Introduction
Since the ‘Silk Road’ (hereafter SR)Footnote 1 gained traction as a concept in Western literature in the late nineteenth century, research under its banner has consistently emphasized the region of the present-day Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China as a crucial hub for East-West exchange. Sectioned by three mountain ranges and two basins, Xinjiang (known in the early twentieth century as ‘Chinese Turkestan’ or ‘East Turkestan’) is a ‘crossroads’, ‘pass’, or ‘transit hub’ for east-west itineraries that follow the natural topography. The SR term communicated the aspirations of early European scientific imperialism. Moving into the twentieth century, as the volume of scientific literature amassed under the SR umbrella burgeoned, SR-inspired applications of geopolitical nostalgia intensified. The term evolved into a symbol of high-stakes geopolitical discourse power that was being contended for by, mostly, Western and Chinese stakeholders,Footnote 2 throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (hereafter BRI) (2013–) is the latest reimagining of the SR. In the last decade, the BRI has actively promoted programmes to revive and re-Sinicize the SR narrative in education, research, and the cultural sector, significantly boosting the profile of Central Asian studies in China.
But recently, upon a fresh contemplation on the centennial milestones of Chinese archaeology and how stakeholders of colonial expeditions had leveraged scientific collaborations for geopolitical benefits, China is adapting the long-standing SR narrative for a new cause, a cause anchored to the recovery and assertion of Chinese ‘discourse power’ (huayuquan 話語權). As a political dictum that has gained substantial traction in scientific discourse in the last 10 years and as a critical tenet of the BRI stratagem, it is widely used to mobilize resources to contend for the ‘right of speech’ internationally.Footnote 3 This reorientation reflects an important shift in perspective among Chinese researchers towards the geopolitical role of Chinese culture and ancient civilization, and the research activities to be developed in tandem within China and internationally.
This change is taking place just as Chinese and Western scholarship is becoming oversaturated with the SR term. In Western academic circles, as in China,Footnote 4 many publications and scientific projects have tapped into the SR term to incentivize academic interest. An advanced search on Google Scholar for the terms ‘archaeology’, ‘archaeological sites’, ‘Xinjiang’, ‘burials’, and ‘settlements’ revealed that out of 230 English-language publications about Xinjiang archaeology in the last 10 years, 179 (about 80 per cent) contain the SR term.Footnote 5
The latest repurposing of the SR in Chinese archaeology raises questions about how effectively SR has served scientific objectives over the past 150 years, and which discourses have been amplified or subdued amid the proliferation of its use across scientific, cultural, and political domains. This article presents a critical review of the ways in which SR orientations have influenced archaeological discourse and practice in Xinjiang, a region long held as a strategic point of the SR and the location where the earliest ‘SR’ expeditions took place.
I examine the fallacies surrounding SR research in the areas of scientific research, cultural diplomacy, and discourse power with reference to the SR’s role in the evolution of Xinjiang archaeology from the 1920s to its current operation under the BRI. I offer three approaches to mitigate its impact on scientific research. I argue that the concept of the SR, increasingly amorphous and coloured by contemporary ideals, offers no more than a reductionist perspective of the archaeological record it is used to characterize. It may even hamper big data-driven research in the future by imposing fixed universalist narratives. Instead of shaping scientific questions with a term that evolves with the prevailing geopolitical climate, challenging its underlying assumptions can offer scholars of Eurasian archaeology new perspectives.
Historical and logical fallacies
Enquiries into the fallacies and mythicism surrounding the SR have multiplied since these theories gained traction in the early 2000s. Scholars in Western academia have identified several reasoning flaws that pervade SR-framed studies. Anthropologist of nomadic cultures Anatoly Khazanov questioned the adequacy of the SR as an analytical concept for Eurasian overland trade and contended that it ‘has already ceased to be a purely scholarly concept because it has found a place in the ideological realm’.Footnote 6 Similarly, Iranian historian Khodadad Rezakhani in his oft-cited article on the SR, ‘The Road That Never Was: The Silk Road and Trans-Eurasian Exchange’, criticized the facile generalizations brought on by the SR concept, citing the words of Near Eastern archaeologist Warwick Ball that the ‘Silk Road’ has been made ‘the glib answer to all questions of trade and communication’ in all discussions of East-West trade.Footnote 7
But critiques of this kind are still scarce compared to those advocating the SR. This is not because they are controversial, however; similar arguments have intermittently surfaced in earlier periods as well. Marc Aurel Stein, a British archaeologist who is known for his expeditions in Central Asia in the early decades of the twentieth century, for example, appeared to have been a SR sceptic.Footnote 8 In the titles of his publications, he did not use the SR term. During this time, researchers of Xinjiang archaeology in China were also lukewarm about the SR even after the term gained popularity from the publication of Sven Hedin’s The Silk Road (1938).
With reference to the development of archaeological research and SR discourse in Xinjiang, I examine below the nature of these fallacies, which I argue stem from two key frames of reference: SR hegemonies and the SR ‘be-all and end-all’ imperative.
From colonial legacies to avatar of the BRI
The impact of politicized historicism on future scholarship and diplomacy in Asia and beyond is an area of growing concern.Footnote 9 The SR has been an instrument of conflicting modern local-global heritage politics—its geography is inevitably nuanced and fluid.Footnote 10 Tim Winter, a foremost scholar of contemporary SR cultural politics, worried that the celebration of ‘shared’ pasts ‘has rapidly become a forum of heritage diplomacy through which China exercises new forms of geocultural power’,Footnote 11 and that depictions of these pasts would grow increasingly Sinocentric with China at the helm of generating new narratives.
But these new forms of geocultural power that comprise the BRI are not solely a Chinese creation; on the contrary, they draw heavily upon the legacy of SR studies.Footnote 12 It is by no means the first time the connotations of the SR have been adapted for nationalist agendas and transnational cultural-economic goals. The practice of overlaying selected nodes of historical SR corridors on ‘routes Beijing has identified for Belt and Road development’Footnote 13 evidently mirrors the way Ferdinand von Richthofen’s die Seidenstrasse overlaid accounts of historical mobility, trade, and exchange with ‘a cartographic imperative to connect Asia to Europe via direct lines of rail’ almost 150 years ago.Footnote 14
Widely recognized as the neologist of the SR term that emerged in the late nineteenth century, German geographer von Richthofen was, more accurately, a proponent of the SR who helped carry the term into modernity through his referencing of earlier nineteenth-century geographical works.Footnote 15 In the first volume of his China, Ergebnisse eigner Reisen und darauf gegründeter Studien (1877), von Richthofen used die Seidenstrasse (the Silk Road) to denote specifically the overland route to the Land of the Silk Marinus of Tyre that he had learnt of from his informant,Footnote 16 and the plural, die Seidenstraßen (the Silk Roads), to refer to ‘routes both east and west of the Pamirs’.Footnote 17 He had also deduced from Chinese annals that the terminus of Marinus’s route is Chang’an, capital of the Han dynasty during the time of Ptolemy, who publicized Marinus’s maps. That Chang’an was the starting point is still the prevailing view today among scholars who adopt a more literal/ historiographical definition of the SR. This presupposition is mostly based on the annals’ description of Zhang Qian’s diplomatic missions to the Western Regions, which originated in Chang’an, then capital of Han China. However, the descriptions in these accounts of the routes of his travels were not very specific.Footnote 18 The detailed itinerary attributed to the SR is actually sourced from texts from the Sui and Tang dynasties, in which routes leading to the Western Regions are precisely outlined—but these routes originated instead from Dunhuang.Footnote 19
The definition of SR provided by Von Richthofen, not a well-formed theory at the time,Footnote 20 was further developed by German archaeologist and geographer Albert Herrmann, a close colleague of von Richthofen, who had more robust knowledge of Sinological sources and posited that die Seidenstrasse reached as far as Syria (the Roman empire).Footnote 21 Hermann went on to work closely with Swedish explorer and geographer Sven Hedin, who integrated Hermann’s historical knowledge of China and the Mediterranean into his cartographic work. Hedin eventually published The Silk Road in 1938 (first in Swedish, Sidenvägen, in 1936), a travelogue chronicling the fourth Sino-Swedish expedition he led in China to investigate possible routes of automobile travel, at the behest of the Republic of China’s Ministry of Railways, specifically between Central China and Xinjiang.Footnote 22 The book became a bestseller in Europe, primarily as an account of exploration, since the history and definition of SR was only summarized in one of its chapters.Footnote 23
As a result of Hedin’s Silk Road, the SR became widely known in the West from the 1940s onwards as comprising ancient routes and networks of trade in East Turkestan. Combining a key commodity symbolizing uncharted territory with the route used to acquire it, the term effectively kindled Western explorers’ fascination with cultures and commodities of the Orient, as emerging transcontinental transport infrastructure made travels on said ‘path’ achievable.Footnote 24 At first, the objective of these SR expeditions was to gather geographical knowledge to enable Western powers to develop economically beneficial infrastructure networks in support of their colonial ambitions.Footnote 25 Then, after the wars, the concept of the SR was reappropriated for cosmopolitan approaches to peacekeeping; it was used to substantiate bilateral diplomatic efforts that aimed to build crosscultural understanding between nation-states.
