Going beyond Empires: Oasis polities, Imperial frontiers and trade across Ancient Eurasia in antiquity

Dear colleagues,

The “Islands in a Sea of Sand” project team are delighted to share with you the call for papers for our upcoming workshop “Going beyond Empires”. It will be held at the Lampeter campus of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David from the 2nd to the 3rd of October 2025.

Most maps depicting networks of long-distance exchange and contact across Eurasia in antiquity, commonly conceptualized as the “Silk Roads”, are dominated by sites that lay beyond the large agrarian empires. These networks are drawn across regions such as the Tarim Basin, Sogdiana, the Middle Eastern frontiers of the Roman and the Parthian/Sassanian empires, and Arabia, to name but the most centrally placed. Yet the prevailing narratives of the “Silk Roads” has, until the last decades, primarily focused upon the role of empires, whether of the Romans, the Parthians, the Kushan, the Xiongnu, or the Han.

This workshop aims to go beyond both the narratives and the frontiers of empires. Instead, it calls for a comparative look at the regions through which long-distance networks of exchange, such as the “Silk Roads”, are thought to have crossed.

To lead this discussion, we are delighted to have three distinguished keynote speakers:

• Prof. Dr. Michael Sommer, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg
• Dr. Lauren Morris, Charles University
• Dr. Annie Chan, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

The “Islands in a Sea of Sand” project team would like to invite any contributions addressing the main theme of the workshop and covering regions along and beyond the frontiers of the great empires of antiquity. In particular we invite contributions addressing one of the following questions:

• What role did the peoples and polities of these regions play in long-distance exchange?
• How did they shape such exchange and how where they shaped by it?
• How did they interact with each other and with nearby empires?
• And do some common patterns emerge?

Submissions

We welcome proposals for papers on relevant topics, from both established scholars and early career researchers. An abstract of no more than 300 words, along with the author’s name, title and institutional affiliation, should be submitted to SilkRoMo@hvl.no no later than April 1st, 2025. Please note that we also encourage poster presentations.

Accommodation

Accommodation will be provided at Lampeter campus by the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and will be covered for all participants.