor gave generously of his time

in the initial planning and on-going production of this issue.

jane hickman, ph.d.Editor

welcome

From the Editor

Secrets of the Silk Road was organized by the Bowers Museum, Santa Ana, California in association with the Archaeological Institute of Xinjiang and the Ürümqi Museum.

ExpedWinter2010.indd 2 12/7/10 12:35 PM

www.penn.museum/expedition 3

Looking back over the last

half-century as archaeology

has become more scientific,

there have been paradoxically

few truly great discoveries.

The wonders of archaeology, so it seems,

were found by Schliemann at Mycenae

and Troy, by Carter with his discovery of Tutankhamun, by

Bingham when he ventured high into the Andes to Machu

Picchu, and by Maudsley, who effectively tamed the jungle to

uncover the Maya. Their stories are told in sepia tone pho-

tographs, many of which have become iconic. Yet two great

archaeological discoveries dominate the archaeology of our

generation: a greater understanding of human evolution from

its roots in Africa, and the incomparable wealth of the cem-

eteries from the Tarim Basin in the Uyghur territory of north-

west China. The intellectual fascination of the findings in sub-

Saharan Africa and their global significance cannot be denied.

But for sheer emotional impact, no recent discoveries match

those from northwest China.

The East Central Asian mummies and associated grave

goods are remarkable for their preservation and beauty.

More than this, though, the Tarim Basin discoveries bring

to light evidence of long-term connections between cultures

that shaped both the East (as far as Japan) and the West (as

far as the Mediterranean). The revelatory finds detail untold

tales of intrepid mobility through trading and herding that we

would normally associate with modern times. Yet plainly such

mobility had its roots in the earliest nomadic and sedentary

groups. Much is made of the ethnic and linguistic issues asso-

ciated with these discoveries, but the really unexpected finds

have been the wealth of clothing and other items of material

culture recovered from the Tarim Basin graves. The exhibition

Secrets of the Silk Road, then—of the great discoveries made

by archaeologists along this ancient tract—will cause us to

rethink many of our accepted ways of understanding the roots

of our civilizations. It will turn long-held beliefs upside down,

and compel us to see interconnections and mobility as axi-

omatic to a past that greatly helped to shape both the Greco-

Roman and Chinese worlds, as well as Gandharan India. We

are at the beginning of a new world history, which may explain

the incredible fascination with this amazing exhibition.

richard hodges, ph.d.The Williams Director

Extraordinary Discoveries along the Silk Road

Vic

tor

H. M

air

by richard

hodges

from the director

The Tarim Basin in East Central Asia was home to numerous cemeteries which contained naturally mummified human remains, colorful textiles, food, and other grave goods. The Xiaohe cemetery shown here is marked by tall wooden posts.



portrait

Dr. Elfriede R. (Kezia) Knauer

Penn museum has lost

a highly regarded author-

ity on the Silk Road

just months before the

appearance of this spe-

cial issue of Expedition. Dr. Elfriede

Knauer died after a long illness, shortly

after agreeing to contribute to this issue. Kezia, as she was

known to her family, friends, and colleagues, led an excep-

tional life. Born in Germany, she learned French, English, and

Latin at an early age; her formal study of Classical Archaeology,

Ancient History, the History of Art, and East Asian Studies

eventually led to a Ph.D. from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Universität, Frankfurt am Main, in 1951. That same year, she

married Georg Nicolaus Knauer, now Professor Emeritus

in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of

Pennsylvania. By her own account, her areas of specialization

were Greek vase painting, the survival of classical themes in

Renaissance art, the history of cartography, and classical influ-

ences on Central and East Asian art.

The Knauers came to the University of Pennsylvania in early

1975. In 1983, Kezia was appointed Research Associate in the

Mediterranean Section at the Penn Museum, and from 1986

onward, served as a Consulting Scholar. She had the distinc-

tion of being elected a member of the American Philosophical

Society in 1999, and additionally belonged to the Archäologische

Gesellschaft zu Berlin. In 2002, she received the Director’s

Award for distinguished service to the Penn Museum.

Knauer’s command of many subjects is reflected in her pub-

lished work including Coats, Queens, and Cormorants (Zürich

2009), a compendium of articles dealing with the historical, cul-

tural, and artistic interconnections between East and West. Her

earlier book, The Camel’s Load in Life and Death (Zürich 1998),

specifically dealt with trade along the Silk Road, much of which

was based on her firsthand observations; this book received

the prestigious Prix Stanislas Julien in 1999 as the best book

in Sinology. Yet for this writer and others who for the past 30

years attended the same lectures and meetings as the Knauers,

perhaps the greatest proof of the breadth of her knowledge

came in the form of

her questions and

comments to the

speakers which reli-

ably followed every

talk. No matter the topic at hand, her questions were invariably

models of perception and verbal lucidity, always delivered with

disarming kindness and modesty to the very heart of the subject

and leaving everyone better informed for having heard them.

Her knowledge of the Silk Road grew out of a series of jour-

neys undertaken by the Knauers beginning in the early 1980s

and continuing until a short time before her death. Indefatigable

and adventurous travelers, they visited nearly every European

country as part of Georg Knauer’s library-based research into

Latin translations of the Homeric epics, interspersed with

excursions to Syria, Israel, Egypt, Tunisia, and the various

Classical regions abutting the northern Mediterranean.

The capstone to four decades of travel included trips to

China, Tibet, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia,

Sri Lanka, Cambodia, India, and Pakistan, as well as to the

Crimea, Ukraine, Armenia, and Georgia. This enabled Dr.

Knauer to examine the Silk Route from the east and the west, a

study which ended up as an all-embracing passion. The fruits of

this took the form of books, articles, and a host of memorable

public lectures, all of which established her as a leading expert

in subjects too often avoided by specialists as linguistically, his-

torically, and even physically too challenging to undertake.

For many of her friends, Kezia Knauer was part of a remark-

able wave of European scholars who revolutionized the study

of the classics, archaeology, and art history in this country

during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Her reputation is destined to

remain intact for years to come. One can only wish that she

had been granted the time to write her recollections of travels

along the Silk Road for this special issue. The Museum and all

its friends shall miss her greatly.

donald white is Professor Emeritus of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Curator Emeritus of the Mediterranean Section at the Penn Museum.

3 July 1926–

7 June 2010

by donald white

Elfriede R. (Kezia) Knauer, photographed by her husband in the early 1980s, just as their trips along the Silk Road began.

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Walking through the exhibition Secrets of the

Silk Road, one is amazed

at the well-preserved

mummies and colorful

textiles. But perhaps the objects that we can

identify with most are the food items that may

have been meant to nourish the dead in the afterlife. Is that a

spring roll? A wonton? Yes, and they are remarkably similar to

what one would purchase in China today.

The extremely dry climate in the Tarim Basin preserved this

food. Few areas of the world can support populations in such

an arid environment, so finds of actual food products—exca-

vated more commonly in places like Egypt—are rare. Scholars

that study ancient food must generally rely on mentions in

ancient texts, animal bones or seeds, or, at best, food that was

thrown into a bog where the airless, acidic environment pre-

serves organic remains.

Secrets of the Silk Road includes six small food items, all

based on wheat. A fried twist of short spaghetti-like dough

strands is dated to the 5th to 3rd century BCE. Such food can

be found in northwest China today. One might assume that

other noodle dishes, particularly soups, were regular fare dur-

ing antiquity, as they have been for a long time in the area.

From the Tang Dynasty (7th to 9th century CE), we have part

of a spring roll and wonton, both virtually identical to modern

versions of the same food. Although we do not know exactly

what is in each one, both were stuffed with a filling. A similar

type of wonton, called a chuchure, is known as a traditional

food in present-day East Central Asia.

From both early and late periods, we have strikingly lovely

modeled flowers: a chrysanthemum, a plum blossom, and a

seven-petaled flower. These flowers were probably more orna-

mental than edible, since they were likely made from a stiff

dough of wheat and water, and baked into rocky hardness. They

may have served as religious offerings, since similar ornamental

offering-pastries are produced in China today. Tang earthen-

ware figurines also offer insight into food preparation in ancient

East Central Asia. Women are depicted performing chores such

as churning, baking or steaming, and rolling out dough.

From earliest times until today, food in many areas of

Central Asia was based on a classic Middle Eastern crop roster:

wheat, barley, and sheep products, with cattle, horses, goats,

camels, and other livestock playing important roles. Wheat

was a staple, and barley was also heavily used. Barley does not Xin

jiang

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what in the world

by e. n.

anderson

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This twisted fried dough, over 2,000 years old, was found in a tomb on a red lacquer table. It was made from flour and twisted by hand.

Ancient and Modern Foods from the Tarim Basin

Left, the dough in this spring roll was rolled out, wrapped around a filling, then fried. Right, a wonton is made of rolled dough that is wrapped around a filling and boiled. Wontons are often found in soups.




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bake well, but it does produce a good crop under conditions

so dry or salty that nothing else will grow. Dairy products were

probably far more important than meat, as in other traditional

Central Asian societies. Grapes and other fruits are well known

from historic sources.

Two species of millets also came from China and were used

for porridge. In Central Asia, however, they were always a

minor crop, since they do not produce good baking material

for bread, a staple that linked the region to the Western world.

Rice, now a staple in the Tarim Basin, is not attested from early

times. Judging by what is preserved, the diet in this region likely

resembled that found in the most remote parts of Afghanistan

and Pakistan up until a few decades ago: bread, a little yogurt,

fruit, and some herbs to accompany the meal. On a rare festive

occasion, meat, cheese, and butter might have also been eaten.

Wine and beer were probably available. The rivers afforded

some fish, known as laks or lakse in the Tocharian languages.

Dumplings of all kinds remain important in this area. They

are usually called by some variant of the word mantu, but they

are ashak in Afghanistan and momo in Tibet. Dumplings are

of uncertain origin and span across Eurasia from quite an early

period. The small dumpling would have been called mantou

(or mantu) in China during this time, while today its name

is jiaozi.

A Persian-style flat bread—often sprinkled with sesame

seeds and baked by sticking it to an oven wall—was probably

the staple food in Central Asia. Its modern Farsi name, nan,

is derived from the familiar pan. This bread reached China by

the Tang Dynasty, brought by Iranian refugees and traders. Its

descendents survive today as the shaobing, which is tradition-

ally baked on a heated pot wall, and the huge sesame breads of

northwest China, which are now steamed rather than baked.

No one seems to know when the huge tandur-style oven was

developed, but it is certainly very old in the region.

With further discoveries of intact burials in the Tarim

Basin, we will likely find more preserved food. Perhaps we will

develop a greater understanding of how food traditions trav-

eled along the many routes that made up the Silk Road.

e. n. anderson is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside.

For Further Reading

Anderson, E. N. The Food of China. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.

Chang, K. C., ed. Food in Chinese Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.

Robinson, Cyril D. “The Bagel and Its Origins—Mythical, Hypothetical and Undiscovered.” Petits Propos Culinaires 58 (1998):42-46.

Schafer, Edward H. “T’ang.” In Food in Chinese Culture, edited by K. C. Chang, pp. 85-140. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.

Trombert, Eric. “Between Harvesting and Cooking: Grain Processing in Dunhuang, a Qualitative and Quantitative Survey.” In Regionalism and Globalism in Chinese Culinary Culture, edited by David Holm, pp. 147-179. Taiwan: Foundation of Chinese Dietary Culture, 2010.

This flour dough dessert, in the shape of a plum blossom, originally contained fruit in its center. Some flowers like this may have been ornamental and not meant to be eaten.

Painted ceramic figurines depict female servants in various stages of food preparation.


Among the myriad objects

of world art, there are always

some that continue to cap-

tivate the viewer and haunt

the researcher. The tri-color

glazed clay Luohan statue from Yi County

(Yizhou), about 50 km southwest of the

city limits of Beijing, is such an object in the Penn Museum.

The mysteries that engulf this Luohan—a portrayal of a monk

who was a disciple of the Buddha Sakyamuni—begin with a

Chinese inscription reported to have been written in a cave in

which the statue may have been hidden. In translation, it reads

“All the Buddhas come from afar.”

The story of the cave with this enigmatic inscription is

recounted by German expeditionary Friedrich Perzynski in an

essay from 1920. In 1912, Perzynski had been shown a simi-

lar Luohan statue by two Beijing art dealers. He then traveled

to Yi County in search of the cave where a group of Luohan

sculptures, according to the dealers, had previously been hid-

den. When he entered the cave, Perzynski found the inscrip-

tion and concluded from this text that the statues had origi-

nally come from elsewhere and had later been deposited in the

cave, perhaps for safekeeping.

The Penn statue left China in 1913 through an arrangement

made by German art dealer Edgar Worch. In June of 1914, the

Museum purchased the statue from Worch. Perzynski mean-

while brought two other Luohan statues with him to Germany

in November of 1913. One was bought by the German collec-

tor Harry Fuld and given to the Museum für Asiatische Kunst

in Berlin, where it is believed to have been lost in the bomb-

ings of 1945. The other was purchased by the Metropolitan

Museum of Art in New York. Between 1914 and 1921, five

similar Luohan statues were bought or acquired by museums,

including the Metropolitan, the British Museum, the Royal

Ontario Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and

the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. Two more

Luohan statues are believed to be part of this group. One was

sold into a private collection in Japan as early as 1921, and the

other is possibly in the Musée Guimet.

Although the group of statues are similar in size,

glaze, and form, the individual quality of each Luohan

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steinhardt

The Luohan that Came from Afar


This Luohan from China is 1.21 m in height. It can be viewed in the Chinese Rotunda in the Penn Museum. UPM #C66A,B.



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challenges a viewer to connect with the person behind

the face. The depth of portraiture seen here is almost

unparalleled in Chinese art. This kind of portraiture is

possible because a Luohan was considered mortal. Chinese for

the Sanskrit word arhat, Luohan can be translated as “enlight-

ened man” or as the adjective “venerable.” Yet there is no

promise that an Arhat will attain the otherworldly status of

Buddhahood.

It is unknown if the Yizhou Luohan were portraits of spe-

cific individuals, although a goal of each sculpture clearly is

an individual, human portrayal. It is also unclear how many

statues were in the original group associated with the Yizhou

cave, and when and where they were originally made. Legends

from Buddhist literature tell of Luohan that appear in groups

of 16, 18, and 500. Today, the Luohan statues that survive in

their original temple settings, particularly in Japan, are often

found in groups of these numbers. At least 8, and probably

10, of the tri-color glazed Luohan statues left China during a

ten-year period, so the group might have originally numbered

16 or 18. The date of manufacture also is not certain. Although

the statues were sold as objects from the Liao Dynasty (ca.

947–1125), chemical tests on the Penn Museum statue yielded

a date as late as the 12th century, meaning that it could have

been made during the non-Chinese dynasty Jin (1115–1234)

that succeeded Liao in northern China.

Two other extraordinary Liao objects are on display in the

Rotunda. One is a silver death mask, beaten to a thickness of

no more than one cm. Not an individualized portrayal, the

burial mask is instead evidence of a Liao funerary practice

believed to have originated with North Asian nomads of the

1st millennium BCE. Another Liao object is the gilt bronze

statue of the bodhisattva Guanyin, acquired by the Penn

Museum in 1922. The bodhisattva is an enlightened being

en route to Buddhahood who aids others in the attainment

of their own Buddhist salvation. Guanyin is known for lov-

ing kindness and compassion, and is identified by the seated

Buddha in its crown.

The three pieces attest to the

strength and boldness of Liao sculp-

ture. The Luohan, however, super-

sedes the other two in its superla-

tive, descriptive face, a visage that

engages anyone who sees it, even

though its provenance remains a

mystery to this day.

nancy shatzman stein-hardt is Professor of East Asian Art, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania, and Curator in the Asian Section at the Penn Museum.