Yet, although Xinjiang was considered the quintessential SR territory from the very beginning, its history of archaeological research has never been solely defined by the SR. The SR concept had a minimal effect on archaeological research until the last 30 years, a shift that was precipitated by commensurate interest in the West and other parts of East Asia.
Chinese scholarship generally traces the beginnings of SR research in China to geographical studies of northwest China in the 1920s.Footnote 26 Yuan Fuli 袁复礼,Footnote 27 a geologist with a Master’s degree from Columbia University, joined the Sino-Swedish Northwest Scientific Expedition (1927–1935) co-led by Sven Hedin six years after he returned to China. Also a member of the expedition team was archaeologist Huang Wenbi 黄文弼, widely recognized as the forefather of Xinjiang archaeology.
When Sven Hedin’s The Silk Road (1938) came out in print, Chinese scholars and journalists became familiar with the SR term, but they considered it as analogous to Xiyu 西域 (Western Regions) histories,Footnote 28 East-West conveyance, and Sino-foreign relations.Footnote 29 In Xinjiang archaeology, the term was scarcely used. In the decade or so following Hedin’s pioneering work, seminal Chinese publications—including Huang Wenbi’s Luobunao’er kaoguji 羅布淖爾考古記 (1948), Tulufan kaoguji 吐鲁番考古記 (1954), Talimu pendi kaoguji 塔里木盆地考古記 (1958), and Xinjiang kaogu fajue baogao 新疆考古發掘报告Footnote 30—did not employ the SR term. Huang’s expeditions revolved around research questions about the locations of the Han Protectorate General of the Western Regions and Tang Anxi Protectorate, the chronology and funerary geography of the Qu Kingdom of Gaochang, and the migration of river courses in Tarim Basin.Footnote 31 In his Luobunao’er kaoguji, a text-based study of the Loulan kingdom’s historical significance in east-west transport across the Western Regions from the Han to the Qing dynasties, a subject closely associated with the SR, SR was not mentioned at all. Instead, Huang used the term ‘fansi zhi lu 販絲之道’ (route of silk sales) to describe Lop Nur’s position as a transit stop on an east-west trade route of silk.Footnote 32
In the 1950s and 1960s, SR appeared mostly in diplomatic contexts, particularly in relation to China’s deepening exchange with Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other Central Asian states of the former Soviet Union.Footnote 33 The state directives for archaeology at the time were focused on bridging gaps in the knowledge of the past and establishing a disciplinary framework for the burgeoning academic field. In 1960, a new institute of archaeology was established within the Xinjiang division of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Field research in the 1950s to 1970s primarily followed routes of investigation that orbited Tian Shan and Tarim Basin, which formed the topographical basis for zoning the region into East Xinjiang, South Xinjiang, and North Xinjiang—a geographical division still in use today.Footnote 34 Archaeological expeditions began in the 1950s and 1960s in Ili, Khotan, Kucha, Urumqi, Turfan, Hami, and Altay, and in the 1970s, field research was also conducted in Tashkurgan and Lop Nur. Two larger-scale surveys of cultural relics were conducted in 1953 and 1959, focusing on oases skirting Tarim Basin, the Ili river valley, Turfan Basin, and grassland areas in north Tian Shan. Archaeologists began to categorize these archaeological finds into the northern, middle, and southern routes (see Figure 1 for all archaeological locations in Xinjiang mentioned in this article).Footnote 35 In 1972, members of the archaeology team from the Institute of Ethnology were reassigned to the Xinjiang Museum, and subsequently organized into the official Xinjiang Archaeology Team (Xinjiang kaogudui 新疆考古隊). This team laid the groundwork for the founding of the Institute of Archaeology of the new Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences in 1979.
Map of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China today showing locations mentioned in this article. Source: Map created by author using ArcGIS.
The 1980s marked several publication milestones. An in-house journal dedicated to the archaeology of Xinjiang, Xinjiang wenwu 新疆文物, was launched in 1985.Footnote 36 A compendium commemorating 30 years of Xinjiang archaeology, Xinjiang Kaogu sanshinian 新疆考古三十年, was published two years prior, in 1983.Footnote 37 Still, SR only appeared in titles where silk was part of the discussion. The earliest example is Sichou zhi lu—Han-Tang zhiwu 絲綢之路—漢唐織物 (The Silk Road: Textiles of Han and Tang) in 1972.Footnote 38 Thus, in the formative period of Chinese archaeology between the 1950s and 1980s, the SR played a rather nominal—and practically non-existent—role in formulating research agendas and theoretical frameworks in China.Footnote 39
In the second half of the twentieth century, on the heels of the European ‘Silk Road’ craze, Japanese scholars took to the trend, advocating ‘more thematically and geographically expansive definitions of the Silk Road’Footnote 40 than what the initial designation had encompassed. This is evident in the volume of scholarship on the SR in Japan; books titled SR alone increased exponentially from the 1960s onwards, averaging around 30 publications per decade since 1970. The devotion of Japanese scholarship to SR studies resulted in a broadening of scientific scope,Footnote 41 but also the further diffusion of SR to accommodate alternative hegemonies of knowledge production. Between 1979 and 1981, at the zenith of SR influence in Japan, Japan’s Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK, Japan Broadcasting Corporation)Footnote 42 and China’s CCTV (China Central Television) jointly produced a docuseries titled The Silk Road 絲綢之路.Footnote 43 Shot in the form of a travelogue, the programme appealed to Japan’s increasing fascination with the SR, which symbolized terra incognita where exchange between Eastern and Western civilizations took place. As public interest in the SR spiked, Japanese East Asian historian Kazutoshi Nagasawa acknowledged how rapidly SR studies had proliferated, and cautioned researchers of SR studies to guard against the ‘vulgarization’ of the field.Footnote 44
The SR term continued to gain traction as the landscape of international scientific research evolved throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and as domestic investment in Xinjiang archaeology increased simultaneously. Two intercontinental cultural-political initiatives further transformed SR into a concept of enormous historical, geopolitical, and emotional potency, encompassing all inter-Asian, pan-Eurasian, and Afro-Eurasian material and ideological flows: UNESCO’s Silk Roads programme that began in 1988 and the Chinese BRI in 2013. Under these programmes, the scientific scope of the SR expanded in tandem with its contemporary geopolitical reach, effectively invoking nostalgia for a shared Eurasian past to foster new supranational systems of cooperation.Footnote 45
The UNESCO Silk Roads programme was instituted to better understand and promote the rich history and shared legacy of mutual exchange and dialogue along the routes of the historic Silk Roads.Footnote 46 The programme defines the ‘Silk Roads’ as,
an interconnected web of routes linking the ancient societies of Asia, the Subcontinent, Central Asia, Western Asia and the Near East, and contributed to the development of many of the world’s great civilizations. They represent one of the world’s preeminent long-distance communication networks stretching as the crow flies to around 7,500 km but extending to in excess of 35,000 km along specific routes. While some of these routes had been in use for millennia, by the 2nd century BC the volume of exchange had increased substantially, as had the long distance trade between east and west in high value goods, and the political, social and cultural impacts of these movements had far-reaching consequences upon all the societies that encountered them.Footnote 47
This depiction of a universal and timeless phenomenon encompassing all inter-cultural and inter-regional connections became a common narrative in both mainstream and scholarly texts, one that remains prevalent today.Footnote 48
Following the institution of the UNESCO programme, a period of increased international collaboration in Xinjiang ensued. Notable joint expeditions include the Sino-Japanese study of burials at the site of Jiaohe (Yarkhoto) (1994–1996) co-led by Waseda University;Footnote 49 a conservation project on the city ruins as part of the UNESCO Preservation of World Heritage Programme;Footnote 50 the Sino-Japanese expedition to Niya (1988; 1990–1997);Footnote 51 and the Sino-French archaeological mission in the Keriya 克里雅 river basin (1993–1994; 1996).Footnote 52 By then, the SR had become the standard rationale for exploring these ancient interregional connections through diplomacy and academic exchange. The archaeology of Xinjiang, through the lens of the SR, became crucial to debates about the history of cultural exchange between East and West. In this period, research into ‘connectivity’ was in full swing. With a vast corpus of underexplored findings dating back to prehistory, the field of Xinjiang archaeology was primed for probing historical questions about the SR with the aim of evincing its antiquity and continuity.
