December 4, 2020

Chinese Frontiers and Central Eurasia:
Art, Archaeology and History at the Turn of the Common Era

Time: December 4, 2020, 9:00am – 1:00pm (Eastern Standard Time)

This workshop will take place online, and RSVP is required.

A Zoom link will be provided via confirmation email from Eventbrite to registered participants. For inquiries regarding registration, please contact:  [email protected]

Co-Organizers:
Fanghan Wang: Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, NYU
Shujing Wang: NYU, Shanghai

Cosponsors:
Tang Center for Early China, Columbia University
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, NYU

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The contact between Han China and Central Eurasia had been drastically intensified around the turn of the Common Era when the so-called Silk Road network took shape. The northern frontiers of Han China, as important nodes of the network, were the prominent arenas in which diverse cultural, economic, and socio-political interactions took place among the people who lived a pastoral, agricultural or mixed mode of life. This workshop intends to revisit this interconnectivity with special attention to the complexity of interregional communication and the interactions in frontier region. Introducing new material/textual discoveries and reassessing current scholarship, this workshop highlights a variety of interlocked factors of the frontier process, such as ecological impacts, material exchanges, cultural encounters, and socio-political transformations. Within an interdisciplinary framework, this workshop also stimulates conversations of researchers from different scholarly circles on various issues surrounding the study of frontiers.

Program

9:00am – Welcome remark

Lillian Tseng, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University

Session 1

9:10am – “Frontier Encounters in Excavated Materials from the Han Northwest”

Charles Sanft, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

9:25am – “Economic Integration and Political Expansion along Western Han Frontiers: A Numismatic Survey”

Chris Kim, Columbia University

9:40am – “Guarding the Granary: Art, Agriculture and Frontier Politics between the Han Empire and Xiongnu”

Fanghan Wang, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University

9:55am – Discussion

10:15am – Break

Session 2

10:25am – “The Great Game on the Silk Road: Contested Nodes and Competing Networks in the Western Regions during the Xiongnu-Han Era”

Bryan Miller: University of Michigan

10:40am – “Burials at the Frontier: Jiaohe Tombs Revisited”

Shujing Wang: New York University, Shanghai

10:55am – Discussion

11:15am – Break

Session 3

11:25am – Talk title, TBD

Ursula Brosseder, Bonn University

11:40am – “Research on the Xiongnu Aristocratic Tombs”

Yeruul-Erdene Chimiddorj: Cultural Resource Analysts inc.

11:55am – “Animal-Style Tropes and the Making of Visual Language across Central Eurasia”

Petya Andreeva, The New School 

12:10pm – Discussion

Final discussion

12:25pm