Associated with the Liao Dynasty (947–1125 CE), this death mask (H. 21 cm) was made by beating a heavy sheet of silver. UPM #44-16-1A,B.

The gilt bronze statue of Guanyin holds a lotus bud in its left hand. It measures 71 cm in height. UPM #C400.



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The Silk Roads in History by daniel c . waugh

There is an endless popular fascination with

the “Silk Roads,” the historic routes of eco-

nomic and cultural exchange across Eurasia.

The phrase in our own time has been used as

a metaphor for Central Asian oil pipelines, and

it is common advertising copy for the romantic exoticism of

expensive adventure travel. One would think that, in the cen-

tury and a third since the German geographer Ferdinand von

Richthofen coined the term to describe what for him was a

quite specific route of east-west trade some 2,000 years ago,

there might be some consensus as to what and when the Silk

Roads were. Yet, as the Penn Museum exhibition of Silk Road

artifacts demonstrates, we are still learning about that history,

and many aspects of it are subject to vigorous scholarly debate.

Most today would agree that Richthofen’s original concept

was too limited in that he was concerned first of all about the

movement of silk overland from east to west

between the “great civilizations” of Han China

and Rome. Should we extend his concept to

encompass striking evidence from the Eurasian

Bronze and Early Iron Ages, and trace it beyond

the European Age of Discovery (15th to 17th

centuries) to the eve of the modern world? Is

there in fact a definable starting point or conclu-

sion? And can we confine our examination to

exchange across Eurasia along a few land routes,

given their interconnection with maritime trade?

Indeed, the routes of exchange and products were

many, and the mix changed substantially over

time. The history of the Silk Roads is a narrative

about movement, resettlement, and interactions

across ill-defined borders but not necessarily

over long distances. It is also the story of artistic

exchange and the spread and mixing of religions,

all set against the background of the rise and fall

of polities which encompassed a wide range of

cultures and peoples, about whose identities we still know too

little. Many of the exchanges documented by archaeological

research were surely the result of contact between various

ethnic or linguistic groups over time. The reader should keep

these qualifications in mind in reviewing the highlights from

the history which follows.

The Beginnings

Among the most exciting archaeological discoveries of the

20th century were the frozen tombs of the nomadic pastoral-

ists who occupied the Altai mountain region around Pazyryk

in southern Siberia in the middle of the 1st millennium BCE.

These horsemen have been identified with the Scythians who

dominated the steppes from Eastern Europe to Mongolia. The

This detail of a pile carpet, recovered from Pazyryk Barrow 5 and dated 252–238 BCE, depicts an Achaemenid-style horseman.


Dan

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. Wau

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Pazyryk tombs clearly document connections with China: the

deceased were buried with Chinese silk and bronze mirrors.

The graves contain felts and woven wool textiles, but curi-

ously little evidence that would point to local textile produc-

tion. The earliest known pile carpet, found in a Pazyryk tomb,

has Achaemenid (ancient Persian) motifs; the dyes and tech-

nology of dyeing wool fabrics seem to be of Middle Eastern

origin. Other aspects of the burial goods suggest a connection

with a yet somewhat vague northeast Asian cultural complex,

extending along the forest-steppe boundaries all the way to

Manchuria and north Korea. Discoveries from 1st millennium

BCE sites in Xinjiang reinforce the evidence about active long-

distance contacts well before Chinese political power extended

that far west.

While it is difficult to locate the Pazyryk pastoralists within

any larger polity that might have controlled the center of

Eurasia, the Xiongnu—the Huns—who emerged around the

beginning of the 2nd century BCE, established what most con-

sider to be the first of the great Inner Asian empires and in

the process stimulated what, in the conventional telling, was

the beginnings of the Silk Roads. Evidence about the Xiongnu

supports a growing consensus that Inner Asian peoples for-

merly thought of as purely nomadic in fact were mixed soci-

eties, incorporating sedentary elements such as permanent

settlement sites and agriculture into their way of life. Related

to this fact was a substantial and regular interaction along the

permeable boundaries between the northern steppe world

and agricultural China. Substantial quantities of Chinese

goods now made their way into Inner Asia and beyond to the

Mediterranean world. This flow of goods included tribute the

Han Dynasty paid to the nomad rulers, and trade, in return

for which the Chinese received horses and camels. Chinese

missions to the “Western Regions” also resulted in the open-

ing of direct trade with Central Asia and parts of the Middle

East, although we have no evidence that Han merchants ever

reached the Mediterranean or that Roman merchants reached

China. The cities of the Parthian Empire, which controlled

routes leading to the Mediterranean, and the emergence of

prosperous caravan emporia such as Palmyra in the eastern

Syrian desert attest to the importance of interconnected over-

land and maritime trade, whose products included not only

silk but also spices, iron, olive oil, and much more.

The Han Dynasty expanded Chinese dominion for the first

time well into Central Asia, in the process extending the Great

Wall and establishing the garrisons to man it. While one result

of this was a shift in the balance of power between the Xiongnu


Xiongnu tombs contained various types of grave goods. Objects in this late 1st century BCE to middle 1st century CE burial from Mongolia included a bronze cauldron containing the remains of a ritual meal, pottery, and a Han Dynasty lacquer bowl with metal rim.


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The Qizilqagha beacon tower, northwest of Kucha, Xinjiang, dates from the Han Dynasty. It is located near an important Buddhist cave temple complex and stands approximately 15 m tall.


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and the Chinese in favor of the latter, Xiongnu tombs of the late

1st century BCE through the 1st century CE in north-central

Mongolia contain abundant Chinese lacquerware, lacquered

Chinese chariots, high-quality bronze mirrors, and stunning

silk brocades.There is good reason to assume that much of the

silk passing through Xiongnu hands was traded farther to the

west. Although Richthofen felt that the Silk Road trade ceased

to be important with the decline of the Han Dynasty in the 2nd

century CE, there is ample evidence of very important interac-

tions across Eurasia in the subsequent period when—both in

China and the West—the great sedentary empires fragmented.

The Silk Roads and Religion

During the 2nd century CE, Buddhism began to spread vigor-

ously into Central Asia and China with the active support of

local rulers. The earliest clearly documented Chinese transla-

Right, the 19 m high Tang period statue of Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future, is located at Xumishan Grottoes, Ningxia Hui Antonomous Region, China. The cave temples here were first carved in the Northern Wei peri-od. Below, this map charts major routes and sites of the Silk Road.


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Maijishan or “Wheatstack Mountain,” in eastern Gansu Province, is a Buddhist cave site first established under the Northern Wei Dynasty in the 5th century.

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tions of Buddhist scriptures date from this period, although

the process of expanding the Buddhist canon in China and

adapting it to Chinese religious traditions extended over sub-

sequent centuries. Understandably, many of the key figures in

the transmission of the faith were those from Central Asia who

commanded a range of linguistic skills acquired in the multi-

ethnic oasis towns such as Kucha. Buddhism also made its way

east via the coastal routes. By the time of the Northern Wei

Dynasty in the 5th and early 6th centuries, there were major

Buddhist cave temple sites in the Chinese north and extending

across to the fringes of the Central Asian deserts. Perhaps the

best known and best preserved of these is the Mogao Caves

at the commercial and garrison town of Dunhuang, where

there is a continuous record of Buddhist art from the early

5th century down to the time of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty

in the 14th century. One of the most famous travelers on the

Silk Roads was the Chinese monk Xuanzang, whose route to

the sources of Buddhist wisdom in India took him along the

northern fringes of the Tarim Basin, through the mountains,

and then south through today’s Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.

When he returned to China after some 15 years, stopping at

Dunhuang along the way, he brought back a trove of scrip-

tures and important images.

Many of the sites that we connect with this spread of

Buddhism are also those where there is evidence of the

Sogdians: Iranian speakers who were the first great merchant

diaspora of the Silk Roads. From their homeland in Samarkand

and the Zerafshan River Valley (today’s Uzbekistan and


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Tajikistan), the Sogdians extended their reach west to the

Black Sea, south through the mountains of Kashmir, and to

the ports of southeast Asia. Early 4th century Sogdian letters,

found just west of Dunhuang, document a Sogdian network

extending from Samarkand through Dunhuang, and along the

Gansu Corridor into central China. Sogdians entered Chinese

service and adopted some aspects of Chinese culture while

retaining, it seems, their indigenous religious traditions (a

form of Zoroastrianism). Their importance went well beyond

commerce, as they served not only the Chinese but also some

of the newly emerging regimes from the northern steppes,

the Turks and the Uyghurs. The Turks for a time extended

their control across much of Inner Asia and were influential

in promoting trade into Eastern Europe and the Byzantine

Empire. The Uyghurs received huge quantities of Chinese silk

in exchange for horses. Sogdians played a role in the transmis-

sion of Manichaeism—another of the major Middle Eastern

religions—to the Uyghurs in the 8th century, by which time

both Islam and Eastern Christianity had also made their way

to China. With the final conquest of the Sogdian homeland

by Arab armies in the early 8th century, Sogdian influence

declined. Muslim merchants of various ethnicities would

replace the Sogdians in key roles controlling Silk Road trade.

Tombs of the 5th to 8th century, along the northern routes

connecting China and Central Asia, contain abundant evi-

dence of east-west interaction. There are numerous coins

from Sasanian Iran, examples of Middle Eastern and Central

Asian metalwork, glass from the eastern Mediterranean, and

much more. By the time of the Tang Dynasty (618–906),

which managed once again to extend Chinese control into

Central Asia, foreign culture was all the rage among the

Chinese elite: everything from makeup and hair styles to

dance and music. Even women played polo, a game imported

from Persia.

The Impact of the Arabs and the Mongols

By the second half of the 8th century—with the consolida-

tion of Arab control in Central Asia and the establishment of

the Abbassid Caliphate, with its capital at Baghdad—western

Asia entered a new period of prosperity. Many threads made

up the complex fabric of what we tend to designate simply as

“Islamic civilization.” Earlier Persian traditions continued,

and the expertise of Eastern Christians contributed to the

This view of the southern portion of the Mogao oasis, Dunhuang, includes a temple façade (on the right) that was restored in 1936. The façade covers a 30 m high statue of Maitreya commissioned at the end of the 7th century by the female usurper of the Tang throne, Wu Zetian. Fences added in recent years to reduce wind erosion are visible on the plateau above the cliff.


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400 BCE 200 BCE 0 200 CE 400 CE 600 CE 800 CE 1000 CE 1200 CE 1400 CE 1600 CE

Mediterranean

Persia

Northen IndiaPakistanAfghanistan

Central Asia

East Asia

Macedonians

Roman Empire

Byzantine Empire

Seleucids Sassanians

Parthians Islamic Dynasties

Mauryans

KushansGuptas

Sogdians

Mughals

Sakas UyghursHephthalites Timurids

Xiongnu Juan-juan Khitans Mongols

Han Dynasty Sui Song Dynasty Ming

Hu Peoples Northern Wei Tang Dynasty Tanguts (Xi Xia)

136–125, 119–115 BCE. Zhang Qian, emissary sent by Han

Dynasty Emperor Wu Di to the “Western Regions,” who sup-

plied important commercial and political intelligence.

629–645 CE. Xuanzang (Hsuan-tsang), Chinese Buddhist

monk who traveled through Inner Asia to India, studied there,

and once back in the Chinese capital Chang’an (Xian) was an

important translator of Buddhist texts.

821. Tamim ibn Bahr, Arab emissary, who visited the impres-

sive capital city of the Uyghurs in the Orkhon River valley in

Mongolia.

1253–1255. William of Rubruck (Ruysbroeck), Franciscan

missionary who traveled all the way to the Mongol Empire

capital of Karakorum and wrote a remarkably detailed account

about what he saw.

1271–1295. Marco Polo, Venetian who accompanied his

father and uncle back to China and the court of Yuan Emperor

Kublai Khan. Marco entered his service; after returning to

Europe dictated a romanticized version of his travels while in

a Genoese prison. Despite its many inaccuracies, his account

is the best known and arguably most influential of the early

European narratives about Asia.

1325–1354. Abu Abd Allah Muhammad Ibn Battuta,

Moroccan whose travels even eclipsed Marco Polo’s in their

extent, as he roamed far and wide between West Africa and

China, and once home dictated an often remarkably detailed

description of what he saw.

1403–1406. Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo, Spanish ambassador to

Timur (Tamerlane), who carefully described his route through

northern Iran and the flourishing capital city of Samarkand.

1413–1415, 1421–1422, 1431–1433. Ma Huan, Muslim

interpreter who accompanied the famous Ming admiral Zheng

He (Cheng Ho) on his fourth, sixth, and seventh expeditions

to the Indian Ocean and described the geography and com-

mercial emporia along the way.

1664–1667, 1671–1677. John Chardin, a French Hugenot

jeweler who spent significant time in the Caucasus, Persia,

and India and wrote one of the major European accounts of

Safavid Persia.

Chronology of Selected Travelers

silk road timeline

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emergence of Baghdad as a major intellectual center. Even

though Chinese silk continued to be imported, centers of

silk production were established in Central Asia and north-

ern Iran. Considerable evidence has been found regarding

importation of Chinese ceramics into the Persian Gulf in the

8th through the 10th century. The importance of maritime

trade for the transmission of Chinese goods would continue

to grow as Muslim merchants established themselves in the

ports of southeast China. The Chinese connection had a

substantial impact on artistic production in the Middle East,

where ceramicists devised new techniques in order to imitate

Chinese wares. Conversely, the transmission of blue-and-

white pottery decoration moved from the Middle East to

China. The apogee of these developments came substantially

later in the period of the Mongol Empire, when in the 13th

and 14th centuries much of Eurasia came under the control

of the most successful of all the Inner Asian dynasties whose

homeland was in the steppes of Mongolia.

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Left, Timurid tile work may have been influenced by Chinese lacquerware. This example of tile work is from the Mausoleum of Shad-i Mulk, ca. 1372, Shah-i Zinda, Samarkand. Right, a gilded silver Tocharian or Bactrian ewer from the 5th or 6th century CE depicts the story of Paris and Helen of Troy. The ewer was found in the tomb of Li Xian (d. 569) near Guyuan, Ningxia Hui Antonomous Region, China. From the Collection of the Guyuan Municipal Museum.




˘

The Mongol Ilkhanid palace at Takht-i Suleyman in northwestern Iran (1270–1275) was probably the source of this lusterware tile with a Chinese dragon motif. From the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (no. C.1970-1910).

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This modern sculpture, shown with the Registan monuments, Samarkand, in the background, is evocative of the Silk Road. The buildings are the 15th century medrese (religious school) of Ulugh Beg and the 17th century Shir Dor medrese.

Under the Mongols, we can document for the first

time the travel of Europeans all the way across Asia, the

most famous examples being the Franciscan monks John

of Plano Carpini and William of Rubruck in the first half

of the 13th century, and Marco Polo a few decades later.

Genoese merchant families took up residence in Chinese

port cities, and for a good many decades there was an

active Roman Catholic missionary church in China. The

reign of Kublai Khan in China and the establishment of

the Mongol Ilkhanid regime in Iran in the second half of

the 13th century was a period of particularly extensive

exchange of artisans (granted, most of them probably

conscripted) and various kinds of technical specialists.

While their long-term impact may have been limited,

the exchanges included the transmission of medical and

astronomical knowledge. There is much here to temper

the view that the impact of the Mongol conquests was

primarily a destructive one.

