Talk by Dr Miljana Radivojević on The Making of the Silk Roads: Networks, Metals and Genes in the Bronze Age Eurasian Steppe Miljana Radivojević

Talk by Miljana Radivojević (UCL Institute of Archaeology & Cambridge Central Asian Forum, Jesus College Cambridge)

on

The Making of the Silk Roads: Networks, Metals and Genes in the Bronze Age Eurasian Steppe

Abstract: 

The Eurasian Steppe has been increasingly recognised as the place where fundamental technologies, languages and ideas originated and spread from Bronze Age onwards. The intricate system of trade networks at the time paved the way for the routes that long outlived the Bronze Age world, the Silk Roads. Of all items transported along these routes, the exchange of ores and metal objects would have been the largest in volume and the most fundamentally transformative for the steppe communities. The prehistory of the Silk
Road is therefore intimately related to that of the steppe metallurgy and mobility, leading the field of study of its origins at the crossroads of archaeology, materials science and genetic research. The most recent archaeometallurgical studies shed new light on the origins, scale and supply routes for ores and metal - long before silk was in vogue – and reveal the connectedness of communities that laid the foundations for the first global economic network.

Date: 10th February, 2020

Time: 16:30-17:30

Venue: Lecture Room, Institute of Archaeology, 36 Beaumont Street, Oxford

If you have any questions, please contact Dr Anke Hein (anke.hein@arch.ox.ac.uk).