In the 1990s and 2000s, exhibitions, catalogues, conferences, and compendia of scientific essays became increasingly SR-themed. Many significant discoveries, primarily burials, helped frame the archaeological record of Xinjiang in broader Eurasian contexts. The first SR-bannered national cultural relics conservation project for Xinjiang was launched in 2006 by the National Development and Reform Commission and the State Administration of Cultural Heritage. This 420-million-yuan five-year scheme involved excavation and conservation work at 21 sites across four prefectures in Xinjiang.Footnote 53 As a result, excavation and survey activities intensified during the first decade of the twenty-first century. The ancient city of Gaochang 高昌, one of the named sites of the national conservation project, was excavated five times between 2006 and 2009. Large numbers of burials and Buddhist sites (including grottoes and monasteries) across the span of Tian Shan, in the counties of Kucha, Nileke, Shanshan, and Turfan region, were the focus of field studies during this time.
It is not unexpected that the tenets of the Chinese BRI, introduced a quarter-century after UNESCO’s programme—modelled on the SR concept—emulate the principle of internationalismFootnote 54 undergirding the UNESCO paradigm. Since SR was already a catch-all term that effectively amalgamates at least two millennia of human connectivity into a teleological narrative of linear east-west, local-global trajectories, it would aptly embody three key traits of Chinese civilization on which the BRI strategy is premised—unity and continuity on the basis of inclusivity. And furthering this perspective has been pinpointed as a core mission of Xinjiang archaeology.
It is prefaced in the inaugural issue of Sichou zhi lu xue 絲綢之路學 (Silk Road Studies), a new archaeology textbook series published by Northwest University that ‘constructing Silk Road of the new era’, that is, the BRI, ‘without the ancient Silk Roads is no different than building a castle in the sky’.Footnote 55 A very similar definition of the SR to that of the UNESCO’s is used, recounting the history of the SR from 1,600 years before Zhang Qian to the present day,Footnote 56 across ‘desert’, ‘steppe’, ‘maritime’, ‘the southwest’, and ‘highland’. The two-pronged research and pedagogical approach consists of, first, to ‘discuss the system, function, and value of the Silk Roads, and the results of exchanges between Eastern and Western civilizations’, and second, to ‘reconstruct the ancient Silk Roads, explore the patterns of exchange between Eastern and Western civilizations, and service the future and development of human civilization’.Footnote 57 Not only is SR a narrative device in Xinjiang archaeology, it is the very target of scientific research, the goal of which is to uncover material evidence that illustrates the histories, routes, and cultures of the SR over time.
But the argument that archaeological findings prove the existence of a SR,Footnote 58 a concept ‘invented’Footnote 59 long after the time periods to which said discoveries are dated, is untenable. This kind of historicist argumentation is circular reasoning, that is, ‘begging the question’. This (il)logic accounts for the continual broadening of the extents of the SR espoused in both Chinese and Western archaeological literature since materials reflecting any kind of cultural exchange are ipso facto SR artefacts and their life histories are in turn used to substantiate the presence of a larger sphere of influence attributed to the SR.
However, the parallelism of the SR and BRI is not simply based on inference; it is rooted in ideology and rhetoric—the idea of the presence of an integrated native culture from time immemorial to which the formation of the modern national identity can be traced. Arguably, the BRI not only patterns itself after the SR but also constitutes a historical continuation of SR. That the past is rendered analogous to the present is the main line of SR arguments that are grounded in heritage science tinged with cultural politics.
For instance, the development of the SR in the period from Han to Tang is today’s trending topic because it is particularly useful for tracing the effective management of the Western Regions (Xiyu 西域) by central governments through history. In the past two decades, Xinjiang archaeology has placed a significant emphasis on surveying and excavating beacon towers, fortresses, and entire cities dating from the Han to the Tang dynasties. This was showcased in a project titled the Great Wall Conservation Project (Changcheng baohu gongcheng 長城保護工程) (2005–2014) that started almost a decade before the BRI. Military infrastructure was described as an integral component of the central administration of the Western Regions during Han times.Footnote 60 The defence system was strategically aligned with SR routes to facilitate the safe and smooth flow of transportation and ensure social stability. There was large-scale fieldwork investigating structures of political administration and defence, such as the purported site of the Han Protectorate General of the Western Regions, Kuiyukexiehai’er 奎玉克協海爾,Footnote 61 the chains of beacon towers in central Tian Shan, and other early walled settlements along the northern rim of Tarim Basin.
This presentist narrative also shapes the discourse of the spread of religion. Specific examples can be drawn from the reports of two major medieval sites being excavated in Xinjiang at present, attributed to different time periods and political entities. The sites of the walled city Tangchaodun 唐朝墩 in Tingzhou 庭州 (Jimsar prefecture) of the Tang empire, where remains of a Nestorian monastery and Subashi 蘇巴什 Buddhist monastery of the Kucha (Kuche) 庫車 kingdom had been found, are both described as strategic hubs of the East-West crossroads, testament to the religions’ eastward spread on the SR and the historicity of ethnic fusion, religious coexistence, and cultural harmony.Footnote 62
Even though SR has always been topologically problematic, the same geographical framework continues to be recycled today. Efforts to counter Eurocentric or hegemonic perspectives still depend on reconstructing past connections between the endpoints of Europe and East Asia, with Central Asia as a crossroads.Footnote 63 The SR has been a research trend imbued with presentism taken for—and romanticized as—historicity. Yet, scholars remain hopeful that, somehow, the purported scientific value of the current SR in tapping a transnational movement of ‘critical localism’ will transcend similar ambitions of nation-building. The equivocal legacies of the SR can be further argued by referencing what historian Arif Dirlik had postulated, even before the BRI was introduced. He wrote specifically about ‘well-intentioned but misguided efforts in China scholarship to assert a “China-centred” view of history’ as an example of how historicism, ‘romantic nostalgia for communities past’, or ‘hegemonic nationalist yearnings of a new kind’ would thwart critical localism and ‘imprison the present in the past’.Footnote 64 What differs from Dirlik’s prudent observation over two decades ago is that China seems no longer subject to the misleading ‘Euro-American teleologies and concepts’ and is asserting its own discourse power.Footnote 65
The be-all and end-all
The fallacy that the SR functions invariably as the raison d’être for every analysis is evident in three ways it contravenes scientific standards of examination: obfuscated scales,Footnote 66 dichotomous thinking, and sampling bias.
