Silk roads : from local realities to global narratives /
edited by Jeffrey D. Lerner and Yaohua Shi.
- Oxford ; Havertown, PA : Oxbow Books, (c)2020..
- 1 online resource (xiii, 297 pages) : illustrations, maps
Includes bibliographical references.
The 'birth' of the silk road between ecological frontiers and military innovation / Sogdians in Shanxi (386 CE-618 CE): literary and archaeological evidence / From exotic toys to objects of scientific inquiry: a special way of transmitting European optical knowledge in the Qing dynasty / The Karakorum highway: gateway of empires, religions, and commerce / A TRP along the silk roads: how and why we detect and use spices / Silk road pharmacy: debating Theriac and defining the natural world / Spice and taste in the culinary world of the early modern Mediterranean / Devotional prints and practice: woodcuts from the library cave at Dunhuang / Dome of heaven: from the lantern ceiling to the Chinese wooden dome / 'Malacca': from fabled port to muddy lagoon: a cautionary tale of ecological disaster / 21st-century trading routes in Mongolia: changing pastoral soundscapes and lifeways / Erasing the local, celebrating the local: tracing the contradictions of the silk road in Pakistan / Arsacid economic activity on the silk road / Pearls and power: Chōla's tribute mission to the northern song court within the maritime silk road trade network / 'Flying cash': credit instruments on the silk roads / The case for shipwrecked Indians in Germany / Samuel Shaw's 'maritime silk road' from American independence towards monopoly, 1784-1794 / Nicola Di Cosmo -- Xiaoyan Qi -- Yunli Shi -- Saba Samee -- Wayne L. Silver and Cecil J. Saunders -- Monique O'Connell -- Eric Dursteler -- Bernadine Barnes -- Di Luo -- Margaret Sarkissian -- Jennifer C. Post -- Chad Haines -- Touraj Daryaee -- James A. Anderson -- Dan Du -- Jeffrey D. Lerner -- John A. Ruddiman
"In recent decades, there has been a new surge of interest in the history and legacies of the Silk Roads both within academic and public discourses. A field of Silk Roads Studies has come into its own. Consciously mirroring the temperament of its subject, the field has moved out of the narrow niches of particular disciplines to become a truly interdisciplinary endeavor. New research findings about the historical operations of the Silk Roads and interpretations of their legacies for the modern and contemporary world have broken down geographical and temporal divides that once demarcated the Silk Roads as primarily pre-modern and Old World-centered conduits of globalization. In light of these developments, the time is ripe to begin formulating a new definition of the contour of Silk Roads Studies and laying a new foundation for further work in this field.Silk Roads: From Local Realities to Global Narratives brings together leading scholars in multiple disciplines related to Silk Roads studies. It highlights the multiplicity of networks that constituted the Silk Roads, including land and maritime routes, and approaches the Silk Roads from Antiquity to China's One Belt One Road Initiative from Afro-Eurasia to the Americas. This holistic approach to understanding ancient globalization, exchanges, transformations, and movements --