Despite the rapid collapse of the Mongol Empire in

the 14th century, under their Ming Dynasty successors

in China and the Timurids in the Middle East, active

commercial and artistic exchange between East and


West continued into the 16th century. Timurid Samarkand

and Herat were centers of craft production and the caravan

trade. The early Ming sponsored the sending of huge fleets

through the Indian Ocean, which must have flooded the mar-

kets in the West with Chinese goods, among them the increas-

ingly popular celadon (pale green) and blue-and-white porce-

lain. The centers of Chinese ceramic production clearly began

to adapt to the tastes of foreign markets, whether in Southeast

Asia or the Middle East. The legacy of this can be seen in the

ceramics produced in northern Iran, which decorated palaces

and shrines, and in the later collections of imported porcelain

assembled by the Ottoman and Safavid rulers in the 16th and

17th centuries. Persian painting, which reached its apogee in

the 15th and 16th centuries, was substantially influenced by

Chinese models.

Conventional histories of the Silk Roads stop with the

European Age of Discovery and the opening of maritime routes

to the East in the late 15th century. Of course, there had already

long been extensive maritime trade between the Middle East,

South Asia, Southwest Asia, and East Asia. Undoubtedly the

relative value of overland and sea trade now changed, as did

the identity of those who controlled commerce. Yet, despite

growing political disorders disrupting the overland routes,

many of them continued to flourish down through the 17th

century. New trading diasporas emerged, with Indian and

Armenian merchants now playing important roles. Trade in

traditional products such as horses and spices continued, as

did the transmission of substantial amounts of silver to pay

for the Eastern goods. Among the Chinese goods now much

in demand was tea, whose export to the Inner Asian pastoral-

ists had grown substantially during the period of the Yuan and

early Ming dynasties. Trade along the Silk Roads continued,

even if transformed in importance, into the 20th century.

Re-discovery of the Silk Roads

An important chapter in the history of the Silk Roads is the

story of their re-discovery in modern times. Over the centu-

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On the left is a Ming porcelain dish created in the Jingdezhen kilns, dated 1403–1424. It was donated to the shrine of Shaykh Safi al-Din at Ardebil (northwestern Iran) by Safavid Shah Abbas I in 1611. On the right is a blue and white ceramic imitation of Chinese porcelain, probably from Samarkand, dated 1400–1450, which was produced by craftsmen conscripted in 1402 in Damascus. Both dishes from the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (no. 1712-1816; no. C.206-1984).


ries, many of the historic cities along the Inner Asian routes

declined and disappeared as a result of climate change (where

water supplies dried up) or changes in the political map. Only

episodically did the ancient sites attract the attention of local

rulers; at best, oral tradition preserved legends which bore

little relationship to the earlier history of the ruins. In Europe,

it was travel accounts such as that of Marco Polo which

helped to alert early explorers of Central Asia to the possibil-

ity of unearthing traces of Silk Road civilizations now buried

beneath the desert sands.

The foundation for modern Silk Road studies was laid

between the late 1880s and the eve of World War I. Somewhat

by accident, the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin discovered sev-

eral of the ruined towns along the southern Silk Road, includ-

ing Dandan Uiliq, north of Khotan, and Loulan, near the dried-

up bed of Lake Lop Nur. Inspired by such information and

the trickle of antiquities that was now coming out of Central

Asia, the Hungarian-born Aurel Stein, an employee of the

British Indian government, inaugurated serious archaeologi-

cal exploration of the sites in western China. His most famous

accomplishment was to purchase from the self-appointed

keeper of the Mogao cave temples near Dunhuang in 1907 a

significant part of a treasure trove of manuscripts and paint-

ings discovered there only a few years earlier. A year later, the

French sinologist Paul Pelliot shipped another major portion

of this collection back to Europe. In the meantime, pursuing

leads suggested by earlier Russian exploration, German expe-

ditions had been active along the northern Silk Road. There

they removed large chunks of murals from the most impor-

tant Buddhist cave temples in the Turfan and Kucha regions

and sent them back to Berlin. The Germans also found manu-

script fragments and imagery from Christian and Manichaen

temples. Such was the quantity and range of the textual and

artistic materials obtained by these early expeditions that their

analysis is still far from complete. Part of the challenge was

to decipher previously unknown languages and scripts. The

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In his own lifetime and even today, Marco Polo’s account of his travels has

been branded a falsification. A late medieval reader might have asked how it is

that there could be such wonders about which we have never heard. Why is it,

the modern critic muses, that Marco so often seems to get the facts wrong or fails to

mention something we think he should have included such as the Great Wall or foot-

binding? Of course in any age, the first descriptions of the previously unknown are

likely to engender skepticism. Accuracy in reporting may be conditioned by precon-

ceived notions, the degree to which the traveler actually saw something or perhaps

only heard about it secondhand, and the purpose for which an account was set down.

Marco had his biases—he was an apologist for Kublai Khan and, it seems, really did

work for the Mongols. As an official in their administration, he would not necessarily

have mixed with ordinary Chinese. When he was in China, much of the Great Wall

was in ruins and thus might simply not have seemed worthy of comment. Where

he reports on Mongol customs and certain aspects of the court, he can be very precise. If his descriptions of cities seem

stereotyped, the reason may have been that they indeed appeared equally large and prosperous when judged by European

standards. In any event, to convey the wonders of the Great Khan’s dominions required a certain amount of hyperbole.

It seems unlikely that Marco took notes along the way. Mistakes can thus easily be attributed to faulty memory as well as

the circumstances in which a professional weaver of romances, Rusticello of Pisa, recorded and embellished Marco’s oral

account while the two were in a Genoese prison. Even if Marco’s account still challenges modern scholars, there can be no

question about its impact in helping to transform a previously very limited European knowledge of Asia.

Marco Polo’s Travels: Myth or Fact?


belated Chinese response to what they came to

characterize as a plundering of their antiquities

finally put a stop to most foreign exploration

by the mid-1930s.

In recent decades, new excavations have

added substantially to our knowledge of this

part of Asia. One focus of Chinese archaeol-

ogy has been on the very early cultures of Inner

Asia, which antedate the traditional “begin-

ning of the Silk Roads.” The ongoing discover-

ies from locations such as the Astana cemetery,

dating from the Tang period, are enabling us

to now write a serious social and economic

history of some of the flourishing oasis com-

munities, in a time when silk was still a major

currency that fueled commerce.

Our knowledge of the cultures in the

northern steppes commenced with the work

of Russian archaeologists beginning at the

end of the 19th century. Russian expeditions

organized by the famous Orientalist Wilhelm

Radloff documented sites in southern Siberia

and northern Mongolia, providing some of the

first evidence about “cities in the steppe” and

helping to publicize the earliest texts in a Turkic

language. Russian-Mongolian expeditions

revealed the richness of Xiongnu elite burials at

the site of Noyon uul (Noin Ula) in the moun-

tains of north-central Mongolia, and were

responsible for the first serious excavation of

the 13th century capital of the Mongol Empire,

Karakorum. Archaeology at sites throughout

the Eurasian steppes has resulted in dramatic

discoveries, and forced us to question many

of our assumptions about when meaningful

exchange across all of Eurasia began.

Yet this is only part of the story, for equally

dramatic discoveries have been made in recent

years regarding maritime trade. From the

East China Sea to the Mediterranean, nauti-

cal archaeology is documenting the cargoes of

everything from scrap metal to fine porcelain.

Excavations along the Red Sea and the East

African coasts have expanded our knowledge

Our knowledge of the mechanisms for commercial

exchange along the Silk Roads is still limited. Most com-

merce was “short-haul” between one oasis or town and

the next, and probably never generated any written records. There

were also long-distance caravans and merchant diasporas often

located far from the “home office.” The Sogdians were involved in

long-distance trade, documented first in Sogdian letters written by

members of that diaspora in the early 4th century, and later from

documents unearthed in the Turfan oasis, among them a famous

example of a contract for the purchase of a slave. Religious affilia-

tion may have bound communities of entrepreneurs who were oth-

erwise isolated minorities in larger population groups. Thus Eastern

Christians (Nestorians) played important roles in trade from the

Middle East to India and beyond. With the rise of Islam, it was not

long before Muslim merchants were resident in the ports of south-

east China and in the Chinese capital of Chang’an. A vast repository

of Hebrew documents preserved in Cairo describes the activities of a

far-flung Jewish community all across the Mediterranean world into

Eastern Europe and through the Middle East. Italian merchants were

active all along the Silk Roads, even sending their representatives to

China in the time of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty.

Although Middle Eastern silk production was by now very sub-

stantial, imports of Chinese raw silk were significant in the emergence

of Italy as a major center of silk weaving. One of the most valuable

sources about products and prices is a commercial handbook com-

piled by the Florentine agent Pegalotti in Constantinople in the 14th

century. In it, he reports that the routes to China are generally safe for

travel. By the late 16th and 17th centuries, Armenian Christians were

placed in charge of the Safavid (Persian) silk trade. One of the most

remarkable documents from this late period in the history of the Silk

Roads is an account book by an Armenian, Hohvannes, who started

at the home office in a suburb of Isfahan, traveled south to Shiraz,

then on to the Indian Ocean coast, where he boarded a ship to India.

Once he arrived in the Mughal Empire, he continued his buying and

selling, aided by a mechanism for cashing in letters of credit and for

shipping goods back home even as he went on, ultimately spending

time in Lhasa before returning to India. Surprisingly, Hohvannes

used double-entry bookkeeping and thus has left us an invaluable,

detailed account of goods and prices.


Merchant Diasporas and Our Knowledge of Silk Road Trade


of contacts with India and the Far East. Although long

known from Classical texts, the archaeological evidence of

Roman trade with India continues to grow. Overall there

is now a much greater appreciation of the importance of

long-distance trade through the Middle East starting in the

Bronze Age and continuing well into the era when first the

Portuguese and then the Dutch and English began to dom-

inate the Indian Ocean. Maritime trade throughout history

has been an integral part of Eurasian exchange.

So the “Silk Roads” did not begin when Han Emperor

Wu Di sent his emissary Zhang Qian to the West in the

2nd century BCE any more than they ended when Vasco

Da Gama pioneered the route to India around the Cape

of Good Hope. Our current “Age of Discovery” concern-

ing the history of the Silk Roads, employing sophisticated


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A mural of donors (Tocharian princes?) from Kizil Grottoes, Cave 8 (“Cave of the Sixteen Swordbearers”), has been C-14 dated to 432–538 CE. Note the red hair on the men and the intentional defacement of the mural. From the Collection of the Museum of Asian Art, Berlin (MIK III 8691).

A mural brought back to Berlin by German archaeologists depicts Uyghur Buddhist devotees. It was found in Bezeklik, Temple 9, in the Turfan region, and dates to the 8th to 9th century CE. From the Collection of the Museum of Asian Art, Berlin (MIK III 6876a).


analytical tools such as DNA testing and remote sensing from

satellites, at the very least should persuade us that the study of

this history is still young. Who knows what secrets remain to

be uncovered from the desert sands?

daniel c. waugh is Professor Emeritus in History, International Studies, and Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is the current direc-tor of the Silk Road Seattle Project and editor of the journal of the Silkroad Foundation.

For Further Reading

Baumer, Christoph. Southern Silk Road: In the Footsteps of Sir Aurel Stein and Sven Hedin. Bangkok: Orchid Press, 2000.

Hulsewé, F. P., and M. A. N. Loewe. China in Central Asia: The Early Stage: 125 B.C.–A.D. 23. An Annotated Translation of Chapters 61 and 96 of the History of the Former Han Dynasty. Leiden: Brill, 1979.

Jackson, Peter, and David Morgan, trans. and eds. The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck: His Journey to the Court of the Great Khan Möngke 1253–1255. London: Hakluyt Society, 1990.

Juliano, Annette L., and Judith A. Lerner. Monks and Merchants: Silk Road Treasures from Northwest China: Gansu and Ningxia, 4th–7th Century. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., with The Asia Society, 2001.

Komaroff, Linda, and Stefano Carboni. The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256–1353. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

Qi, Xiaoshan, and Wang Bo. The Ancient Culture in Xinjiang along the Silk Road. Ürümqi: Xinjiang renmin chubanshe, 2008.

Tucker, Jonathan. The Silk Road: Art and History. London: Art Media Resources, 2003.

Whitfield, Roderick, Susan Whitfield, and Neville Agnew. Cave Temples of Mogao: Art and History on the Silk Road. Los Angeles: Getty Institute and Museum, 2000.

Whitfield, Susan. Life along the Silk Road. London: John Murray, 1999.

Whitfield, Susan, and Ursula Sims-Williams. The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith. Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2004.

Websites

Digital Silk Road (http://dsr.nii.ac.jp/).

Silk Road Seattle (http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad).

The International Dunhuang Project (http://idp.bl.uk).

The Silkroad Foundation (http://silkroadfoundation.org).


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About 130,000 ceramic vessels were recovered from a shipwrecked Chinese junk near Ca Mau, Vietnam. The tea bowls and saucers are from the Jingdezhen kilns and were made around 1725, apparently the year that the ship sank en route from Guangzhou to Batavia (Jakarta). From the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (nos. FE.49:2 to 179:1, 2-2007).



The Mummies of East Central Asia

by victor h. mair

In 1988, while visiting the Ürümqi Museum in

China, I came upon an exhibition which changed

the course of my professional life. At the time, my

academic career focused on the philological study of

manuscripts from caves at Dunhuang, a site where

the Silk Road splits, proceeding to the north and south. But

after I walked through black curtains into a dark gallery that

day, my fascination with the mummies of East Central Asia

began. At first, I thought the exhibition was a hoax, because

the mummies looked so lifelike. The colors of the textiles they

wore were vibrant. The associated bronze tools and other

objects from 3,000 to 4,000 years ago could not, I thought,

have been found in this region at such an early period. At that

time, I was not an archaeologist, but my general knowledge of

Chinese history and Central Asian sites indicated that this did

not make sense. I stayed in that gallery for probably five hours

that day.

I went back to my life at Penn as a scholar of medieval

Buddhist literature and Chinese popular Buddhist literature.

In the fall of 1991, while on sabbatical, I read of the discovery

of Ötzi the Iceman in the Alps near the border between Austria

and Italy. Ötzi, over 5,000 years old, had been naturally mum-

mified in the Schnalstal glacier. That afternoon, I started mak-

ing calls to organize an expedition to China to study the mum-

mies that had been naturally preserved there. Since 1993, I

have traveled to China numerous times with different kinds of

scholars—archaeologists, geneticists, textile specialists, bronze

experts—to study the Central Asian mummies and the cul-

tures they represented.

Dan

iel C

. Wau

gh The Beauty of Xiaohe is one of over 30 well-preserved mummies found at the site, and certainly the most famous.

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A History of the Region: Where the Mummies

Were Discovered

During the late 19th century, a large region of East Central Asia

was forcibly incorporated into the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912)

through conquest by the Manchus. As a result, the region

became known as Xinjiang, which means “New Borders.”

This area—referred to by the local Uyghurs (a Turkic ethnic

group) as Uyghurstan or Eastern Turkistan—regained its

independence during the first half of the 20th century, after

the collapse of the Qing Dynasty. The People’s Republic of

China (hereafter China), however, militarily asserted its claim

as the legitimate successor to most of the lands of the Manchu

Empire during the second half of the 20th century, and rein-

corporated this region as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous

Region (hereafter Xinjiang).

The region constitutes 1/6 of the whole of China and,

apart from its obvious geostrategic significance, is blessed

with oil and other mineral resources, has rich agricultural

lands (especially for animal husbandry), and is where China

tests its nuclear weapons. Consequently, since the late 1970s,

the Communist government has made a concerted effort to

develop the region.