Obfuscated scales
Today, the definition and geographical extent of SR continues to expand. The temporal range is likewise broad and fluid. It is generally agreed that the original SR began in 200 bce and ended either in 900 ce or as late as 1600 ce but its variants, such as the steppe SR and the highland SR, could date to as early as the Bronze Age and as late as the most recent manifestations of the BRI. Terms homologous to the SR began to emerge in the 1990s; ‘road’ or ‘route’ were named after other geographical, biome, and material attributes. In addition to roads of the steppe, desert, oasis, maritime,Footnote 67 bronze, lithic, fur, incense, tea, horse, among others, there are those tracing intangible practices, technologies, and ideologies, such as music, religion, and food,Footnote 68 many of which traverse Xinjiang. This broadening of discourse encouraged an even wider, but more scattered array of viewpoints on the SR.
Given the vast research output on the SR, pinpointing the nature of the research question has become incredibly difficult. In the Silk Roads World Heritage database,Footnote 69 a principal source of SR heritage news managed by the Xi’an branch of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), research articles assembled on sites in Xinjiang alone number almost 250, archaeological reports on Xinjiang SR sites amount to over 330, while the number of miscellaneous articles under the categories of ‘feature articles’, ‘press releases’, and ‘conference reports’Footnote 70 adds up to over 500. About one-fifth of the over 1,000 articles mention the SR in their title. These web articles showcase the geographical scopes encompassed by the SR—Chang’an to Tian Shan, Pamir Plateau, southwest China, maritime, etc.Footnote 71 Book publishing has also taken up the SR trend. Twenty volumes published in a Silk Roads Research series (Sichou zhi lu yanjiu congshu 絲綢之路研究叢書) include a wide array of topics.Footnote 72
Interestingly, publications on Xinjiang archaeology from the late 1980s and 1990s, a peak period for archaeological field research, seldom used SR. Findings from the first region-wide survey,Footnote 73 which took place between 1988 and 1991, were published as separate reports by the prefecture or administrative district in Xinjiang Wenwu 新疆文物 between 1988 and 2004.Footnote 74 Compendia of excavation and survey reports and research articles were published in two volumes of Xinjiang kaogu xinshouhuo 新疆考古新收穫in 1995 for results in 1979–1989 and in 1997 for 1990–1996, respectively.Footnote 75 The term SR is rarely used in the titles of these publications and their content is also mostly devoid of the term. However, the term almost invariably shows up in discussions where cultural exchange is inferred from the archaeological record.
It is difficult to substantiate the idea that the numerous SR data points are all microcosms of the SR. Current archaeological evidence does not support a linear and cohesive SR landscape, especially on a transcontinental scale.Footnote 76 Instead, it indicates more varied and intermittent connections than those purported by the SR concept. Enquiries into prehistoric connections between Central China and the steppe zone to uphold the idea of a proto-SR,Footnote 77 for example, are implausible for scholars who adhere to a narrower, historiography-supported definition of the SR.Footnote 78 Proponents of more traditionalist views might consider the fact that the impetus for adopting the SR was partly influenced by developments in the field of history, which has been the guiding discipline for ancient studies in China. The SR was once a historical problem in need of archaeological input. Archaeologists working in Xinjiang, Gansu, and Shaanxi first caught on to the usage of the SR from historians working in the Gansu-Qinghai region studying Qin-Han and Tang histories. Therefore, in the 1980s, research expeditions dedicated to SR studies along historical routes between Xinjiang and Gansu flourished.Footnote 79
Conversely, arguments for a more liberal reading of the SR, such as the one proposed by David Christian in ‘Silk Roads or Steppe Roads’ to correct the underrepresentation of mobile pastoralists’ contributions to trans-ecological exchanges within and across the steppe are equally warranted—but for studying exchange, not the SR.Footnote 80 ‘Constructing a unified and coherent history of Afro-Eurasia’,Footnote 81 fortunately, need not hinge on how SR is defined and historicized, but only how the processes it seeks to encompass are studied.
It is not surprising that the definition of SR has rarely been debatedFootnote 82—not because it is uncontested, but because it remains broad and indeterminate. Beyond descriptions in historical texts consistent with the SR, there is scant evidence to support the understanding of what the SR was in ancient times. Consequently, it is not surprising that studies on the SR avoid explicitly defining what the SR is/was within the context of their research.
Historian Li Bozhong asserted that the contemporary wholesale collation of data brought on by the ‘“Silk Roads”-craze’ must be kept in check—by distinguishing between public and scholarly concepts of the SR.Footnote 83 But establishing this demarcation poses a significant challenge. It is difficult to square the aspirations of universalism espoused in the public sphere, that is, shared histories of progress and symbiotic exchange, with disparate perspectives stemming from various lines of investigation within SR studies.
The fragmentation of the field is a strong indicator that these varying approaches in SR studies have significant drawbacks. As Ma Lirong, professor at the Institute of Silk Road Strategy Studies of Shanghai International Studies University, explained, it has been difficult to integrate the studies’ macro and micro foci, which have their origins in distinct developmental stages within the field’s history.Footnote 84 According to Ma, the micro foci include, for example, Asian studies, Dunhuang studies, and Western Regions studies. Li Mingwei at the Department of Beijing Institute of Petrochemical Technology and director of the Society for the History of Sino-Foreign Relations, also voiced the same concern about disintegration, listing geography, anthropology, ethnology, religion, Mongolian history, Central Asian history, Sino-Western transportation history, trade history, Dunhuang and Turpan studies, and Tibetan studies as the many subjects SR encompasses.Footnote 85 Authors of the inaugural Sichou zhi lu xue (Silk Road Studies) volume also observed that said studies have yet to gain a foothold because the field has still to assemble and integrate the smithereens of fine-grained histories.Footnote 86
Furthermore, data collection is often hindered by lack of granularity and presentist biases. Between her two critiques of the SR in 2007 and in 2020, Susan Whitfield, a leading historian of the SR, did not gain newfound confidence in the availability of ‘big data’-driven, detailed studies to consolidate SR scholarship. Xinjiang was her case in point. She explained, ‘[there] are few general histories of this region and barely a monograph on any of the Tarim kingdoms’;Footnote 87 the first history of Khotan was published only in 2006.Footnote 88
Dichotomous thinking
Not only is an empirical basis lacking for the ubiquity and perpetuity of the SR, the idea of a demarcated network coterminous with Eurasia conveniently bolsters what Whitfield dubbed the dichotomy of ‘East’ and ‘West’, promoted by popular science, with the ‘Silk Road’ representing a pre-modern meeting of the respective opposing cultures.Footnote 89 Li Bozhong also disproved the tendency to portray SR as an invariable East-West communication route that continues from time immemorial to the present.Footnote 90 In early archaeological studies in Xinjiang, the SR framework was largely eschewed, as it was geographically aligned with the extent of the infrastructural ambitions of Western powers. Contextualizing any local history within the framework of SR entails a priori assumptions that, no matter how geographically limited, it must inevitably pertain to the longue durée of East-West exchange.Footnote 91
Sampling bias
The current understanding of Xinjiang archaeology in popular science—and arguably academic science as well—is still largely shaped by distinctive finds. This epicurean biasFootnote 92 was present as early as the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when expeditions into remote areas of East Turkestan fuelled the exoticism that brought prominence to Xinjiang as a ‘crossroads’ in the cultural-political dichotomy that is East-West.Footnote 93 The strong focus on funerary archaeology in Xinjiang that developed thereafter also helped cement a tradition of an object-centric approach in field archaeology in China, resulting in a preponderance of burial objects in research for most of the past century.
