China and Prehistoric Silk Routes: An Archaeological Perspective | Professor Li Zhang

The Silk Routes were one of the most marvelous phenomena in Eurasian history. Along them flowed a huge number and variety of objects and customs between China and various parts of the vast Eurasian continent. There has recently been a growing number of strikingly eye-opening archaeological discoveries which have demonstrated the existence of such long-distance interactions stretching back several millennia, even to the prehistoric period. These connections between China and the Steppe, Central Asia and even further to the west can very well be called “prehistoric silk routes.”

 

What was transmitted along the prehistoric silk routes? How was early China incorporated into the far-flung network? To what extent did different societies in early China shape the interactions along the prehistoric silk routes? This talk by Dr. Li Zhang, incorporating the most up-to-date archaeological discoveries on the Chinese side, illustrates the puzzle of interactions between different societies of China and other parts of Eurasia, along the prehistoric silk routes.

 

Li Zhang is Associate Professor of archaeology at Zhengzhou University, China. She obtained her PhD degree in archaeology in 2012 from Peking University. She has held postdoctoral positions at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University (2012-2013), and the Forum Transregionale Studien, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2013-2014). Her major field of research is art and archaeology of prehistoric and Bronze Age China. She focuses on the emergence and transformation of complex societies in a global perspective, as well as the art and archaeology of China’s participation in the Eurasian network during the Bronze Age.

 

Introduction and moderation of the Q&A by Tansen Sen, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Global Asia.

 

Co-sponsored by the Global China Studies program and the Center for Global Asia.