As is true elsewhere in China and other parts of the world,

wherever the construction of buildings, roads, and other pub-

lic projects is carried out, archaeological discoveries are likely

to be made. There has been an endless succession of finds in

Xinjiang from the Bronze Age and Iron Age right up to mod-

ern times. Because of its remoteness from the centers of early

human development and its inaccessibility—in the form of

harsh deserts surrounded by formidable mountains—East

Central Asia was one of the last places on earth to be inhabited

by humans. Thus, the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods are

poorly represented. From the Bronze Age (beginning ca. 2000

BCE) onward, however, this region was a key locus of interac-

tion between western and eastern Eurasia. During the 2nd and

1st millennia BCE, the overwhelming majority of the traffic

was from west to east, but starting around the beginning of the

Common Era, transcontinental exchange gradually shifted,

moving now more from east to west. Of course, some indi-

viduals and groups continued to travel from west to east—for

example, for trade, diplomacy, and religion. The result of this

traffic, travel, and exchange across Eurasia was a great mixing

of cultures and peoples, with East Central Asia constituting a

vital contact zone at the very center of the continent.

Despite the inhospitable climate—temperatures range

from -40 degrees C to +40 degrees C (-40 to 104 degrees F)—

tens of thousands of individuals

poured into East Central Asia and

settled down in oases, intramontane

valleys, and wherever they could

eke out a living. Since this area was

so far from the steppes, the coasts,

and the major plains and river val-

leys of Eurasia, there was not much

competition for the settlements

after they were established. Still,

having found an ecological niche

and having devised unique means

for subsisting there, the inhabitants

thrived, leaving behind large cem-

eteries.

Hundreds of archaeological

sites scattered across the length and

breadth of East Central Asia date to

every century starting from about

4,000 years ago. Many of these This map shows archaeological sites in East Central Asia that are discussed in this article.


sites are cemeteries of considerable extent, often with hun-

dreds of burials. Nearly all burial grounds in the region have

yielded abundant skeletal remains. Due to the local conditions

(extreme aridity and sandy, highly saline soil), dozens of cem-

eteries around the southern and eastern edges of the Tarim

Basin contain extraordinarily well-preserved mummies,

together with the textiles in which they were dressed and the

artifacts that accompanied them to the afterworld.

It should be noted that the so-called mummies of East

Central Asia are actually desiccated corpses. Unlike Egyptian

mummies, their lifelike appearance is due not to any artificial

intervention on the part of those who buried them. Rather,

it is the outcome of the special environmental conditions

described above, with the best-preserved bodies being those

who died in winter and were buried in especially salty, well-

drained soils—all of which would inhibit putrefaction and

prevent deterioration; after thousands of years, not even slight

amounts of moisture penetrated these burials.

The early inhabitants of this region did not belong to a sin-

gle genetic and linguistic stock, nor did they come from a sin-

gle source. Instead, they entered the Tarim Basin at different

times and arrived from different directions. In earlier periods,

they came from the north, northwest, west, and southwest.

During later periods, these migrations continued, but groups

came from all directions.

Although the mummies from the first 2,000 years (2nd and

1st millennia BCE) were manifestly Caucasoid in appearance,

careful physical anthropological and genetic studies reveal

that they possessed a variety of characteristics linking them

to diverse groups outside of the region. Beginning about the

time of the Eastern and Western Han Dynasties (206 BCE–9

CE; 25–220 CE), the proportion of Mongoloid traits from

the east progressively increased until now the Uyghurs,

Kazakhs, Kirghiz, and other non-Sinitic (non-Chinese)

peoples in the region are between a 30/70% and 60/40%

Caucasoid/Mongoloid admixture. During the more than 50

years of China’s rule over Xinjiang, there has been a dramatic

increase in the number of people of Sinitic (so-called Han

Chinese) descent entering the region, such that the previously

admixed Turkic and other non-Sinitic peoples—who used to

constitute over 90% of the population—now amount to only

about 50%, with the other half made up of rapidly in-migrat-

ing Han Chinese.

Cemeteries of East Central Asia

The human history of East Central Asia begins about 3,500 to

3,800 years ago, with three sites just to the west of the fabled

city of Loulan (also known as Kroraina in the Prakrit language,

and Krorän in Uyghur), which lies to the northwest of the great

dried-up lake known as Lop Nur. These sites are Gumugou

(Qäwrighul), Tieban (Töwän), and Small River Cemetery 5

(SRC5, Xiaohe, Ördek’s Necropolis). While the burials are

laid out somewhat differently at the three sites—Gumugou

features hundreds of wooden posts radiating in what may be a

solar pattern, Tieban has shallow burials on terrace land, and

Small River Cemetery 5 is a striking 7 m high mound of sand

with five layers of burials in the middle of the desert—prox-

imity of time and place, plus a number of common features,

certify that Gumugou, Tieban, and SRC5 belong to a single


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The cemetery site of Xiaohe, shown here with wooden posts and boat-shaped coffins, has been completely excavated.


cultural horizon. Among the shared features of these sites

are plain-weave, natural color woolen mantles that serve as

shrouds, felt hats with a feather inserted at the side, ephedra

(a medicinal plant) deposited in the grave, finely woven grass

baskets rather than ceramics, and evidence of bronze usage.

Among the most spectacular of the mummies from Small

River Cemetery 5 (hereafter Xiaohe) is a female that has come

to be called “The Beauty of Xiaohe” (ca.1800–1500 BCE) (see

page 23 and above). She is more than a match for “The Beauty

of Loulan,” a mummy dated to ca. 2000 BCE that was found

at Gumugou in 1980. The Beauty of Xiaohe is very well pre-

served and even retains flaxen hair and long eyelashes. She

was wrapped in a white wool cloak with tassels and wore a felt

hat, string skirt, and fur-lined leather boots. She was buried

with wooden pins and three small pouches of ephedra. The

Beauty of Loulan wears garments of wool and fur and a felt

hood with a feather; she was buried with a comb, a basket,

and a winnowing tray.

Among the other striking aspects of the Xiaohe cemetery

are six surrogate mummies made of wood, with leather for

skin, hair, and mustache sewn on, and a full set of clothing.

Since all six of these artificial mummies are male, and all six

were buried at about the same time, we may speculate that

they represent men who died away from home and whose

bodies were never recovered.

What is even more remarkable than the two “Beauties”

or the connections between these three sites south of the


Jeff

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, Kai

lun

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g (s

ideb

ar)

One will never know what kind of person the Beauty of Xiaohe was in life. Death

and time separate the Beauty from us like the shroud wrapped around her body.

She seems to be part of two worlds: one of life, for she appears merely asleep, and

one of mortality. The discovery of her mummy was a revelation, and yet much of her history

remains an enigma. Even though she is thousands of years old, her youthful appearance is

well-preserved. I was inspired to create this painting by the Beauty’s famed attractiveness and

the mysteries surrounding who she may have been in life. Three drafts were created: the first

an observational study; the second, a woman gazing at the viewer; and finally, a third draft

that was ultimately painted, portraying the Beauty in a serene atmosphere with an inexpli-

cable sense of both gentleness and isolation. Although artistic liberties were taken with her

appearance, she could not be without her trademarks: that rakish felt hat and long flaxen hair.

kailun wang is a member of the Class of 2012, College of Arts & Sciences, University of Pennsylvania. She is a student of Victor Mair.

The Beauty of Xiaohe, as painted by Kailun Wang.

The Beauty of Loulan was discovered in a grave along the Töwän River near Loulan. A wooden comb, woven basket, and win-nowing tray were found with her.


Kuruk (Quruk) Tagh range is that a fourth site, the Northern

Cemetery (Beifang Mudi), has recently been discovered about

600 km to the southwest. The resemblances to Xiaohe, in

particular, are so close that there can be no mistaking their

consanguinity, although the Northern Cemetery is thought to

be slightly earlier than Xiaohe. The puzzle that remains to be

solved, however, is how these two closely related sites, which

are so far apart on the map, came to resemble each other so

nearly. Since the people of both Xiaohe and the Northern

Cemetery seem to have entered the Tarim Basin with their

cattle, ovicaprids (goats and sheep), and wheat—all of which

were domesticated in Southwest Asia thousands of years

earlier—a great deal more research is necessary to determine

whether the people of these two sites embarked from a com-

mon staging ground and separately went their own ways, or

whether one of the two groups sprang from the other.

Another noteworthy site with well-preserved mummies is

that of Qizilchoqa (“Red Hillock” at Wupu [“Fifth Burg”]),

about 60 km west of Qumul (Hami), an important, old Silk

Road town in the far eastern portion of the region. Dated


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This mummy, wearing a felt hat, was found in the Northern Cemetery.

Preliminary excavations have taken place at the recently discovered Northern Cemetery (Beifang Mudi).



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Known as Chärchän Man, this 50- to 55-year-old male is unusually tall at well over 6’.

This infant died when he or she was less than a year old. Dark blue stones covered its eyes, and red woolen yarn was inserted into its nostrils. A cow horn and a bottle made from a sheep’s udder accompanied the infant.

to ca. 1200 BCE, the site of Qizilchoqa is distinguished by the

presence of diagonal twill plaids, tripartite disk wheels for carts,

and evidence of horse domestication. Again, the existence of

all these cultural traits—with long distance connections to the

west in such a remote desert location—calls for further investi-

gation and explanation.

Returning to the Tarim Basin, we find along its southeast

edge the most extraordinary burial ground outside the small

village of Zaghunluq, in Chärchän (Qiemo) County. Dated ca.

1000 to 500 BCE, Zaghunluq is home to three of the most strik-

ing mummies from East Central Asia. Clad in rich burgundy

wool clothing, the individuals buried in Tombs 1 and 2 may

be a family, due to the similarity of their burial garments. The

group consists of a man about 50-55 years old, a woman, and

an infant. The man wears white deerskin boots and striped felt

leggings; a solar or sheep’s horn design is painted in ocher on

his temples. The woman’s face is also painted with spirals and

triangles. The infant is wrapped in a shroud, with a soft, fluffy

bonnet of blue cashmere; he or she was buried with a cow horn


cup and a sheep udder that may have been used as a nursing

bottle. Because the soil of the Zaghunluq cemetery is particu-

larly saline, all organic remains—human bodies, foodstuffs,

and an astonishing variety of Late Bronze Age and Early Iron

Age textiles—have been extremely well preserved.

Continuing westward along the southern rim of the Tarim

Basin, we come to the ancient site of Niyä (called Jingjue Guo

[Kingdom of Jingjue]). Here we find, along the Niyä River and

into the desert, large cemeteries and extensive villages dating to

roughly the 3rd to 4th century CE. The archaeological remains

recovered from Niyä enable us to gain a vivid picture of life in

a desert oasis nearly 2,000 years ago. Houses with elaborately

carved woodwork, grape arbors, workshops for making nails,

richly decorated Buddhist temples, and sealed wooden letters

written in Kharoshti Prakrit all contribute to our understand-

ing of a community on the outskirts of civilization.

By the Middle Iron Age, elements of Chinese culture such

as lacquerware and fine silks began to show up as grave goods,

although the local culture was fundamentally composed of

a curious mixture of Indian, Western Classical, and West

Central Asian characteristics. One very large wooden coffin

from Niyä is of particular interest, since it contained a lov-

ingly laid-out couple with exquisite silk face covers and an

extremely rich assemblage of grave goods, including a bow

and a quiver full of arrows, a knife in a sheath, pottery, goat/

sheep legs, fruit and other food, a lacquer box, a bronze mir-

ror, cosmetics, needlework, and other objects, all of which

indicated the status and the interests of the deceased. An indi-

cation of the ethnicity of the ancient people of Niyä may be

found in the fair-skinned individuals with light blond hair one

comes across in the villages of this area still today.

Farther westward beyond Niyä lies the town of Khotan;

outside of this large oasis is the ancient cemetery complex of

Sampul (2nd century BCE to 3rd century CE), which stretches

on for many kilometers. Like nearly all of the Bronze Age

and Early Iron Age cemeteries encircling the Tarim Basin,

the complex at Sampul lies on the gravelly tableland or ter-

race that is located between the desert floor and the foothills of


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A man and woman with masks covering their faces were recovered from a burial at Niyä. See Sheng, this issue, page 41 for details of the silk brocade covering the mummies.



Above, the female mummies from Subeshi are known for their black pointed hats. Right, the trappings of Yingpan Man are in excellent condi-tion. However, his remains have deteriorated.

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the mountains beyond, the source of the meltwater from the

glaciers that sustains life in the oases. Among the unusual

aspects of the Sampul cemetery are the mass burials, with as

many as 170 bodies thrown in chaotically—perhaps the vic-

tims of a massacre. The hair of the individuals was mostly

light brown, but the population was probably heterogeneous

as it is today. The ancient inhabitants of Sampul undoubtedly

had vibrant interactions with peoples of West Central Asia

and even further west, since their magnificent textiles possess

motifs, dyes, and weaves that are characteristic of cultures that

lie in that direction.

Probably the most intriguing mummies in East Central

Asia are the “witches” of Subeshi, who wear very tall, pointed

black hats that look like the iconic headgear of their sisters in

popular culture. Subeshi is located to the east of the impor-

tant city of Turfan, in the basin of

the same name, which is home to

the second lowest spot (-154 m) on

earth (after the Dead Sea at -422 m).

There are also a number of impres-

sive male mummies from Subeshi,

including a man wearing a felt hel-

met (perhaps a soldier) and another

man whose chest has been stitched

up with horse hair in an early (4th

century BCE) example of surgery in

the region.

Subeshi lies high up in the Tuyuq

Gorge. When we come down out

of the mouth of the gorge and pro-

ceed along the floor of the Turfan

Depression, we soon arrive at the

site of Yanghai (or Yangkhay).

Among the mummies from Yanghai

are a little boy whose chin is tucked

under on his chest, and a shaman-

like figure smothered in cannabis,

with bells on his boots. Another man

from Yanghai had a well-preserved

harp by his side.

Traveling southwest along the

main trade route leading from

Turfan, we come to the old caravan

site of Yingpan. The tallest (nearly

6’6”) and most resplendently garbed mummy—Yingpan

Man— was discovered here. Yingpan Man’s amazing cloth-

ing, with its Greco-Roman motifs and extravagant embroidery

(see Sheng, page 39 this issue, for a detailed description of the

textiles), marks him as a man of tremendous wealth and far-

reaching connections. Although his seriously decomposed

body no longer lies within its sartorial shell (his remains were

recently removed during conservation and study of his cloth-

ing, and have since been stored separately in Ürümqi), we

know from earlier descriptions that he was a Caucasoid with

brown hair. Considering his riches, international aura, and the

strategic trading spot where he was buried, it is not unlikely

that Yingpan Man was a Sogdian merchant. The Sogdians

were a Middle Iranian people who were known as traders par

excellence throughout Eurasia.

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A geneticist from Jilin University works on obtaining bone samples from a skeleton at a burial outside of Turfan.



This has been a very brief overview of the amazingly well-

preserved mummies of East Central Asia. The significance of

these ancient human remains is not simply their uncannily life-

like appearance. More important are the physical and material

attributes which link them to cultures far and wide. Indeed,

these mummies have filled what was previously an enormous

gap in the prehistory and history of east-west cultural inter-

actions. It was evident all along that civilizations from both

eastern and western Eurasia had not arisen in isolation, but

the mechanisms of cultural transmission were poorly under-

stood. With the discovery of the Bronze Age and Early Iron

Age mummies of East Central Asia, however, the actual agents

of transmission—the people, together with their cultural attri-

butes—have finally been recovered.

It is certain that the inhabitants of the Tarim Basin did

not arise from the soil of the region, but that they came from

elsewhere and brought with them the technologies, ideas, and

practices of their homelands. Ensconced in their new sur-

roundings, the early denizens of East Central Asia adapted

and modified their cultures to fit the new local conditions

they encountered. Careful examination of the mummies,

using ancient DNA analysis and physical anthropology, as

well as continuing study of associated artifacts, allow us to

put together an increasingly clear picture of the origins of the

Bronze Age and Early Iron Age peoples of the Tarim Basin and

their interactions with the peoples of the surrounding areas.

