The lecture will be given by Tim Williams, Senior Lecturer in the Institute of Archaeology, University College, London (UCL).
Chinese silk – unique, expensive and portable – and much in demand in the Roman Empire underpinned trade along a complex network of long distance trade routes linking China, central Asia and Europe that have come to be known as the Silk Roads. Over a period of some 1,500 years, silk and other trade goods such as spices, aromatics, drugs, gems, metals, ivory and horses, delivered wealth to those who organised the trade. Through these routes also spread ideas, beliefs and languages. There is spectacular evidence of all these activities in the cities, forts, caravanserai, temples, and decorated grottoes along the Silk Roads, much built of earth and in a fragile condition.
As part of a UNESCO-ICOMOS World Heritage Silk Roads project to support countries along the Silk Roads to identify and conserve potential sites as part of a serial nomination, Tim Williams and Paul Wordsworth, UCL, have been commissioned by ICOMOS to develop a Thematic Study to put individual sites into context.
Tim Williams will talk about the outcomes of this study which is beginning to provide for the first time an analysis of the profile, distribution and distinctiveness of the existing sites and how they might be seen as manifestations of shifting systems of power and patronage along the roads. In view of the enormous extent of the routes, some 7,000km, and the quantity of sites, the project has set up a database of known sites and linked this to a Geographic Information System and Google Earth to produce images that define links between cities, sites and natural passes along the routes.
For more information, contact ICOMSO-UK:
Email: admin@icomos-uk.org
Phone: 020 7566 0031
