Susan Whitfield's book offers a history of cultural exchange in premodern Afro-Eurasia through ten key objects, beginning with earrings and ending with slaves. It is less a continuous narrative than a collection of cross-referenced essays on materials, technologies, styles, beliefs, and ideas that embody or concrete, in one way or another, pivotal moments of cultural encounter. Spanning East Asia to Western Europe over more than a millennium and engaging nine separate media with as many distinct contexts of use and patterns of circulation, this study vastly exceeds current disciplinary and field categories. Inevitably, it relies significantly on secondary studies in English and specialist interlocutors acknowledged by Whitfield throughout the text. The...
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Spring 2020
Book Review|
March 01 2020
Review: Silk, Slaves, and Stupas: Material Culture of the Silk Road, by Susan Whitfield
Susan Whitfield,
Silk, Slaves, and Stupas: Material Culture of the Silk Road
. Berkeley
: University of California Press
, 2018
. 376 pp., 8 color photos, 10 color maps. ISBN 9780520281783. $85.00.
Michelle McCoy
Michelle McCoy
Assistant Professor Department of History of Art and Architecture University of Pittsburgh
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Studies in Late Antiquity (2020) 4 (1): 147–150.
Citation
Michelle McCoy; Review: Silk, Slaves, and Stupas: Material Culture of the Silk Road, by Susan Whitfield. Studies in Late Antiquity 1 March 2020; 4 (1): 147–150. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2020.4.1.147
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