Like Islands in a Sea of Sand – Understanding the Silk Roads of Late Antiquity as a layered network model

“Like Islands in a Sea of Sand” (SilkRoMo) seeks to develop a new theoretical framework for understanding the Silk Roads, with a focus on networks and the polities on the routes themselves. To do so it will conduct five comparative case studies, on Kroraina, Kucha, Rob, Palmyra/Dura-Europos and Turfan.

The project “Like Islands in a Sea of Sand” (SilkRoMo) proposes to change the way we understand the Silk Roads. The Silk Roads are frequently held up as a prime example of ancient globalization, envisioned as a vast system of trade routes and networks spanning across Eurasia since at least antiquity. The Silk Roads are usually depicted as a network of routes connecting east and west, passing a multitude of nodes (sites, cities, and kingdoms). Yet few systematic studies exist of how the Silk Roads network might have functioned in practice, and surprisingly little attention has been paid to the role of the nodes in the network, the islands in the sea of sand.

The SilkRoMo project seeks to deepen our understanding of the Silk Roads by conducting a comparative study of five such nodes, namely the kingdom of Kroraina (China), the kingdom of Kucha (China), the kingdom of Rob (Afghanistan), the cities of Palmyra and Dura-Europos (Syria), as well as various kingdoms in and around the Turfan depression. The results of these studies will allow the project to test and refine a new analytical model for describing the Silk Roads, namely a “layered network model”. In this model the Silk Roads are conceived as a network of networks, where smaller local networks interacted with and served as the foundation for larger regional and inter-regional ones. This framework, thus, a) considers all the various actors involved, large and small, b) considers the plurality of networks that constituted the Silk Roads, and c) systematically considers the infrastructures and institutions that made movement along the Silk Roads practically possible.

By combining a detailed comparative study of places and polities along the Silk Roads with a new theoretical framework, the SilkRoMo project seeks to rethink the Silk Roads network. The SilkRoMo project will also encourage a rethinking of early globalization processes and ancient trade more generally, by bringing its insights to the debates in these fields.