In the 1990s, museums became a rising forum for marrying heritage politics and public archaeology. Local ‘spectacle[s] of material culture’ came to invoke ‘an aura of romance and mysticism around a story of mobility, transmission, and carriage’.Footnote 94 And it was partly in the realm of museology, Tim Winter argued, that the time—and the geographical scales associated with the ‘Silk Road imaginary’—first became obfuscated, since for a time, the trending museological SR narrative was built around dazzling collections of singular objects. At the same time, UNESCO was espousing broadened and shared timelines and geographies to support its post-war vision of a single world history and its mission of peacekeeping through ‘cultural internationalism’.Footnote 95
During this time, there was a surge in state investment and interest in the archaeology of Xinjiang, coinciding with a rise in the discovery of ancient remains in Central Asia, which revealed connections in material traits harkening back to ‘cosmopolitan’ times in antiquity. The SR became the perfect emblem of these scientific trends. The mummies of Lop Nur;Footnote 96 the gold hoard of Boma; manuscripts, silk, and clay sculptures and figurines of Shanshan; the wooden slips and woven textiles of Niya; the Buddhist monastery, murals and sculptures of Dandan Oilik and Keriya Basin; and the grottoes of Kucha are, unsurprisingly, symbols of the SR and spotlighted in exhibits. The classic SR inventory also comprises stereotypical luxury objects traded in from afar. The exhibit curated by the National Museum of China for the public exhibition ‘Sharing a Common Future: Exhibition of Treasures from National Museums along the Silk Road’ includes objects as distant as ‘European forms of dress, Omani pottery, and dinnerware from Eastern Europe’.Footnote 97
However, assuming that the presence of shared material traits between these select nodes (of sites)—ergo SR-esque connections—can be extrapolated to the entirety of the region is a fallacy of composition. One might also argue that the trade and communication routes indicated by these distinct objects may not have been the only or most important pathways for cultural exchange. Interactions of different people groups are also the result of diaspora, migration, war, exile, intermarriage, pilgrimage, etc., events that do not allude to symbiotic relations or yield trade benefits.Footnote 98
Consistently framing these past connections and exchanges in a positive light also deters critical thinking and paradigmatic breakthroughs. This kind of idealist narrative appears to share the markings of UNESCO’s early mission of writing a global, universal history of peace and progress.Footnote 99 Not all SR histories were favourable, yet the SR is rarely used to indicate ‘unfavourable’ histories of severed connections and ethnocentrism. Aligning research with present-day goals of universalismFootnote 100 increases the risk of ahistorical and anachronistic interpretations, thereby introducing biases into research.
A new era of China-centric discourse for Chinese archaeology
The institution of the BRI in 2013 appears to be an apex of the rising SR trend but also a shift in how Xinjiang archaeology relates to the SR—now with the BRI in tandem. This has led to structured developments of the SR as a distinct academic field. The acronym BRI stands for Belt and Road Initiative, a combination of the ‘economic belt of the Silk Road’ and the ‘twenty-first century maritime Silk Road’. It offers an expanded framework for integrating regional histories, particularly those of Xinjiang, into a unified narrative encompassing west China and all border regions within the BRI’s ambit.
As an epithet for a reimagined Sinicized multi-ethnic discourse and a long-standing emblem of Chinese multiculturalism in China, the SR has proven useful for constructing a more cohesive and unassailable account of national history within China. It has also been an effective conduit for building international scientific collaborations. The state’s push towards unifying and promoting Chinese SR studies has had resounding implications for funding priorities and publication trends, which is perceptible in Xinjiang archaeology where the number of SR-titled books skyrocketed after the turn of the century.Footnote 101 The call for a better understanding of inter-regional cultural flows in the past is well-embedded in state-building and cultural management agendas, a matter that has been thoroughly analysed in many articles.Footnote 102 But a notable, recent shift in the ethos of archaeological practice within China suggests the potency of SR may be subsiding. Specifically, it is assuming a progressively subsidiary role to the broader goal of nation-building and in efforts to reclaim ‘discourse power’ (huayuquan) in geocultural politics.
As introduced at the beginning of the article, the term ‘huayuquan’ does not have its beginnings in the BRI, but the initiative is largely responsible for its popularization in scientific discourse. Prior to the BRI’s institution in 2013, and as early as 2000, the geopolitical implications of discourse power was already being discussed in scientific publications, in the context of post-colonial processes of globalization. The narrative espoused was centred on the reclamation and assertion of national (zhonghua minzu 中華民族)Footnote 103 discourse power, not all that different from the epistemologies undergirding the current BRI.Footnote 104 At the time, China was growing increasingly concerned about Western dominance over newly emerged cultural markets through a globalized finance system. Discourse power was a means to safeguard both China’s economic interests internationally and to ensure the autonomous, continual development of its national culture.Footnote 105 It was also a way to correct the imbalance in academic discursive authority between China and the West.Footnote 106
The BRI was a continuation and expansion of this very narrative. The only change was the introduction of a specific goal for enhancing discourse power, which was the realization of the BRI stratagem. As Wu Xianjun explained, effective discourse politics—rendered by rigorous academic standards and research findings—is essential for making an impact on international systems, as it serves to counter criticism and opposition of ideas from the West.Footnote 107 Under the BRI, SR was a lens through which China’s relation with the world is evinced and interpreted; it serves to amplify China’s discourse authority on the international stage.Footnote 108
However, due to the broadening of the SR scope to accommodate political and diplomatic objectives, over the past decade the connection between Xinjiang archaeology and SR has become less pronounced. The current portrayal of Xinjiang archaeology in scientific and pedagogical materials, museums, and other arenas of public engagement appears to be veering away from SR-centred narratives, and highlighting instead how cultural relics projects in Xinjiang can contribute to reconstructing national history and bolstering scientific capabilities both domestically and abroad—with the SR as a potential conduit. Against a backdrop of intensifying BRI activity, the scientific purpose of the SR becomes increasingly derivative.
Exhibitions in Xinjiang are orienting towards themes that accentuate the particularities of the archaeological record and Chinese methods of research, and not clinging to the ‘Silk Road(s) imaginary’.Footnote 109 Only four out of the 32 special exhibits at Xinjiang Regional Museum since 2011 were SR-themed; they were about horse culture, Tian Shan and the five northwestern provinces, Buddhist grottoes, and lives of women in the Tang dynasty. None of the new permanent exhibits installed in the new wings following the completion of the museum’s second phase of construction in 2022 is titled or revolves around the SR.