Western explorers first came face-to-face with the des-

iccated bodies of the earliest inhabitants of the Tarim Basin

over a century ago, while Chinese and Uyghur archaeologists

uncovered increasing numbers of them beginning in the late

1970s. But it was not until the 1990s that serious international

investigation of the mummies and their cultures occurred.

During the coming decades more cemeteries with mummies

will surely be discovered, and research on the findings from

them will undoubtedly flourish, with the result that the prehis-

tory and history of Eurasia and its peoples will become ever

more comprehensible and distinct.

victor h. mair is Professor of Chinese Language and Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a curatorial consultant and the catalog editor of the exhibi-tion Secrets of the Silk Road, as well as author and/or editor

of numerous books including The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West (2000), with J.P. Mallory.

For Further Reading

Anthony, David W. “Tracking the Tarim Mummies: A Solution to the Puzzle of Indo-European Origins?” Archaeology 54.2 (2001):76-84.

Barber, Elizabeth Wayland. The Mummies of Ürümchi. New York: W. W. Norton; London: Macmillan, 1999.

Debaine-Francfort, Corinne, and Abduressul Idriss, eds. Keriya, mémoires d’un fleuve: Archéologie et civilisation des oasis du Taklamakan. Suilly-la-Tour: Findakly, 2001.

Mair, Victor H., ed. The Mummified Remains Found in the Tarim Basin. Special issue of The Journal of Indo-European Studies 23.3-4 (1995).

Mair, Victor H., ed. The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia. 2 vols. Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph Series, 26. Washington, DC and Philadelphia: The Institute for the Study of Man in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania Museum Publications, 1998.

Mair, Victor H. “Genes, Geography, and Glottochronology: The Tarim Basin during Late Prehistory and History.” In Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference. Los Angeles, November 5-6, 2004. Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph Series, No. 50, edited by Karlene Jones-Bley, Martin E. Huld, Angela Della Volpe, and Miriam Robbins Dexter, pp. 1-46. Washington: Institute for the Study of Man, 2005.

Mair, Victor H. “The Rediscovery and Complete Excavation of Ördek’s Necropolis.” Journal of Indo-European Studies 34 (2006):273–318

Mair, Victor H., ed. Secrets of the Silk Road. An Exhibition of Discoveries from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China. Santa Ana, California: Bowers Museum, 2010.

Mallory, J. P., and Victor H. Mair. The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West. London: Thames & Hudson, 2000.

Millward, James A. Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

Wang Binghua, ed. Xinjiang gushi: gudai Xinjiang jumin ji qi wenhua (The Ancient Corpses of Xinjiang: The Ancient Peoples of Xinjiang and Their Culture). Victor H. Mair, tran. Ürümchi: Xinjiang Renmin Chubanshe, 2001.



Silk was one of the most luxurious com-

modities traded along the many routes of

the Silk Road. But one should not assume

that only silks were traded, or that silks

were the most important of all exchanged

goods. Since the late 19th century, archaeologists

have unearthed textile fragments made of other fibers

such as wool, cotton, and hemp from sites around

the Taklamakan Desert in Central Asia. In this arti-

cle, different types of cloth found in Central Asia will

be described and illustrated by photographs of arti-

facts from Secrets of the Silk Road.

The first evidence for weaving silk appears 5,000

to 7,000 years ago in China. Any evidence of silk out-

side China proper at this time would strongly suggest

that the non-Chinese traded with the Chinese for this

much sought-after textile. Chinese silks were prized

in ancient Rome, which led to the forging of a trade

route between the East and West. Whereas scholars

have amply documented the complex long- and short-

distance trade between China and the Mediterranean

world and between China and Korea and Japan, few

have examined the contemporaneous exchange of

goods to the north and south, such as between the

pastoral nomads, who roamed seasonally across the

pastures to the north of ancient Iran and China, and

the sedentary agriculturalists in China. The extensive

representation of nomadic legacies in Secrets of the

Silk Road—in the form of practical as well as extraor-

dinary wool textiles—addresses this imbalance.

Textiles from the Silk RoadIntercultural Exchanges among Nomads,

Traders, and Agriculturalists

by angela sheng

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A fragment of a tapestry shows a centaur blowing a horn and a warrior carrying a spear. See pages 38-39.



READING CULTURE IN TEXTILES

Textile patterns attract the eye, and textile textures invite

the hand. Textiles can further reveal much about their

makers, traders, and users. For example, a specific kind

of fiber would suggest the maker’s way of life. Pastoral

nomads sheared wool off domesticated sheep that

required large pastures. Sedentary agriculturalists reeled

silk off silkworms that necessitated the planting of the

mulberry for feeding the silkworms. Each type of tex-

tile construction required different kinds of tools, some

portable such as a back-strap loom, others less so, such

as a treadle loom. Design and ornamentation revealed

the source of inspiration for textile-makers: stylized flora

and fauna or imagery with figures suggest myths and

narratives, perhaps seen on other objects transported by

traders from faraway places. The study of cloth manu-

facturing leads us to understand how various peoples—

nomads, traders, and agriculturalists—contributed to

the development of textile art and technology.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––

A glossary of terms shown in bold is provided to help

you understand words like warp and weft: the language

of textile production. Also, objects are not shown to scale.

WOOLEN FINDS

Textile historian Elizabeth Barber dates the domestica-

tion of sheep at 7000 BCE, or perhaps as early as 10,000

BCE. In ancient times, woolen fibers were short, scaly,

and much rougher than they are today. Normally, short

woolen fibers would require twisting and spinning into

long, continuous yarn before they could be woven into

textiles. The scaly surfaces of early wool fibers, however,

allowed textiles to be manufactured without weaving.

The fibers interlocked when felted or compressed by the

combined application of damp heat and kneading pres-

sure. The scaly surfaces of these fibers also meant that

a felted textile contained a myriad of tiny air pockets

between the kinks of the fiber. These air pockets retained

body heat when the wool mass was made into clothing

and worn in bitterly cold winters.

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Back-strap loomAny loom, often requiring the weaver to be seated on a

platform or the ground, with a strap behind the weaver’s

back so that the weaver uses his or her body as weight to

maintain the stretched warp taut for weaving. The warp

ends are attached to the strap at one end and at the other

end, to a fixed pole or stick.

BrocadingTo weave with a brocading weft, a supplementary weft

introduced to a ground weave.

complex pattern loomAny loom that is equipped with shafts and patterning rods

for the repetition of patterns in both the warp and weft.

douBle-weave, taBBy-BasedA weave in which either the warp or the weft is composed

of two series and the binding structure is the tabby; better

known as double-faced weave.

Felted woolWool compressed by heat and moisture to form an

interlocked surface.

knotted pile weave A weave that is made with supplementary weft yarns

wrapped around the warp ends; the wrapped yarns are

then cut to make a “knotted” pile standing above the sur-

face of a ground weave.

taBBy ground weaveThe structure of the textile is tabby, the basic binding sys-

tem based on a unit of two warp ends and two weft picks

in which each warp end passes over one and under one

weft pick.

tapestry weaveA weave of only one warp and one weft but composed of

threads of different colors that do not pass from selvage to

selvage but are carried back and forth in small areas, one

color at a time (by means of a shuttle), interweaving with

the warp of that colored area only. The binding is usually

tabby and weft-faced (where you do not see the warp).

treadle loomAny loom with a treadle, or foot pedal, for the raising

and lowering of a shaft holding warp ends by the seated

weaver. The number of foot pedals would correspond to

the number of shafts.

warpThe longitudinal threads of a textile, stretched between

the beams on a loom.

warp-Faced compound taBByA warp-faced weave with complementary warps of two

or more series (usually of different colors for patterning

purposes) and one weft. The ground binding weave is in

the tabby.

warp-Faced compound twillSame as above except the ground binding weave is in the

twill. Also known as samitum.

weFtYarn drawn through the warp ends by means of a shuttle.

weFt BeaterA sword beater or a comb beater to beat the weft densely

so that the weft picks are even and the textile compact.

weFt-Faced compound taBByA weft-faced weave with complementary wefts in two or

more series, usually of different colors for patterning pur-

poses and a main warp and a binding warp. The ground

binding weave is in the tabby. Also known as taqueté.

The Language of Textile Production: A Glossary of Terms

(1, 2

) Xin

jiang

Inst

itute

of

Arc

haeo

logy

Col

lect

ion,

(3) V

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air



Felted Wool

Felted wool was used to make clothing and furnishings,

such as hats, capes, carpets, and even saddle blankets for

both functional and aesthetic purposes. This example of

a short conical hat (1) dates to ca. 1800–1500 BCE. It is

made of very dense felt in its original off-white hue, and is

conspicuously stitched with a red cord going around the

hat several times as if marking a pathway. The hat was fur-

ther adorned with feathers and two weasel pelts. A red cord

attached to the rim of the hat afforded the wearer a chin

strap. Similar red wool cords are found on other objects

from the same time period. Here you see a red cord used to

string a jade bead as a bracelet (2).

Pastoral nomads used felt headgear to mark distinct

social status, and many hats, as shown here in the xinjiang

Musuem, have been recovered from burials (3). This tall,

peaked hat (32.7 cm) (4) was excavated in 1985 from Tomb

No. 5 at Zaghunluq, Chärchän, an oasis on the Chärchän

River to the south of the Taklamakan Desert. Dated to ca.

800 BCE, it is made of two thick brown felt pieces sewn with

buff stitching. To stiffen the peak and prevent it from col-

lapsing, the tip was stuffed with tufts of felt. The use of buff

yarn (natural color faded over time) for both functional and

decorative stitching shows that the maker of this unusual

hat was aware of aesthetic needs (form and color) while

frugal with resources. Note that the peak curls backward in

contrast to the forward curl of the peaked hat worn on the

bronze figurine of a kneeling warrior (5) from a tomb dated

to ca. 500 BCE in xinyuan county of Ili vally—a mountain

valley to the northwest of the Taklamakan Desert.

The peaked brown felt hat is only one of ten hats associ-

ated with the famous mummy known as “Chärchän Man”

from Tomb No. 2 at Zaghunluq, Chärchän (see page 28

in this issue). He was buried in a wool trouser suit with

pale red piping. His legs and feet were wrapped in hanks

of combed wool (in primary colors: red, yellow, and blue)

underneath white deerskin boots. Elizabeth Barber specu-

lates that felting might have been discovered when a man,

wearing hanks of wool such as these, inadvertently com-

pressed the wool inside his boots; sweat given off as he

moved would have fused the fibers creating felt.

A type of felt similar to that used for Chärchän Man’s

leggings was made into a blue bonnet with red edging for

(4,5

,7) X

injia

ng U

yghu

r A

uton

omou

s R

egio

n M

useu

m C

olle

ctio

n, (6

) The

Sta

te H

erm

itage

Mus

eum

, St.

Pet

ersb

urg

© T

he S

tate

Her

mita

ge M

useu

m/p

hoto

by

Vla

dim

ir Te

rebe

nin,

Leo

nard

Khe

ifets

, Yur

i Mol

odko

vets

4 5

6

7



a 3-month-old infant found in Tomb No. 1 at Zaghunluq,

Chärchän (see page 28 in this issue). Similar textiles were

found on both the man and the infant, including the

twisted red and blue wool cord tied over the clothing and

around the arms of the man and around the small shroud

of the infant.

larger felt textiles—such as carpets and saddle blan-

kets—allowed space for more intricate designs. An out-

standing example (6) (not in exhibition) is a felt saddle

from Kurgan (burial mound) No. 1 at Pazyryk in the Altai

Mountains of Siberia, which dates to the second half of the

4th century BCE. It features a crested griffin, horned feline

heads, and a goat or ram intertwined in transformative

combat. Such animal designs as nomadic expressions were

more commonly found in metal ornaments, like this gold

plaque with a tiger design (7).

Pastoral nomads created their own textile patterns

as well as adapting complex motifs from others.

The peripatetic lifestyle of the nomads ensured widespread

transmission of motifs, resulting in many local varia-

tions. one example of the sharing of designs is found on a

wooden container, carved with quadrupeds, that dates

to the 5th century BCE (8). Rows of triangles at the top

and bottom of the vessel recall the design of the crown

worn by a seated female figure (goddess?) in the earliest

pictorial felt carpet, also from Pazyryk, Kurgan No. 5 (9)

(not in exhibition). Anne Farkas and others have already

traced various motifs on this large carpet (measuring 4.5

by 6.5 m) to ancient Iranian designs, notably those seen

at Persepolis, such as the throne of the goddess on the

felt carpet which recalls a carved stone relief of Persian

King Darius’ throne. Such similarities reveal the contact

between pastoral nomads in the north with the neighbor-

ing centralized empire to the south—a pattern also found

in the nomads’ trade with or raiding of the Chinese for silk,

described below.

Woven Wool

The woolen cloak from Small River Cemetery 5 (xiaohe)

(10), dated to 1800–1500 BCE, is woven in the simplest

plain weave of tabby ground; it features horizontal bands

achieved by inserting a darker yarn through as weft at

(4,5

,7) X

injia

ng U

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r A

uton

omou

s R

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n, (6

) The

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itage

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eum

, St.

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urg

© T

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tate

Her

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by

Vla

dim

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nin,

Leo

nard

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, Yur

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vets

(8, 1

0) X

injia

ng In

stitu

te o

f A

rcha

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gy C

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n, (9

) The

Sta

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itage

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, St.

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© P

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h at

The

Sta

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/pho

to b

y V

ladi

mir

Tere

beni

n, L

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rd K

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olod

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ts

8

9

10



(11,

13)

Xin

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Inst

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logy

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(12)

Xin

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hur

Aut

onom

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regular intervals—a simple method of ornamentation that

shows an acute sense of aesthetics.

While plain wool garments were more common

(11), dyed textiles were also sewn together to form bold

patterns, as on the skirted dress (12) from Tomb No.

55 at Zaghunluq. Both garments date to the 5th to 3rd cen-

tury BCE.

More elaborate designs were woven using the knotted pile and tapestry weaves. In 1984 a woolen saddle blan-

ket, measuring 76 by 74 cm, was unearthed from Horse

Pit No. 2, Cemetery 1, at Shanpula (Sampul) near Khotan

on the southern route (13). This blanket has regularly pat-

terned leaves in several colors, knotted as pile over a plain

tabby ground weave. Dated to the 1st or 2nd century

BCE, the leaves seem of local design. They foreshadow a

popular Sogdian (from ancient Iran) and more evolved

silk design of later times: the brocaded tree-leaf. Fragments

of the Sogdian design, discussed in more detail below,

were discovered in Astana tombs near Turfan, dated to 551

CE (14).

Pictorial representations were also woven as tapestry, a

method that afforded maximum flexibility to the weaver in

making motifs with wefts of different colors. An interest-

ing example is the contemporaneous remains of trousers

showing a human-headed horse moving through a field

of stylized flowers, and a larger warrior with a spear (15).

The trousers were created from a large wall hanging with

a celebratory theme. Although the human-headed horse

might have been inspired by the mythological Centaur

of Hellenistic origin, Elfriede Knauer indicated that the

warrior was Parthian, based on the animal-headed weap-

ons tucked into his belt (not shown on the section in the

exhibition). This tapestry fragment was unearthed from

Shanpula, Tomb No. 2, near the Horse Pit tomb where the

saddle blanket was found.

The pastoral nomads and settlers who inhabited the

oases around the Taklamakan Desert most often wove

tapestries in narrow bands that they used to embellish

clothing and accessories. Many such fragments came to

light in Shanpula, broadly dated from 100 BCE to 300 CE.

