Susan Whitfield

As world powers realign their cultural, economic and political outlooks, there is no better time to consider how Afro-Eurasia's complex network of ancient trade routes - which spanned the vastness of the steppe, vertiginous mountain ranges, fertile river plains and forbidding deserts across the continents and on to the seas beyond - fostered economic activity and cultural, political and technological communication. From silk to slaves, fashion to music, religion to science the movement of interaction of goods, people and ideas was crucial to the flourishing of peoples and their cultures across this vast region. Edited by Susan Whitfield, an established authority on the subject, with contributions from over 80 leading scholars from across the globe, Silk Roads situates the ancient routes against the landscapes that defined them, to reveal the raw materials that they produced, the means of travel that were employed to traverse them and the communities that were shaped by them. Organized by terrain, from steppe to desert to ocean, each section includes detailed maps, a historical overview, thematic essays and features showcasing art, buildings and archaeological discoveries. A wealth of photographs reveals the breathtaking and often forbidding landscapes encountered by travellers and traders through the millennia. With one section inscribed as a World Heritage Corridor by UNESCO in 2014 and others to follow, and China claiming the Silk Roads as the precursor of its Belt Road Initiative, this network of ancient trade routes and the interaction along them has never been of greater interest or importance than today. This beautiful publication honours the astonishing diversity in the way cultures advance and flourish not in spite of their differences, but because of them.

Peoples, Cultures, Landscapes

Silk Roads

Draws on contemporary sources and first-hand accounts to reconstruct the history of the route through the personal experiences of these characters.

Life Along the Silk Road

Introduces the Chinese zodiac, relates how each of its twelve signs was named for an animal, and explains the qualities associated with each animal and what animal rules the year in which the reader was born.

The Animals of the Chinese Zodiac

Roderick Whitfield

Neville Agnew

The Mogao grottoes in China, situated near the town of Dunhuang on the fabled Silk Road, constitute one of the world’s most significant sites of Buddhist art. The hundreds of caves carved into rock cliffs at the edge of the Gobi desert preserve one thousand years of exquisite art. Founded by Buddhist monks as an isolated monastery in the late fourth century, Mogao evolved into an artistic and spiritual mecca whose renown extended from the Chinese capital to the Western Kingdoms of the Silk Road. Among its treasures are miles of stunning wall paintings, more than two thousand statues, magnificent works on silk and paper, and thousands of ancient manuscripts, such as sutras, poems, and prayer sheets. In this new expanded edition, Cave Temples of Mogao at Dunhuang, first published in 2000, combines lavish color photographs of the caves and their art with the fascinating history of the Silk Road to create a vivid portrait of this remarkable site. Chapters narrate the development of Dunhuang and the Mogao cave temples, the iconography of the wall paintings, and the extraordinary story of the rare manuscripts—including the oldest printed book in existence, a ninth-century copy of the Diamond Sutra. The book also discusses the collaboration between the Getty Conservation Institute and Chinese authorities in conservation projects at Mogao, and the ways in which the site can be visited today.

Art History on the Silk Road: Second Edition

Cave Temples of Mogao at Dunhuang

Introduces the Chinese zodiac and relates how each of its twelve signs was named for an animal. Explains the qualities associated with each animal and what animal rules the year in which the reader was born.

The Legend of the Chinese Zodiac

Following her bestselling Life Along the Silk Road, Susan Whitfield widens her exploration of the great cultural highway with a new captivating portrait focusing on material things. Silk, Slaves, and Stupas tells the stories of ten very different objects, considering their interaction with the peoples and cultures of the Silk Road—those who made them, carried them, received them, used them, sold them, worshipped them, and, in more recent times, bought them, conserved them, and curated them. From a delicate pair of earrings from a steppe tomb to a massive stupa deep in Central Asia, a hoard of Kushan coins stored in an Ethiopian monastery to a Hellenistic glass bowl from a southern Chinese tomb, and a fragment of Byzantine silk wrapping the bones of a French saint to a Bactrian ewer depicting episodes from the Trojan War, these objects show us something of the cultural diversity and interaction along these trading routes of Afro-Eurasia. Exploring the labor, tools, materials, and rituals behind these various objects, Whitfield infuses her narrative with delightful details as the objects journey through time, space, and meaning. Silk, Slaves, and Stupas is a lively, visual, and tangible way to understand the Silk Road and the cultural, economic, and technical changes of the late antique and medieval worlds.

Material Culture of the Silk Road

Silk, Slaves, and Stupas

"In this long-awaited second edition, Susan Whitfield expands her trailblazing exploration of the Silk Road and broadens her rich and varied portrait of life along the great premodern trade routes of Eurasia. This new edition is comprehensively updated to support further understanding of themes relevant to global and comparative history. In the first 1,000 years after Christ, merchants, missionaries, monks, mendicants, and military men traveled on the vast network of Central Asian tracks that became known as the Silk Road. Whitfield recounts the lives of twelve individuals who lived at different times during this period, including two new characters: an African shipmaster and a Persian traveler and writer during the Arab caliphate. With these additional tales, Whitfield extends both geographical and chronological scope, bringing into view the maritime links across the Indian Ocean and depicting the network of north-south routes from the Baltic to the Gulf. Throughout the narrative, Whitfield conveys a strong sense of what life was like for ordinary men and women on the Silk Road, the individuals usually forgotten to history. A work of great scholarship, Life along the Silk Road continues to be extremely accessible and entertaining"--Provided by publisher.

Second Edition

Corresponding Fellow of the Dunhuang Academy Percival David Professor of Chinese and East Asian Art School of Oriental Studies Roderick Whitfield

The Mogao grottoes in China, situated near the oasis town of Dunhuang on the fabled Silk Road, constitute one of the world's most significant sites of Buddhist art. In some five hundred caves carved into rock cliffs at the edge of the Gobi desert are preserved one thousand years of exquisite murals and sculpture. Mogao, founded by Buddhist monks as an isolated monastery in the late fourth century, evolved into an artistic and spiritual center whose renown extended from the Chinese capital to the far western kingdoms of the Silk Road. Among its treasures are miles of stunning wall paintings, more than two thousand statues, magnificent works on silk and paper, and thousands of ancient manuscripts, such as sutras, poems, and prayer sheets, which in 1900 were found sealed in one of the caves and then dispersed to museums throughout the world. Illustrated in color throughout, Cave Temples of Mogao combines lavish photographs of the caves and their art with the fascinating history of Mogao, Dunhuang, and the Silk Road to create a vivid portrait of this remarkable site. Chapters discuss the development of the cave temples, the iconography of the wall paintings, and the extraordinary story of the rare manuscripts, including the oldest printed book in existence, a ninth-century copy of the Diamond Sutra. The book also describes the long-term collaboration between the Getty Conservation Institute and Chinese authorities in conservation projects at Mogao as well as the caves and the museum that can be visited today. The publication of this book coincides with the centenary of the discovery of the manuscripts in the Library Cave.

Susan Whitfield

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