The themes of the special exhibit of ‘100 years of Xinjiang Archaeology’, entitled Zaizhan zaizhi 載瞻載止, which call for pause and observation, also attest to this change. The exhibit opened on 18 November 2023 at Xinjiang Art Gallery. This two-month exhibit was intended to take place alongside other centennial exhibits of Chinese archaeology.Footnote 110 The year 2023 was also a significant one for China’s cultural diplomacy, being the tenth anniversary of the BRI.Footnote 111
The exhibit followed how field archaeology evolved in Xinjiang over the past century in the face of foreign influences—from subservience to Western powers’ expeditionary goals to the building of a China-centric discourse of Xinjiang archaeology.Footnote 112 The narrative arc dovetails nicely with the key message of the opening ceremony, which was to equip and empower a Chinese way of archaeology, through ‘review’ and ‘reflection’, on the landmark occasion of Chinese archaeology’s centennial. Instead of advocating the SR as a quintessence of Xinjiang archaeology, which was prevalent in museums across the region pre-pandemic, the exhibit embraced a more holistic view of the SR: it is a topic correlated with the objectives of Xinjiang archaeology, but by proxy of the broader goals and visions of Chinese archaeology.
The exhibit’s opening ceremony was well attended by scholars and heads of institutes and cultural bureaus across the country. The welcome addressesFootnote 113 were consistent in advocating: first, the archaeology of Xinjiang is practised in Chinese style and Chinese ways, that is, it keeps to the trajectory and idiosyncrasies of the field’s development within the context of national history. It is a microcosm of the century-old development of Chinese archaeology, and also a powerful testament to Chinese culture progressing towards self-confidence and self-improvement. Second, the archaeology of Xinjiang has always been used to address ethnic and religious issues because Xinjiang has always been a place where multiple cultures and religions coexist. The fact that Xinjiang is a hub of the ancient SR bears witness to the inclusiveness (baorongxing 包容性) of Chinese civilization; the other three traits are ‘continuity’ (lianxuxing 連續性), ‘unity’ (tongyixing 統一性), and ‘innovativeness’ (chuangxinxing 創新性).Footnote 114 Unity and continuity are achieved on the basis of inclusivity, just as innovativeness, that is, keeping pace with social needs and the development of the state, contributes to continuity. Third, advancing archaeological work in Xinjiang is a principal matter of national concern. A key objective is to develop this core area of the BRI to better leverage archaeological and cultural relics resources.
A statement by a group of leading Chinese historians and archaeologists in a 2021 special issue of Social Sciences in China pronounced the shift in archaeology’s role in advocating national interests:
Through the unremitting efforts of several generations of archaeologists, archaeology, initially a Western ‘import’, has gradually adapted to China’s historical and cultural traditions and practical needs … which has laid a solid foundation for the construction of an archaeological disciplinary system, academic system and discourse system with Chinese characteristics.
The last meeting of the Congress of Chinese Archaeology, hosted annually by the Archaeological Society of China (Zhongguo Kaogu Xuehui 中國考古學會) and the largest national gathering of archaeologists,Footnote 115 took place in Xi’an in October 2023 with the theme ‘Formation and Development of a Unified Multi-ethnic Country’, boasting an attendance of over a thousand people. The previous three conferences dealt with topics concerned with the history and future of the discipline, with the 2022 meeting conferring about Chinese style (Zhongguo tese, Zhongguo fengge, Zhongguo qipai 中國特色, 中國風格, 中國氣派)Footnote 116 archaeological study. SR has never been the theme of the Society’s conference.
In structuring their steering committees, the Archaeological Society places ‘Silk Road archaeology’ in the same category as ‘border archaeology’ (bianjiang kaogu 邊疆考古), ‘cultural heritage conservation’ (wenwu yichan baohu 文化遺產保護), ‘archaeology of ancient cities’ (gudai chengshi 古代城市考古), and ‘architectural archaeology’ (jianzhu kaogu 建築考古).Footnote 117 In terms of geographical scope, ‘Silk Road archaeology’ may even be subsidiary to ‘border archaeology’, which encompasses research in all peripheral regions, including Northeast China, Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Xizang, Huanan, and Xinjiang.
The latest international product of the SR-BRI symbiosis is the establishment of a new Silk Road Archaeological Cooperation Research Center at Northwest University, Xi’an, as part of a new Alliance for Cultural Heritage in Asia (Yazhou yizhi baohu lianmeng 亞洲遺產保護聯盟), chaired by China.Footnote 118 The Center was inaugurated on 25 April 2023, with the mission to create ‘an open, collaborative, shared, and inheritable international platform’Footnote 119 to foster the archaeological study of the SR and the ancient East and West, and to promote cultural exchange and collaboration with countries along the SR. It has already forged partnerships with eight countries—Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan—and 13 academic institutions.Footnote 120 Perhaps more important than affording Chinese researchers opportunities to participate in discourses at the international level,Footnote 121 the SR called for a broadening of scientific perspectives beyond China. These international programmes provided China with the platform to reclaim ‘huayuquan’ by rectifying Eurocentric approaches to Asian history,Footnote 122 and asserting Chinese ones. They also serve to showcase Chinese archaeology’s advancements in fieldwork method and scientific technique internationally.
Interestingly, while three areas of BRI-oriented developments are named for Xinjiang—national unity and ethnic integration; bolstering academic disciplinary developments and research management systems; and implementing ‘urban development’ archaeology—notably, as early as 2017, ‘international scholarly exchange’ has largely been dropped from associated narratives.Footnote 123 Foreign participation in domestic archaeology appears to be curtailed compared to the growing investment in launching archaeology projects abroad. There are currently active joint excavations and collections study in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, and Russia. These projects serve to assert China’s historical and cultural links with these neighbouring countries, particularly those in Central Asia bordering its western frontiers, which occupy a high-stakes arena of ‘peripheral diplomacy’.Footnote 124 China’s ‘huayuquan’ is wielded through heritage politicsFootnote 125 in the interests of maintaining security and stability in Xinjiang and strengthening China’s influence over international systems to counter pressure from the West. The intensification of China’s all-around involvement in Central Asia’s economic and infrastructural growth—from technology and trade, to energy, transportation, agriculture, and tourism—has been met with mixed reactions from these countries, with concerns over uneven economic benefits and the risks of over-reliance on China’s investment and over-connectivity.Footnote 126 The impact on scientific developments, however, has yet to be systematically studied.
A corrective
Scholars who have warned about the perils of using SR indiscriminately have proposed divergent solutions: apply a ‘broad and inclusive definition’Footnote 127 or ‘[do] away with the whole concept’.Footnote 128 It is evident that the first is no longer effective because broad definitions have given rise to blanket statements. The second suggestion is, unfortunately, impractical as the term’s widespread use in popular and academic sciences indicates its continued relevance. Although it is media-exploited, the term cannot be dismissed outright. As Susan Whitfield argued, ‘we [cannot] confidently say that there was not a Silk Road’,Footnote 129 and it would also not be worth the risk of substituting SR with ‘other misleading terms’Footnote 130 seeing that ‘silk’ is still widely recognized as a symbol and catalyst for trade and communication between East and West.Footnote 131
Although there is now an implicit recognition of the need to reflect critically on the SR as a productive space of knowledge production and intellectual enquiry as well as the analytical leverage it provides, how it can be achieved remains equivocal.Footnote 132 The upward trend in Google Books Ngram viewer indicates that the SR term will continue to be prolific in publications. How do we then ensure empirical research is not biased by SR constructs? As I stated at the beginning of the article, nomenclature is not the crux of the SR problem. In the following, I propose three analytical approaches to counteract the fallacies surrounding the SR.
Calibrate representations of the SR
It is now commonly understood that the Silk Road does not refer to a measurable physical path of travel that can be uncovered through excavation.Footnote 133 The two words are token representations of large networks of exchange and connections between distant parts of Eurasia based on scattered data points of archaeological remains. Nevertheless, as discussed earlier, the increasing amount of data amassed under the SR umbrella has become unwieldy due to the pitfalls of fallacy of composition, circular reasoning, and presentism.