The exhibition includes an example of stylized flora in a

tapestry weave as the central decoration of a cosmetic bag

with strap (16). The bag contained a bronze mirror, an

iron clasp, red yarn, a bag of rouge, and hair when it was

11

12

13



(14)

Si c

hou

shi l

u: H

an T

ang

shi w

u, p

l. 23

. Bei

jing:

Wen

wu

chu

ban

she,

197

3, (1

5) X

injia

ng U

yghu

r A

uton

omou

s R

egio

n M

useu

m C

olle

ctio

n

(11,

13)

Xin

jiang

Inst

itute

of

Arc

haeo

logy

Col

lect

ion,

(12)

Xin

jiang

Uyg

hur

Aut

onom

ous

Reg

ion

Mus

eum

Col

lect

ion

unearthed in 1995 from Tomb No. 5 of Cemetery 1 at Niyä

on the southern route. The strap clearly made it portable,

essential for a lady on the move.

lastly, spectacular wool garments were found on

yingpan Man (see cover and page 30 in this issue). He

was unearthed in 1995 from Tomb No. 15 near yingpan,

south of Korla to the north of the Taklamakan Desert. He

was approximately 30 years old and was buried supine in a

wooden coffin that was painted with flowers on the outside

and covered with a woolen pile carpet with designs of lions.

Inside the coffin, the man’s head rested on a silk pillow in

the shape of two back-to-back roosters, metonymical of

the rooster’s crowing at dawn to imply the re-awakening

after death. His face was covered with a painted mask

embellished with gold leaf. His body was clothed in a silk

robe and embroidered wool trousers underneath a woolen

robe of exceptional artistic and technical competence. on

his feet he wore felt boots with silk insteps also embellished

with gold leaf. Miniature silk funerary garments, the pur-

pose of which is unknown, were placed at his waist and on

his left side.

Judging by his exotic burial dress and the square of

brocaded silk with the word shou, or longevity, placed by

his head, he may have been a rich merchant familiar with

Chinese customs. In addition, the Sasanian cut-glass bowl

buried with him would indicate that he traded with part-

ners from farther west.

The embroidered patterns on his brown woolen

trousers show arrays of stylized flora: four direction-

ally oriented long petals in red and green separated

by four smaller sprigs in buff (faded) surrounded

by large dots forming a diamond. When examined

closely, the slight irregularities of the shapes and stitching,

though still remarkable, would suggest either the handi-

work of a group or an amateur effort. It contrasts sharply

with the professionalism of the red and yellow woolen

robe worn as an overcoat, clearly the product of an accom-

plished workshop.

The robe shows spectacular motifs of paired bulls, goats,

and human figures interspersed with fruit-bearing pome-

granate trees in yellow on a red ground. Cut as a caftan with

crossed lapels, but closed on the right in a Chinese style, it

features naked males with muscular bodies and prominent

genitalia, some wearing a fluttering scarf. Each male figure

14

15


(16,

17)

Xin

jiang

Inst

itute

of

Arc

haeo

logy

Col

lect

ion,

(18)

©A

begg

-Stif

tung

, CH

-313

2 R

iggi

sber

g, 2

004,

inv.

nos

. 507

3 an

d 51

75, p

hoto

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isto

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has curly hair and big eyes above a high nose—definitely

not of Chinese ethnicity. Emma Bunker has identified

the conventionalized poses of these putti as derived from

late Antique motifs inherited from earlier Hellenistic and

Roman times. Such designs on silver cups or shields trav-

eled from Roman-Western to Parthian-Eastern lands. The

bulls and goats are also portrayed in typical Near Eastern

pose: standing on their hind legs with their forefeet lifted in

the air and their heads turned backwards. Elfreide Knauer

points out that the bulls are encircled with garlands, indi-

cating they were to be sacrificed.

Based on the adaptation of similar motifs on late

Antique (3rd to 7th century) metalware, Emma Bunker

suggests that this woolen robe was woven locally near

yingpan. The structure is a double-weave (tabby-based),

woven with two sets of weft, one in yellow and the other in

red. The pattern repeat consists of six alternating rows of

animals and figures in the weft and in the warp, the reverse

of each combination of an animal, half of a tree, and a fig-

ure. Both the structure and the pattern repeat indicate

technological mastery of a complex pattern loom. The

tight weave could have been enhanced with the weft beater

(17), where the teeth of the comb would have been inserted

among the warp threads so as to press the weft down.

The motifs closely resemble those found on a woolen

textile fragment, also unearthed from xinjiang, with a

dendro-calibrated C-14 date of 430–631 CE; naked and

winged figures chase butterflies amid scrolled vines (18) (not in exhibition). Even the structure of the textile is

similar: weft-faced compound tabby. Thus, the yingpan

woolen robe can probably be dated to a similar time period,

from the mid-5th to the mid-7th century. This coincides

with the radical developments in silk weaving at precisely

the same time, as evidenced by silk finds from the Astana

tombs of Turfan, to which we now turn.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE SILK FINDS

The discovery of artificially cut silkworm cocoons

(Bombyx mori) dated to the Neolithic yangshao Culture

in China traces the awareness of silk as a textile fiber

back to at least 5000–3000 BCE. Textile finds from Chu

16

17

18


(16,

17)

Xin

jiang

Inst

itute

of

Arc

haeo

logy

Col

lect

ion,

(18)

©A

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, CH

-313

2 R

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004,

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nos

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Tomb No. 1 (340–278 BCE) of Jiangling at Mashan in

Hubei reveal a technical mastery of brocading silk with

pictorial patterns in the warp (warp-faced compound tabby) by weavers in royal workshops. This technique

persisted, yielding textiles of many motifs. The motif of

dogwood blossoms on a face cover (19) probably origi-

nated in central China, where burial finds include textiles

with exquisite designs. Auspicious wishes for longev-

ity and progeny were soon added in Chinese characters,

such as “May this one-of-a kind jin silk bring the par-

ents generation after generation of descendants” (20).

Fragments of such exotic brocaded silks have surfaced far

from China, attesting to their broad appeal and bearing

witness to the efforts of the Han court to appease maraud-

ing nomads. Such treasured silks were made into mouth

covers and gloves.

Similarly, auspicious words also appeared on shoes

(21): “Wealth and prosperity suitable for a prince; may

heaven grant longevity.” These words were densely woven

in thick silk warps on narrow strips. The strips were

then sewn together as the shoe-face. The round-toe style

was Han Chinese, in contrast to the upturned-toe style

of distinct Turkish influence fashionable in the later

Tang dynasty.

During the 4th or 5th century, northerners of nomadic

ancestry fled westward from the ravages of war in China to

Turfan, an oasis on the northern route. Simultaneously,

Sogdians also moved eastward from their homeland in

search of long-distance trade. I have argued elsewhere

that exceptional circumstances brought Chinese and

Sogdian weavers to live and work together in Turfan.

Experimentation in weaving workshops led to new designs

and new weaving techniques, as evidenced by cloth made

by both groups.

For example, the brocaded robe with small blue and

gold checks (22) was woven in the traditional Chinese

weave of warp-faced compound tabby, unknown to the

Sogdians. This robe was unearthed in 1995 from Tomb

No. 3 in Cemetery No. 1 of Niyä on the southern route.

The checkered pattern cannot be traced to any Chinese

antecedent; however, it can be seen on the robe worn by

the historical Buddha as painted on a mural in a Kizil cave

(23). Note that the robe is cut in a non-Chinese style, with

narrow cuffs and a wide skirt, that is more convenient for

(19,

20)

Xin

jiang

Inst

itute

of

Arc

haeo

logy

Col

lect

ion,

(21)

Xin

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Uyg

hur

Aut

onom

ous

Reg

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Mus

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Col

lect

ion

19

20

21



horseback-riding than the straight Chinese cut, suited to

a more sedentary lifestyle. A more obvious Central Asian

motif—paired birds and rams around the tree-leaf pat-

tern—was also woven in the same warp-faced compound

tabby (24).

Although one brocaded silk might look like another,

each may have been woven differently. A new weave

structure emerged in the 5th century: the warp-faced compound twill. The astounding example in the exhi-

bition was discovered in 1972 in Astana Tomb No. 177,

belonging to the Northern Liang royal heir, Jüqü Fendai,

who died in 455 CE (25). This fragment features drag-

ons, deer, qilin (a type of unicorn), camels, and peacocks

facing each other under arches and between columns, in

red and yellow on a navy ground. This weave structure

was used extensively in the later Tang Dynasty to make

patterns that combined various cultural styles (26).

Whereas the pearl-roundel on this fragment derived

from Sasanian designs, the four-petaled flowers recall

the embroidered flora on the woolen robe worn by the

Yingpan Man. And the overall balanced and symmetrical

placement of those two repeating motifs was grounded in

Han Chinese aesthetics.

Over the next two centuries, two very complex bro-

caded silk weave structures were developed: the weft-faced

compound tabby (taqueté) and the weft-faced compound

twill (samitum). The taqueté is the weave structure of the

spectacular red and yellow woolen robe worn by Yingpan

Man. Silks woven in these new weaves often featured the

Sasanian pearl-roundel circling an animal such as a bird,

deer, horse, peacock, or as shown on the face cover in the

exhibition, a boar’s head (27). The face cover, woven in

the samitum, was excavated from Astana Tomb No. 332

and dates to the early 7th century. Controversy exists as to

where it was produced, either in Sogdiana or in Central

Asia. I have argued that it is Turfan. The boar’s head

may have served as a metonymical device to encourage

honesty in an official. In Sogdian mythology, the deity

Verethraghna assumed the shape of a boar when he went

to earth to punish liars. Certainly, the boar was a central

motif for Sogdian rulers, the Sasanians.

Still other artifacts show improved dyeing techniques

brought by traders from South Asia. This orange skirt with

stylized flora was probably stencilled with wax as a dye

(22)

Xin

jiang

Inst

itute

of

Arc

haeo

logy

Col

lect

ion,

(23)

Bild

arch

iv P

reus

sisc

her

Kul

turb

esitz

/ A

rt R

esou

rce,

NY

; Mus

eum

für

Asi

atis

che

Kun

st, S

taat

liche

Mus

een,

Ber

lin, G

erm

any,

Pho

togr

aph:

Iris

Pap

adop

oula

s, (2

4) X

injia

ng U

yghu

r A

uton

omou

s R

egio

n M

useu

m C

olle

ctio

n

22

23

24



resist (28). Many similarly dyed thin silks have surfaced at

various sites. Some show patterns tied and dyed. The dyes

and dyeing methods could be replicated far more easily than

complex weaving. Thus, their designs imitate the popular

woven textiles.

Secrets of the Silk Road presents a wide range of textile

motifs and techniques found on cloth recovered from burial

sites around the Taklamakan Desert. Peoples of fundamen-

tally different ways of life optimized their resources to create

clothing and furnishings to meet their functional and aes-

thetic needs. Their legacies reveal the extent to which they

learned from each other and thus enriched their material

expressions, with far-reaching implications.

angela sheng is Associate Professor of Art History and Director Chair of The Confucius Institute for Culture, Language, and Business at McMaster University.

For Further Reading

Bunker, Emma. “Late Antique Motifs on a Textile from Xinjiang Reveal Startling Burial Beliefs.” Orientations 35.4 (2004):30-36.

Cammann, Schuyler. “Notes on the Origin of Chinese K’o-ssu Tapestry.” Artibus Asiae 11 (1948):90-109.

Curtis, Vesta Sarkhosh. Persian Myths. London: British Museum, 1993.

Farkas, Anne. “Filippovka and the Art of the Steppes.” In The Golden Deer of Eurasia: Scythian and Sarmatian Treasures from the Russian Steppes, edited by Joan Aruz, Anne Farkas, Andrei Alekssev, and Elena Korolkjova. New York and New Haven: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2000.

Gervers, Michael, and Veronika Gervers. “Felt-making Craftsmen of Anatolian and Iranian Plateaux.” Textile Museum Journal 4.1 (December 1974):14-29.

Keller, Dominik, and Regula Schorta, eds. Fabulous Creatures from the Desert Sands: Central Asian Woolen Textiles from the Second Century BC to the Second Century AD. Riggisberg: Abegg-Stiftung, 2001.

Knauer, Elfriede R. The Camel’s Load in Life and Death. Zurich: Akanthus, 1998.

Schorta, Regula, ed. Central Asian Textiles and Their Contexts in the Early Middle Ages. Riggisberger Berichte 9. Riggisberg: Abegg-Stiftung, 2006.

Sheng, Angela. “Reading Costumes as ‘Texts’ and Decoding Ethnic Visual Culture of Southwest China.” Writing with Thread, pp. 13-41. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Art Gallery, 2009.

Zhao, Feng. Treasures in Silk. Hong Kong: The Costume Squad Ltd., 1999.

(22)

Xin

jiang

Inst

itute

of

Arc

haeo

logy

Col

lect

ion,

(23)

Bild

arch

iv P

reus

sisc

her

Kul

turb

esitz

/ A

rt R

esou

rce,

NY

; Mus

eum

fue

r A

siat

isch

e K

unst

, Sta

atlic

he M

usee

n, B

erlin

, Ger

man

y, P

hoto

grap

h: Ir

is P

apad

opou

las,

(24)

Xin

jiang

Uyg

hur

Aut

onom

ous

Reg

ion

Mus

eum

Col

lect

ion

(25,

26,

27,

28)

Xin

jiang

Uyg

hur

Aut

onom

ous

Reg

ion

Mus

eum

Col

lect

ion

25

26

27

28


Bronze Age Languages of the Tarim Basin

by j . p . mallory

The earliest accounts of the Tarim Basin depict

a society whose linguistic and ethnic diversity

rivals the type of complexity one might oth-

erwise encounter in a modern transportation

hub. The desert sands that did so much to

preserve the mummies, their clothes, and other grave goods

also preserved an enormous collection of documents, written

on stone, wood, leather, or—

employing that great Chinese

invention—paper. A german

expedition to the Tarim Basin

in the early 20th century

returned with texts in 17 differ-

ent languages.

We can get some appre-

ciation of the linguistic com-

plexity if we put ourselves in

the place of a traveling mer-

chant working the Silk Road

in the 8th century CE. A typi-

cal trader from the West may

have spoken Sogdian at home.

He may have visited Buddhist

monasteries where the liturgi-

cal language would have been

Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, but

the day-to-day language was

Tocharian. If his travels took him south to Khotan, he would

have to deal in Khotanese Saka. Here, if he had been captured

by a raider from the south, he would have had to talk his way

out of this encounter in Tibetan or hoped for rescue from an

army that spoke Chinese. He could even have bumped into

a Jewish sheep merchant who spoke Modern Persian. And if

he knew which way the wind was blowing, he would have his


West meets East at Bezeklik in the 9th to 10th century CE. Here we see a “western” and an oriental monk depicted together.

Alb

ert

von

Le C

oq,

1913

, C

hots

cho,

Ber

lin,

D.

Rei

mer

, 21

.



Xin

jiang

Uyg

hur

Aut

onom

ous

Reg

ion

Mus

eum

Col

lect

ion

(top

), Ja

mes

R. M

athi

eu (b

otto

m)

sons investing their time in learning uyghur, the language

of a major Turkish tribe who would descend on the Tarim

Basin in the 9th century to form its next major ethno-lin-

guistic group.

The many languages of the Tarim Basin can be

approached in a variety of ways. Normally, a linguist would

first examine them in terms of their genetic relationship

by language group. But here, where we are attempting to

relate them to the mummies and artifacts of the Bronze

and Iron Ages, another approach may be more efficient.

Some of the languages were clearly intrusive, derived from

outside of the Tarim Basin, and their use was probably con-

fined to certain contexts; others may have been “native”

(i.e. spoken over broad areas of the Tarim Basin since the

Bronze Age) and, consequently, may have been the spoken

languages of the people whose mummified remains have

captured so much attention.

