Silk, Slaves, and Stupas

Following her bestselling <I>Life Along the Silk Road</I>, Susan Whitfield widens her exploration of the great cultural highway with a new captivating portrait focusing on material things. <I>Silk, Slaves, and Stupas</I> tells the stories of ten very different objects, considering their interaction with the peoples and cultures of the Silk Road&mdash;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.<BR /> &#160;<BR /> 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.&#160;<I>Silk, Slaves, and Stupas</I>&#160;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.&#160; &#160;<BR /> &#160;