These issues can be rectified by calibrating the types of archaeological record the SR represents. The metrics may include: first, use only with explicit reference to its attested histories, avoid reinventing the ‘reinvented Silk Road’;Footnote 134 second, scale and periodize in accordance with the scope of investigation, for example, descriptions of westward itineraries from Classical Chinese texts cannot be used to corroborate prehistoric SR remains; third, identify what the empirical basis of the SR is in any given study or which discourse it labels; omit when the significance of the representation is tangential to the discourse or research question at hand.
This is an approach akin to Li Bozhong’s appeal for zhengming 正名 (rectification of names), an ancient nomenclatural practice of ensuring that the name or concept is consistent with its implementation.Footnote 135 To render SR studies more in-depth and scientific, zhengming is necessary; as Li argued, a contextual framework is no substitute for actual research. Not considering corresponding contexts of local histories when studying archaeological materials will bring about empty grand narratives that make for SR hyperboles. The SR cannot serve as an all-inclusive ‘be-all-end-all’ narrative; its homogenizing effect would obscure the diverse processes of archaeological record formation at play.
One can create analytical separation between the archaeology of Xinjiang and the SR concept, while maintaining the scientific weight and comparative scope of the research. One way is to design questions that examine only the narrow definitions of the SR, which pertain mostly to diplomatic and commercial activities in the early imperial period in the Western Regions.Footnote 136 Another way to calibrate representations of the SR in archaeology is to revert to the origins of the concept. For a long time after the SR term appeared in the Western discourse, as historian Liu Jinbao noted, Chinese scholars were merely using the terms ‘history of Sino-Western transport’ (zhongxi jiaotong shi 中西交通史) and ‘history of China’s foreign relations’ (zhongwai guanxi shi 中外關係史) to discuss SR topics.Footnote 137 Back then, the term SR specifically referred to the silk trade routes, and did not encompass the broader meaning it holds today. Reapplying these literal and geographically explicit meanings that underlie the SR concept can enable researchers to discern the myriad historical and geographical dimensions of the SR. It would also aid in addressing a critical gap in theorizing SR landscapes: what constitutes a SR network? What are its topological and geographical characteristics?
Another is to reorient the questions to methodological approaches of enquiry that circumvent potential pitfalls of the SR framework. As the field of Xinjiang archaeology moves towards large-scale settlement studies, from single-site fieldwork that centres on burials, significant progress has been made by Chinese archaeologists in studies of local environmental history,Footnote 138 the development of technologies of production,Footnote 139 ritual behaviour in architecture, and history of defence in the Xiyu (Western Regions).Footnote 140 Research has also advanced beyond establishing typologies based on type sites to uncovering patterns of material culture on transregional scales.Footnote 141 However, even though a large number of primary archaeological reports have been published and are accessible, integrative studies remain lacking. Nevertheless, numerous examples can be drawn from an extensive body of Central Asian archaeological scholarship, from prehistory to the medieval period, that are no less effective in unveiling SR-esque connections without an elusive SR premise. The edited volumes of Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity: Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppe, ca. 250–750 and Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies, for example, are harbingers of this more empirical approach.Footnote 142
Mitigate the SR ‘imperative’: Alternative, non-SR horizons
The questions above dovetail with the one being asked here: where in the landscape is the SR not present? A negative response would render the SR problem unscientific; a positive one would compel the field to establish more robust SR criteria for the scientific use of the term. How important is the SR for scientific analysis?
‘Road’ is arguably the word carrying more weight in the term SR. But, given the significance attributed to it, there are disproportionately few analyses delving into the nature of this physical or metaphorical ‘road’ and how the connection it represents manifested. Most SR enquiries are, instead, about the ‘silk’, that is, objects and sites that are the nodes on SR maps. This emphasis on ‘silk’ over ‘road’ seems incongruent with the primary objective of SR studies, which is to uncover the cultural interactions between different regions. Furthermore, there are seldom characterizations of said ‘road’ or ‘network’ other than implicit assumptions about connections that were present between the nodes, all presumably attributable to the SR. Material networks in human history clearly formed before the SR existed, but what distinguishes the SR type of network from other kinds in history? Do local SR networks that are distant from one another belong to the same overarching SR network?Footnote 143
Syntheses on the SR often cite a collage of sites that are seemingly connected by a single (category of) material trait(s) as evidence. And these sites are linked to the SR because the latter is a priori a condition for the emergence of these sites. The argument follows that while the ‘roads’ are no longer visible to us today,Footnote 144 their existence is evinced by the archaeological remains. But the correlation is hard to prove, even in the case of Xinjiang. Although the sites around the Tarim seem to cluster along three axes (the northern, the middle, and the southern routes)Footnote 145—largely due to the topography heavily influencing accessibility in this area—there is limited evidence indicating that these routes were consistently and continuously used over time. Valerie Hansen’s analysis of Turfan manuscripts shows that the trade of the SR up to Tang was in fact localized in many places,Footnote 146 which is to say, there are purported SR sites that may well not have been part of the SR network.
Khazanov’s recent study shows the value of sidestepping SR-premised histories to review ‘networks of many different itineraries’Footnote 147—short and long haul, maritime and overland, steppe routes from the Han to the Mongols, and north-south as well. What determines the directionality, longevity, and accessibility of these routes are not only the objects that travelled on them, but also the people, places, and the systems that governed them. As many of these ‘roads’ were in fact segmented, staggered, and short-lived itineraries,Footnote 148 it stands to reason that they might not have played a part in establishing East-West exchange on a continental scale. Instead, they may have constituted the ‘negative spaces’ surrounding the purported connections that the SR subsumes. Given the topology of routes and networks and the relative demographic immobility in the past, it is reasonable to infer that there were more areas devoid of SR influence—‘negative spaces’—than those connected by the SR.
The presence of non-SR horizons warrants attention, because they also often consist of objects that do not fit the stereotypical SR profile. The analysis requires us to set aside the SR paradigm and reason inductively. It can be achieved by, for example, shifting the question to processes of record formation from assessment of stereotypical cultural traits, which often reveal the pasts of niche demographics. This could prove valuable for revealing undercurrents of cultural transmission that may not be less significant than what the SR totalizes. Such an approach can in turn reduce the need to invoke SR as a mere cosmetic framework, thereby rendering the term less totalizing, to borrow Henry Giroux (1992)’s treatment of ‘politics of difference’.Footnote 149 The research questions that therefore become centred on the local—despite the global—may be far more interesting and amenable to critical thinking. The ‘imperative’ to invoke the SR concept, premised on the presence of allochthonous influence, can prejudice the evaluation of the impact of local cultures on the material record.
For example, studies of the spread of Buddhism in China are heavily focused on iconography, excavated manuscripts, and records in historical texts. The connection between the propagation of a foreign religion and local economy, demographic flows, etc., is still poorly understood. Furthermore, the role of Buddhist monasteries and religious establishments at various sites across the area of Xinjiang is seldom placed in comparative contexts, archaeologically, with corresponding developments at other centres of Buddhist architecture within the Sinosphere, for example, Luoyang and Dunhuang, and beyond.Footnote 150 The idiosyncrasies of these local histories have important implications for understanding the spatial patterns of cultural flows over time. Without the encompassing veil of the SR, the so-called Han SR and the Tang SR, the proto-SR, or even the journeys between different known trade stops along the SR may reveal themselves to be drastically different undertakings.Footnote 151
Shifting the focus to non-SR horizons also serves to upend conventional east-west/East-West dichotomous thinking. Framing enquiries into the Central Asia’s past indiscriminately in terms of East-West exchange is not only unfounded, it betrays hegemonic thinking that exoticizes local histories in the interest of building globalized narratives.