This discussion of languages begins with those that are

liturgical, the languages for which we find sacred texts or

the accounts of specific religious communities. For exam-

ple, followers of the Iranian prophet Zarathustra entered

the Tarim Basin in the 7th century CE to establish their

fire temples in Khotan; they conducted their services in the

ancient Iranian language of Avestan. Buddhist missionar-

ies possessed liturgical texts in what is known as Buddhist

Hybrid Sanskrit, a language originating in northern

India. Sogdian, whose homeland is west Central Asia, was

employed not only by merchants but also for the religious

documents of Buddhists, Manicheans, and Nestorian

Christians. Whether from India or greater Iran, all of these

languages were carried into the Tarim Basin by religious

communities or merchants from outside the region during

the 1st millennium CE.

A second group of languages are associated with docu-

ments that were not exclusively religious, but also admin-

istrative. This may indicate that the languages were spo-

ken by considerable numbers of the local population.

Buddhists in the region of Krorän (Chinese loulan), for

example, employed an Indic language, Prakrit, in admin-

istration. Tocharian was used both to translate Buddhist

texts and as an administrative language, which suggests that

it was spoken by a wider range of people than exclusively

monks. Another major language was Khotanese Saka, the

language spoken in the south of the Tarim Basin at the site

Alb

ert

von

Le C

oq,

1913

, C

hots

cho,

Ber

lin,

D.

Rei

mer

, 21

.

Above, this text is an example of the Sogdian language and records a bill of sale for a female slave, dating from the Gaochang Kingdom (639 CE). Sogdian merchants traded throughout Eurasia and were important players in the econ-omy and culture along the Silk Road. Below, modern tour-ists along the Silk Road take a camel ride up the Flaming Mountain near the Bezeklik Buddhist Cave complex.


of Khotan as well as at northern sites such as Tumshuq and

Murtuq and possibly Qäshqär, the western gateway into the

Tarim Basin. The Khotanese texts date to the 7th to 10th cen-

tury, but they belong to a much wider group of Saka languages

spoken across the Eurasian steppe. And unlike Tocharian,

which became extinct, there were small pockets of Saka speak-

ers who survived in the Pamir Mountains. Among them are

the Sarikoli who relocated to the Tarim Basin to settle near

Tashkurgan. Finally, there was a third and obvious ethno-

linguistic group that had been established in the region: the

Han Chinese. Before the Han Dynasty the Tarim Basin was,

according to Chinese history, very much in the huang fu or

“wild zone”: the frontier world of fabulous peoples and beasts.

We do not begin to obtain good evidence of this region until

the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), when Zhang Qian made

his famous journeys to the west. How much earlier Chinese

had settled in the Tarim Basin is estimated by archaeological

and anthropological evidence.

In addition to these major players, the presence of some

groups of people can only be confirmed from about the

time of the Han Dynasty. These were nomadic peoples who

were variously in alliance or confrontation with the world of

ancient China. Most formidable were the xiongnu, the horse-

riding warriors of the steppe whose repeated attacks prompted

the Chinese to build major sections of the great Wall. The

xiongnu also controlled the Tarim Basin during the 2nd and

1st centuries BCE, until they were finally routed and replaced

by the Chinese at the end of the 1st century CE. They left no

written records, but if the xiongnu were the historical Huns,

they probably spoke an Altaic language related to Turkish or

Mongolian. Among the “peoples of the bow” who were tem-

porarily subjected to the leadership of the xiongnu were the

Wusun; this group settled the northern part of the Tarim

Basin in the first centuries CE in a territory previously occu-

pied by Saka tribes.

once one excludes all the languages imported by foreign

missionaries, outside merchants, Chinese administrators, and

later Turkic invaders, we are effectively left with two main

language groups in the Tarim Basin that might be associ-

ated with at least some of the Tarim mummies of the Bronze

Age and Iron Age: Khotanese Saka (or any other remnant

of the Scythians of the Eurasian steppe) and Tocharian. of

course, totally different languages may have been spoken by

these populations, especially if they were derived from native

Neolithic groups, whose languages did not survive into the

historical record.

Saka belongs to the eastern branch of the Iranian lan-

guages, which was one of the most widespread of the Indo-

European family of languages spoken in most of Europe, Iran,

India, and other parts of Asia. our primary knowledge of this

language group derives from documents from ancient Iran.

However, the borders of the language vastly exceeded those

of ancient Persia or modern Iran, as it was spread over most

of Central Asia and across the Eurasian steppelands from the

Danube to the yenisei River. The sub-branch to which Saka

belongs also included Sogdian, Bactrian, and Avestan. Most

archaeologists and linguists believe that the Iranian languages

appeared earliest in the steppelands and only later moved

southward through the agricultural oases of Central Asia into

the region of modern Iran. The Iranian language group is very

closely related to Indo-Aryan, the branch of Indo-European

that occupies the northern two thirds of India; these language


This text is in Khotanese Saka. (KS 01 from the Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin–Preussischer Kulturbesitz Orientabteilung, published at titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/texte/tocharic/tht.htm.)


Jam

es R

. Mat

hieu

, Xin

jiang

Uyg

hur

Aut

onom

ous

Reg

ion

Mus

eum

Col

lect

ion

(inse

t)

Above, the Buddhist temple complex in the ancient city of Gaochang is near Turfan and in the region where Tocharian A appeared. Left, this text is written in Tocharian A. (THT 677 from the Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften in der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin–Preussischer Kulturbesitz Orientabteilung, published at titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/texte/tocharic/tht.htm.)



Jam

es R

. Mat

hieu

groups presumably shared a common origin

in the steppe region during the Bronze Age,

perhaps about 2500 BCE.

The other major language group in the

Tarim Basin is Tocharian, which is subdivided

into two languages: Tocharian A, found in

documents near Turfan and Qarashähär, and

Tocharian B, found mainly around Kucha

in the west but also in the same territory as

Tocharian A. The documents, dating from

the 6th to the 8th centuries CE, suggest that

Tocharian A was by that time probably a dead

liturgical language, while Tocharian B was still

very much in use. In addition to Tocharian,

administrative texts have been discovered in

Prakrit, an Indian language from the territory

of Krorän; these documents contain many

proper names and items of vocabulary that

would appear to be borrowed from a form of

This chart compares Saka and Tocharian B with Latin, another Indo-

European language; except for English “ask,” all other English words

listed here are also cognate with the Latin and the languages of the Tarim

Basin, that is, they derive from the same Proto-Indo-European source.

saka tocharian B latin english

duva wi duo two

drai trai tres three

tcahora stwer quattuor four

hauda sukt septem seven

sata kante centum hundred

päte pacer pater father

mata macer mater mother

brate procer frater brother

assa- yakwe equus horse

gguhi- keu bos cow

bar- pär- fero bear (carry)

puls- park- posco ask

-

-

-

-

-

-

´


A market scene in modern-day Kucha, a city where Tocharian B once flourished.



Jam

es R

. Mat

hieu

J. P

. Mal

lory

Tocharian (sometimes known as Tocharian C) spo-

ken by the native population. The Kroränian docu-

ments date to ca. 300 CE and provide our earliest

evidence for the use of Tocharian. For our purposes

here, it is also very important to note that the ear-

liest evidence for the mummified remains of “west-

erners” in the Tarim Basin is found in cemeteries at

xiaohe (Small River) and Qäwrighul, both of which

are located in the same region as Tocharian C.

Tocharian documents consist primarily of trans-

lations of Buddhist texts, but also include secu-

lar documents such as permits for caravans to pass

through the territory. Two important features about

Tocharian make it stand out among all the languages

of the Tarim Basin. The first is that it has no outliers:

no evidence of an outside source such as that which

can be found for any of the Iranian, Turkish, Chinese,

or Tibetan documents. Tocharian is only known in

the Tarim Basin. Second, although the Tocharian

languages belong to the great Indo-European family

of languages, they are not closely related to the only

other group of Indo-European languages in greater

Asia: the Indo-Iranian languages. Indeed, many lin-

guists prefer to seek out the closest relatives of Indo-Iranian

among European languages such as greek or germanic, or

they argue that Indo-Iranian separated from the rest of the

Indo-European world at a very early date. From a linguistic

point of view, it is difficult to imagine that the Tocharians

originated in the same place and time as Iranian-speaking Saka.

Iranians

From a linguistic point of view, we need to explain how lan-

guages from two major Indo-European language groups man-

aged to spread into the Tarim Basin, and evaluate as far as pos-

sible whether they were the languages spoken by those Bronze

Age individuals whose remains were mummified. Purely from

a geographical perspective, neither language is likely to have

entered the Tarim Basin from either the east (where we find

Chinese) or the south (Tibetan), thus limiting their approach

to either the mountains to the west or the steppes to the

north. We also know that the Saka were known to the ancient

greeks as Scythians, and were clearly a people of the north-

ern steppes, famous as horse-riding nomads who periodically

challenged the civilizations to their south. They are attested

in historical and archaeological sources from about the 8th

century BCE, and are identified with ancient regional cultures

such as the Tagar of the Minusinsk Basin (8th to 1st century

BCE), located to the north of the Tarim, or cemeteries to its

west such as Shambabay/xiangbaobao on the Chinese side of

the Pamirs.

Saka cemeteries generally involve inhumation burial within

some form of timber chamber—anything from a solid piece

of wood to a timber-built chamber—covered by a kurgan or

mound. The identification of Saka tombs in the environs of

the Tarim Basin itself includes Zhongyangchang in the Tian

Shan, where there are about 30 kurgans (ca. 550–250 BCE)

attributed to the Saka before the area fell to the Wusun. The

site of Alwighul/Alagou is a multi-period and apparently

multi-ethnic cemetery; the latest burials (3rd to 2nd century

BCE) are assigned to the Saka, as they are found in pine-built

chambers and accompanied with animal-style art famous

from Scythian/Saka tombs across the Eurasian steppe. on the

Keriya River we have both the fortified settlement of yumulak

The cross-hatched areas of this map show the distribution of evidence for the Saka language and archaeological sites, identified as Saka or earlier Iranian, in the Tarim and Jungghar basins.



J. P

. Mal

lory

Kum/yuansha and adjacent cemeteries. one of the cemeteries

goes back to the 7th century BCE and is believed to have been

associated with the Saka, based on evidence including timber-

built tombs, high peaked hats, Europoid physical type, and

Saka-compatible pottery. In terms of distribution, the Saka

sites tend to lie to the north, east, or south of where most of

the mummified remains have been recovered; however, they

have also been identified among the later burials at Alwighul.

The tall hats of the female mummies from Subeshi might also

pass for a Saka trait, and so identification of some of the mum-

mies with the Saka or Iranian speakers in the northeast Tarim

is a serious possibility. But here we are dealing with people

and languages which, if our archaeological identifications

can be trusted, date only to the last half of the 1st millennium

BCE. Can we determine an earlier date for Iranian speakers in

the Tarim?

The Bronze Age antecedent to the Iron Age Scythians/Saka

is the Andronovo cultural complex, a series of related cultures

that spanned the area between the urals and the yenisei from

ca. 2000–900 BCE. Its linguistic identification is somewhere

within the general Indo-Iranian branch of languages and, at

least within the steppeland regions, it is presumably Iranian

before the 1st millennium BCE. The Andronovo cultural com-

plex provides a broad umbrella of cultural traits which impor-

tantly include the use of tin bronze, an extensive series of char-

acteristic metal implements and ornaments, the use

of chariots, and distinctive horse-gear. Economically,

the culture was versatile: in some regions, it was clearly

semi-nomadic, while in others, it adopted irrigation

agriculture. Its presence is attested in the Jungghar/

Zhunge’er Basin at cemeteries at Sazicun and

Adunqiaolu, where the ceramics are clearly related to

the Andronovo complex. People associated with this

cultural complex may have lived in the Tarim Basin,

although the evidence is strongly circumstantial. We

do not have clear examples of Andronovo settlements

marked by its distinctive ceramic styles. While some

of its burials share what may be generic elements with

those found in the Tarim—use of timber chambers or

stone cists—the Andronovo type of east Kazakhstan,

the Fedorovo culture, practiced cremation as well as

inhumation.

In short, direct evidence for Andronovo sites is so

far absent from the Tarim Basin. It must be noted that

Andronovo metalwork has been recovered from a number

of sites, e.g. xintala, Qizilchoqa, and yanbulaq as well as the

Agarshin hoard from Toquztar. In addition, the initial appear-

ance of horses and wheeled vehicles in the Tarim, and the intro-

duction of the chariot to China, are all attributed to Andronovo

contacts. This evidence dates from ca. 1300 BCE onwards and

advances considerably the potential presence of Iranian speak-

ers in the Tarim, although it does not provide us with the settle-

ments and burials that might better constitute a “smoking gun.”

Tocharians

The one language group that is most clearly anchored in the

Tarim, Tocharian, lacks any obvious external source. So the

line of reasoning that might link linguistic evidence with the

archaeological record becomes even more dubious. To ren-

der matters even more difficult, Iranian speakers from the

Andronovo culture of the Iron Age could enter the Tarim

Basin from both the north and the west, so this would seem,

at first, to remove any potential homeland for the Tocharians

since they should not have come from precisely where we

derive another language group. There are two ways out of this

problem. The first involves suggesting a long and untrace-

able trek across the Eurasian steppe to the Tarim Basin. As

The distribution of the Andronovo cultural complex is shown on this map.



J.P

. Mal

lory

J. P

. Mal

lory

the Andronovo culture is sister to the Timber-grave culture of

the European steppe— also seen as the antecedent to Iranian-

speakers—this trek would have to start somewhere to the west

of the Dnieper and would rival prehistoric journeys such as

the migration of southern Athabascans from Canada to the

American Southwest. Such an extraordinary historical event is

rarely the type of solution that is likely to satisfy either archae-

ologists or linguists.

The alternative approach is to select a staging area much

closer to the Tarim Basin that predates any of the proposed

Iranian-associated migrations. one culture that might fit

the bill is the Afanasievo culture of the Altai and Minusinsk

regions. This was an Early Bronze Age culture which may have

appeared before 3000 BCE (the start date is a serious prob-

lem) and continued to ca. 2500 BCE. The Afanasievo is known

from settlements that practiced both cereal agriculture and the

raising of domestic livestock; however, most evidence of this

culture comes from about 50 cemeteries. The Afanasievo buri-

als are in pits, either single or collective, surrounded by stone

enclosures, both rectangular and circular. grave goods include

ceramics that are generally decorated over much of their body;

shapes are large pointed base vessels and small footed vessels

that have been interpreted as censers for burning either an

aromatic or hallucinogenic substance. The Afanasievo culture

is linguistically attractive because its own antecedents appear

to lie in the European steppe, the same region that provides

the point of departure for the Indo-Iranian expansion some

thousand years later. This provides a convenient explana-

tion for why the Tocharian languages are ultimately related

to Indo-Iranian as members of the Indo-European language

family, but also as to why they are very different, in that they

separated from the rest of the Indo-Europeans at an early

date. Admittedly, this still requires an enormous trek from the

volga-ural region east to the yenisei with very little evidence

of intermediate “stop-overs” other than an Afanasievo cem-

etery near Karaganda.

The Afanasievo culture apparently expanded to the

south. Recent excavations by Alexei Kovalev and Diimaajav

Erdenebaatar have uncovered Afanasievo burials in north-

west Mongolia at the site of Khurgak-govi that date to ca.

3000–2500 BCE. of great importance was the discovery of the

Above, the distribution of the Tocharian languages in the Tarim Basin and the locations of some of the most significant discoveries of mummified remains are shown here. Right, Afanasievo burials are in pits surrounded by circular or rectangular stone enclosures. They may be single or collective burials.


remains of a wheeled vehicle in one of the graves. Before

this, the only evidence that the Afanasievo culture pos-

sessed vehicles was found engraved on stones within their

cemeteries. Also, in the foothills of the Jungghar Basin—

the natural approach to the Tarim Basin from the north—

we find the Qiemu’erqieke (Turkish Shamirshak) culture.