Counteract the SR-BRI lockstep
A publication tally shows there is growing desynchronization in the SR-BRI lockstep. The number of Chinese journal articles on the BRI rose from <10,000 in 2015 to <30,000 in 2017 but dropped to below the 2015 level in 2021. Ma Lirong at the Institute of Silk Road Strategy Studies attributed the latest drop to the desynchronization of SR studies and the academic goals of the BRI, among other contemporary geopolitical factors.Footnote 152 She contended that Chinese academia has yet to fully transpose the research focus of SR studies to the study of core ideas of BRI, which rendered the BRI an ill-defined research discipline, and that the fragmentation of the former was obfuscating the research aims of the latter.Footnote 153
Interestingly, this echoes Tim Winter’s observations on the conundrum of SR geopolitics. While he found possible resolution in the discourse of internationalism as a means of moving ‘between the past and future in ways that develop a critical disposition toward the Silk Roads as a productive space of inquiry’, he also recognized that the very same internationalism ‘cohabiting cultural and heritage diplomacy’ and advancing pillars of the BRI has rendered the SR ‘highly malleable and amenable to metaphorical invocation’,Footnote 154 leaving the state of future SR studies unpredictable.
The fragmentation of discourse could also be explained using the theory of ‘global localism’. Global localism is brought on by the transnationalization of capital, which saw ‘[p]roduction and economic activity (hence, ‘economic development’) become localized in regions below the nation, while its management requires supranational supervision and coordination’.Footnote 155 In recompensing for Eurocentric narratives of history, the SR became, effectively, the supranational ‘global thinking’ that captures this newly fragmented cultural-economic space, harnessing and domesticating the local into imperatives of a non-European postmodern.Footnote 156
Kate Franklin’s treatment of ‘globalization’ is an example of this fallacy at work in applied SR studies. It sought to reconcile views that SR has the potential to ‘challenge modernist understandings of globality, globalization, and deterritorialization’ with arguments asserting that it enables an ‘archaeology of globality and globalization’ and can serve as ‘a framework for thinking about world-scale systems, human and material mobility, and processes and experiences of globalization at different scales’, but in the same breath acknowledged that the ‘designation of Silk Road routes as universal cultural heritage is fraught with contradictions’.Footnote 157
A methodological antidote to the local/global dualistic hold on Asian histories may be found in Engseng Ho’s ‘interAsian concepts’. Specifically, this entails interrogating partial notions of society, transregional axes of history, plasticity of space-time, and asymmetrical and undulating connections that may be incongruent with modules of either the local or the global.Footnote 158 For it is seemingly at this intermediate scale that SR becomes most entangled in heritage politics and unamenable to scientific enquiry as it struggles to reconcile contemporary geopolitical ideals with processes of the past.
Regardless of the potential fruits and pitfalls of SR-based BRI diplomacy, a presentist approach would only scientifically render obsolete the phenomena represented by the ancient SR by placing them in lockstep with contemporary developments. Instead, to preserve its external validity, critical thinking of the SR should venture in directions that offset the pull of totalizing and internalist narratives.
Assessing the current placement of SR research within Chinese archaeological discourse can yield valuable insights for finding a congruent approach. A good barometer is the 12-volume centenary history of Chinese archaeology (Zhongguo kaogu bainianshi 中國考古學百年史 [Chinese Archaeology’s Centenary History]) published in 2021. In it, the SR is classified as a distinct topic of interest, along with 11 others.Footnote 159 In various chapters of the compendium, the SR is taken as synonymous with East-West exchange or general modes of cultural exchange. But its development is most extensively discussed in the context of archaeological fieldwork in Xinjiang, where European explorers first pursued their interests in the name of the SR, with the BRI representing its most recent evolution.Footnote 160 All related accounts in the volumes demonstrate that rather than offering empirical methods for research, the SR has primarily functioned as a framework for conceptualizing aspects of Chinese archaeology’s evolution in the twentieth century and envisioning the discipline’s future trajectory. The Bronze Age Xinjiang chapter, for example, mentions the SR only in a postscript on future research directions.Footnote 161 The SR is also scarcely mentioned in other chapters (Neolithic, Six Dynasties period, and Sui-Tang period) on Xinjiang in the four-volume compendium on Chinese archaeology. Considering the influence of the BRI on science and education, the coverage of the SR is relatively parsimonious. This seems oddly inconsistent with its widespread use in other contexts, but it also signals the clarity that can be gained in scientific enquiry when the SR trajectory is separated out from discourses of empirical research.
Conclusion
In light of the growing recognition of the pitfalls of SR orientations in archaeological research, this article aims to provide grounds for questioning the logic of leveraging the SR, whether empirically, conceptually, or rhetorically, in scientific studies. I examine the history of the field of Xinjiang archaeology, arguably the first locus of SR studies, to illustrate three common fallacies associated with the SR. First, to engage with the concept of SR in research today is to have to disentangle the palimpsest of connotations layered on the term over the past 150 years. The SR has continuously shape-shifted—from a cause for Western explorers’ expeditionary ambitions in East Turkestan to a catchword for UNESCO’s ideals of marshalling scientific resources to promote a shared understanding of humanity’s past, and later an avatar for the geopolitical goals of the BRI. Second, close examination of the archaeological evidence attributed to the SR rarely reveals discernible linear and directional patterns of cultural exchange characteristic of the SR. The SR is a conception best observed from a panned-out, largely presentist perspective. In the near future, the amorphousness of the concept will become increasingly at odds with the specificity required of fine-grained analysis as well as big data analytics. Third, in most of the archaeological literature, the meaning of the SR is indistinguishable from cross-cultural and East-West exchange. To indiscriminately characterize findings as evidence of the SR would be to make a blanket argument for external influence. With China’s reorientation of the SR towards building a China-centric archaeological discourse aimed at augmenting international discourse power, the implications of asking SR-framed scientific questions will only grow more complex.
These arguments are not presented to diminish the progress made by SR studies, which is indisputably significant. There is now a sizeable repository of data at our disposal, and many questions that can be asked—without engaging the concept. Research can be conducted at greater international scales through cross-institutional schemes and infrastructure that have been put in place to support collaboration. The questions raised by new archaeological findings, however, do not necessitate new renditions of the SR concept, which is still a prevalent practice. Instead, they demand a more critical engagement with the material it encompasses, independent of the SR construct. I propose that this entails exploring alternative, non-SR horizons, deploying calibrated SR frameworks only where necessary, and deconstructing or relinquishing narratives that inherited and beget hegemonic world views. Studies of the material record cannot be tethered to ahistorical political constructs if they are to keep pace with scientific progress. While the SR remains an important theme in Xinjiang archaeology, the field’s progression demands empirical frameworks that challenge its indiscriminate applications.
Acknowledgements
I thank Zhang Yang for her untiring research assistance, which was indispensable for gathering the sizeable corpus of Silk Road-themed publications. I am indebted to Cong Dexin for pointing me to crucial resources and references, and to Andrew Law, Max Oidtmann, and Susan Whitfield for their acute feedback on earlier drafts of the article. I am thankful for the detailed comments from the anonymous reviewers of Modern Asian Studies which helped greatly improve the article’s structure and strengthen its arguments. Earlier versions of the article were presented at the History and Practice of Archaeology in China workshop organized by Anke Hein and Julia Lovell at the University of Oxford, and at the Asian Cultural Mobilities: Transitions, Encounters, Heritage workshop organized by Alessandro Rippa, Karen O’Brien-Kop, and Xiang Ren at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich.
Funding statement
The LMUexcellent Junior Researcher Fund supported the fieldwork in China that enabled the collection of data.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
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