Although so far not precisely dated, this culture’s ceramics

(both pointed base vessels and footed ones) are similar to

those known in the Afanasievo, and here too graves may

be marked off with rectangular stone enclosures. Another

linking trait is that some of the burials lie on their backs

but with their legs flexed: this peculiar posture is also

known both in the Afanasievo culture and among the

burials of the European steppelands, but it is very rare

anywhere else. Similarly, the footed bowls—interpreted

as lamps in China but as “censers” in the Afanasievo cul-

ture—are also linked to the east European steppe. Finally,

the Qiemu’erqieke, Afanasievo, and European steppe cul-

tures all share a tradition of erecting stone anthropomor-

phic stelae. Although the Qiemu’erqieke is located in the

far north of the Jungghar Basin, similar pottery has been

recovered from the site of xikan’erzi, not far from both

Ürümchi and the territory of the Tocharians.

Further Afanasievo influence is difficult to substanti-

ate. our earliest cemeteries with Caucasoid populations

are at xiaohe and Qäwrighul, and their connection to the

Afanasievo culture is hardly robust, although a case can be

made. A key problem is that neither cemetery employed

ceramics as grave goods; consequently, the most sensitive


J. P

. Mal

lory

Some have compared this type of basket from the Qäwrighul cemetery with the ceramics of the Afanasievo culture (see previous figure, object C).

Above, the Afanasievo culture expanded to the south, as depicted by the cross-hatched area on this map. Below, these drawings show a comparison of material culture (bowl and “censer”) from Qiemu’erqieke (A, B) and Afanasievo (C, D) sites.


index of cultural affinity at this time is absent and may sug-

gest profoundly different cultural behavior. However, among

the baskets deposited with the burials, some certainly bear a

generic resemblance to Afanasievo vessels both with respect

to shape and ornament. While we do not find the characteris-

tic stone enclosures of the Afanasievo graves, Qäwrighul does

reveal concentric rings of timber posts that may have served

a similar purpose. Moreover, one might argue that the spec-

tacular wooden figures recovered from xiaohe are related to

the erection of stone stelae in the Qiemu’erqieke, Afanasievo,

and European steppe cultures. The fact that the deceased

are Caucasoids has also been regarded as circumstantial evi-

dence that they must have come from either the north or the

west, although their actual place of origin is still in question.

Analyses of the physical type of the Qäwrighul population have

produced mixed results, with physical anthropologist Han

Kangxin suggesting that they are closest to the Afanasievo, but

Brian Hemphill arguing that they do not resemble any neigh-

boring population. More recent ancient DNA analysis indi-

cates that the population from the xiaohe cemetery derives

from two sources: some individuals bear the same haplogroup

type widely found in eastern Europe, and others possess a type

more at home in the east Eurasian steppe of Siberia. Thus,

there is good circumstantial evidence that might associate the

earliest Bronze Age mummies with an expansion of Tocharian

speakers from the north who were formerly settled in the

region of the Altai mountains and Minusinsk Basin.

j. p. mallory is Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Author of numer-ous articles and books, his most recent book, with D.Q. Adams, is The oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World (2006). He is also the author, with Victor H. Mair, of The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West (2000).

For Further Reading

Jia, Peter Wei Ming, Alison V. G. Betts, and Xinhua Wu. “Prehistoric Archaeology in the Zhunge’er (Junggar) Basin, Xinjiang, China.” Eurasia Prehistory 6 (2009):167-198.

Kuz’mina, Elena E. The Origin of the Indo-Iranians. Leiden: Brill, 2007.

Lebedynsky, Iaroslav. Les Saces. Paris: Éditions Errance, 2006.

Li, Chunxiang, et al. “Evidence that a West-East Admixed Population Lived in the Tarim Basin as Early as the Bronze Age.” BioMedCentral 8, 15. www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/8/15

Mallory, J. P., and Victor H. Mair. The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West. London: Thames & Hudson, 2000.


The

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. 128

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J. P

. Mal

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The concentric circles of timber posts found at Qäwrighul have been compared with the stone enclosures surrounding Afanasievo burials (see page 51 in this issue).



GIfT fROM EUSEBA AND WARREN KAMENSKY ENDOWS NAGPRA POSITION

Penn Museum is pleased to announce a generous gift from

Mr. Warren F. Kamensky, long-time Penn Museum mem-

ber and volunteer, to endow the position of NAgPRA

(Native American graves Protection and Repatriation Act)

Coordinator. The gift will directly support the full-time staff

position currently held by Stacey Espenlaub. The position’s

new title will be the Euseba and Warren Kamensky NAgPRA

Coordinator of the American Section.

Penn Museum’s NAgPRA Coordinator position, estab-

lished initially in 1995 on a part-time basis, was formalized

as a full-time duty in 1997. It has proven to be of increasing

importance to the Penn Museum’s mission, not only in the

care of the collection, but also in developing and maintaining

relationships with tribes and Native American communities

across the united States.PENN MUSEUM CO-HOSTS INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON SOUTHEAST ASIAN CERAMIC ARCHAEOLOGY

From November 4 through 8, 2010, the Penn Museum,

in partnership with the Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler

galleries, co-hosted the International Workshop on Southeast

Asian Ceramic Archaeology: Directions for Methodology and

Collaboration. More than 30 international scholars from

laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, and vietnam, as well

as Japan, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and North America

gathered to view a special exhibition Taking Shape: Ceramics

in Southeast Asia in Washington, DC, and, in Philadelphia, to

examine and discuss one of the most significant collections of

legally excavated ancient Southeast Asian pottery outside of

the region—more than 500 vessels including material from

Ban Chiang, Thailand.

The workshop was co-organized by Dr. Joyce C. White,

Associate Curator, Asian Section, Penn Museum, and Director

of the Museum’s Ban Chiang Project and its Middle Mekong

Archaeological Project and louise Allison Cort, Curator of

Ceramics at the Freer and Sackler galleries. The program was

made possible with funding from the Henry luce Foundation

and the university of Pennsylvania Research Foundation.

museum mosaic

So

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People, Places, Projects

Warren Kamensky (seated on left) on the Penn Museum’s Susan H. Horsey Deck, with American Section staff, clockwise from top left, Stacey Espenlaub, NAGPRA Coordinator; William Wierzbowski, Associate Keeper; and Lucy fowler Williams, Ph.D., Keeper.

International scholars from ten countries participated in the Southeast Asian Ceramic Archaeology workshop.



So

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reviewed by mandy chan, Ph.D. student in the

Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the

University of Pennsylvania.

Few regions in the world have captured popular imagination

as much as the “Silk Road,” the overland trade routes that con-

nected the great cities of xian and Rome through the Central

Asian oases. However, long before silk was traded as a com-

modity along this fabled route, intensive cultural interaction

between the East and the West had been taking place, from as

early as the Bronze Age (ca. 2000 BCE) in the Eurasian Steppe.

In The Prehistory of the Silk Road, eminent Russian archae-

ologist Elena Kuzmina presents a critical overview of the cul-

tural conditions in Eurasia’s past that may have precipitated

the establishment of the Silk Road, and how these conditions,

in turn, profoundly impacted the development of the old

World. This book marks the first major scholarly effort that

synthesizes a large body of interdisciplinary subject matter on

Eurasian archaeology into a comprehensive account.

The book begins with an introduction to steppe ecology,

emphasizing the interrelationship between the environment

and the cultural development of Copper and Bronze Age

Eurasian communities. Kuzmina views the emergence of a

mobile economy on the Eurasian Steppe as an adaptive strat-

egy devised by early populations to counterbalance unfavor-

able ecosystems, as evidenced by the first major migration of

Indo-Europeans from the Pontic Steppe into Central Asia in

the 3rd millennium BCE, which coincided with a period of cli-

matic shift in the steppe grassland. With the advent of this new

economy, the spread of wheeled transport technology intensi-

fied, laying the foundation for semi-nomadic pastoralism as

the predominant lifestyle of the Eurasian Steppe.

To provide a proper cultural context, Kuzmina discusses

the complex cultures of Bronze Age Eurasia and their regional

interactions. She specifically references the Andronovo cul-

ture, known for its spoked-wheeled chariots and metal-

lurgy, whose cultural influences were felt as far as the Shang

Dynasty in China. Kuzmina argues against the idea that the

horse-drawn chariot first appeared in the Near East. Instead,

she proposes the Eurasian Steppe as the chariot’s place of ori-

gin. To support her argument, the author cites the evidence

of the early remains of spoked-wheeled chariots, cheek pieces,

and bones of sacrificed horses discovered at the graves of the

Sintashta-Petrovka culture in the ural Mountains. Though a

consensus has yet to be reached on the chariot’s origin, the

extensive amount of data presented in support of her hypoth-

esis has nevertheless demonstrated the central role of prehis-

toric Eurasian populations in the diffusion of cultural and

technological ideas throughout the region.

The last part of the book examines the role of Indo-Europeans

in the development of xinjiang and its neighboring territories.

looking at funerary customs and craniological research from

the gumugou burials in xinjiang, Kuzmina identifies the popu-

lation at this site as Tocharian. In addition, the author discusses

different indigenous archaeological cultures along the northern

and southern rims of the Tarim Basin—the routes that corre-

spond to those of the future Silk Road—to illustrate the inten-

sity of the historical process that transpired there.

As a student in the archaeology of China, I benefited

immensely from the book’s analysis of the complex prehistory of

the Silk Road. It provides not only an account of Eurasian prehis-

tory, but also insight into mankind’s ability to adapt and inno-

vate. Kuzmina’s research provides a much-needed framework

to bridge the theoretical vacuum between Chinese and Western

scholarship on the transcultural phenomenon of Bronze Age

Eurasia. While some of her hypotheses still await corroboration

from future archaeological research, her effort to make Eurasian

archaeology more accessible to a broad audience makes this

book an indispensable resource. Scholars will find this book a

helpful research summary and reference guide to Eurasia’s pre-

history, and informed readers will find a gateway through which

to further explore the rich cultural tapestry of the steppe.

book news & reviews

Before the Silk Road

The Prehistory of the Silk Road

by E. E. Kuzmina. victor H. Mair, ed. (Philadelphia, PA: university of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). 264 pp., 73 illustrations, cloth, $65.00, ISBN 978-0-8122-4041-2



call toll free: 1-800-537-5487www.penn.museum

ORIGINS OF AGRICULTURE IN WESTERN CENTRAL ASIAAn Environmental-Archaeological StudyDavid R. Harris

Archaeologist David R. Harris addresses questions of when, how, and why agriculture and settled village life began east of the Caspian Sea. The book describes and assesses evidence from archaeological investigations in Turkmenistan and adjacent parts of Iran, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan in relation to present and past environmental conditions and genetic and archaeological data on the ancestry of the crops and domestic animals of the Neolithic period. It includes accounts of previous research on the prehistoric archaeology of the region and reports the results of a recent environmental-archaeological project undertaken by British, Russian, and Turkmen archaeologists in Turkmenistan, principally at the early Neolithic site of Jeitun (Djeitun) on the southern edge of the Karakum desert.

2010 | 328 pages | 8 1/2 x 11 | 102 illus. | Cloth | $65.00

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U n i v e r s i t y o f P e n n s y l v a n i a m U s e U m o f a r c h a e o l o g y a n d a n t h r o P o l o g y f o U n d e d 1 8 8 7

indexvolume 52 – 2010

No. Page

3 5 Anderson, E. N. – What in the World: Ancient and Modern Foods from the Tarim Basin

3 55 Chan, Mandy – Book News & Reviews – Before the Silk Road

1 4 Gürsan-Salzmann, Ayse, and Evin H. Erder – From the Field: A Conservation Management Plan for Preserving Gordion and Its Environs

1 31 Hendrickson, Carol – Ethno-Graphics: Keeping Visual Field Notes in Vietnam

1 2 Hickman, Jane – From the Editor



1 3 Hodges, Richard – From the Director



1 44 Hodges, Richard – Book News & Reviews: Off the Beaten Path in England and Spain

2 6 Hamilton, Elizabeth – From the Field: Penn Museum in Laos

2 5 Hughes, Heather – What in the World: A Hidden Gem at the Penn Museum

2 43 Jensen, Erin, and Jennifer Reifsteck – Around the Museum: Summer in the City

2 48 Kauer, Jane – Book News & Reviews: The World of Soy

2 8 Lertcharnrit, Thanik – From the Field: An Early Ivory Bracelet from Central Thailand

3 23 Mair, Victor H. – The Mummies of East Central Asia

3 44 Mallory, J.P. – Bronze Age Languages of the Tarim Basin

1 46 Museum Mosaic: People, Places, Projects



2 9 Ousterhout, Robert G. – Archaeologists & Travelers in Ottoman Lands: Three Intersecting Lives

2 4 Pezzati, Alessandro – From the Archives: The Pennsylvania Declaration

1 40 Possehl, Gregory L. – Research Notes: Ernest J. H. Mackay and the Penn Museum

1 22 Raczek, Teresa P., and Namita S. Sugandhi – In the Heart of the Village: Exploring Archaeological Remains in Chatrikhera Village, Rajasthan, India

1 9 Romano, David Gilman, and Mary E. Voyatzis – Excavating at the Birthplace of Zeus: The Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project

1 8 Sharer, Robert – Portrait: Remembering Bill Coe

3 33 Sheng, Angela – Textiles from the Silk Road: Intercultural Exchanges among Nomads, Traders, and Agriculturalists

3 7 Steinhardt, Nancy Shatzman – Research Notes: The Luohan that Came from Afar

2 33 van der Sluijs, Marinus Anthony, and Anthony L. Peratt – Astronomical Petroglyphs: Searching for Rock Art Evidence for an Ancient Super Aurora

3 9 Waugh, Daniel C. – The Silk Roads in History

3 4 White, Donald – Portrait: Dr. Elfriede R. (Kezia) Knauer

2 21 Zrałka, Jarosław, and Wiesław Koszkul – New Discoveries about the Ancient Maya: Excavations at Nakum, Guatemala

¸

´

call toll free: 1-800-537-5487www.penn.museum

ORIGINS OF AGRICULTURE IN WESTERN CENTRAL ASIAAn Environmental-Archaeological StudyDavid R. Harris

Archaeologist David R. Harris addresses questions of when, how, and why agriculture and settled village life began east of the Caspian Sea. The book describes and assesses evidence from archaeological investigations in Turkmenistan and adjacent parts of Iran, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan in relation to present and past environmental conditions and genetic and archaeological data on the ancestry of the crops and domestic animals of the Neolithic period. It includes accounts of previous research on the prehistoric archaeology of the region and reports the results of a recent environmental-archaeological project undertaken by British, Russian, and Turkmen archaeologists in Turkmenistan, principally at the early Neolithic site of Jeitun (Djeitun) on the southern edge of the Karakum desert.

2010 | 328 pages | 8 1/2 x 11 | 102 illus. | Cloth | $65.00

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA MUSEUM PUBLICATIONS

now

Order Today! Email [email protected] or call (215)898-4050.


Preserved forever.Here for a moment in time.

february 5 - june 5, 2011

only east coast aPPearance

Photographs courtesy of the Cultural Relics Bureau of Xinjiang and Wang Da-Gang. Exhibition organized by the Bowers Museum, Santa Ana, California in association with the ArchaeologicalInstitute of Xinjiang and the Urumqi Museum.

3260 South Street Philadelphia, PAwww.penn.museum/silkroad

The landmark exhibition Secrets of the Silk Road tellsa tale of long-forgotten cultures along the world’s mostlegendary trading route, featuring the most amazinglypreserved mummies ever found, and rare artifacts neverbefore seen in the West.

Timed tickets available now.Visit www.penn.museum/silkroad

or call (877)77-CLICK.For group tickets, call (215) 746-8183

or email [email protected]

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Expedition magazine - Silk Road Issue

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Transcript of Expedition magazine - Silk Road Issue