Silk Roads: Peoples, Cultures, Landscapes. Edited by Susan Whitfield (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2019) 480 pp. $65.00

Abstract

An expansive definition of the Silk Roads shapes this striking volume, which measures 9 by 11.5 inches, weighs more than 5 pounds, and contains 450 color photographs and 200 black-and-white images, many of them difficult-to-obtain shots of extraordinarily high quality. Whitfield articulates her subject at the start of the book as “a system of substantial and persistent overlapping and evolving interregional trade networks across Afro-Eurasia by land and sea from the end of the first millennium BCE through to the middle of the 2nd millennium CE, trading in silk and many other raw materials and manufactured items—including, but not limited to, slaves, horses, semi-precious stones, metals, pots, musk, medicines, glass, furs and fruits—resulting in movements and exchanges of peoples, ideas, technologies, faiths, languages, scripts, iconographies, stories, music, dance and so on” (15). In sum, this volume aims to cover every item and idea that moved anywhere in Afro-Eurasia between 200 b.c.e. and 1500 c.e. and that has left any traces in the historical record.A detailed, legible two-page map illustrates the geographical scope of the volume—as far west as Great Britain, north to St. Petersburg and Siberia (but not the Arctic), east to Japan, and south to southeast Asia (but not Australia) and Sofala on the Mozambican coast of Africa (8–9). An inset map highlights Sogdiana, Bactria, and Gandhara, regions of Central Asia falling under the narrower definition of the Silk Roads.That same map appears at the start of each geographical section of the book— “Steppe,” “Mountains and Highlands,” “Deserts and Oases,” “Rivers and Plains,” and “Seas and Skies”—with page numbers superimposed on the map to guide readers to the scenery, objects, historical photographs, and maps illustrated in that section. This innovative structure allows readers with no previous knowledge to choose a point on the map to investigate.Pictures come first in this book. The photographs are larger, clearer, and more opulent than in any other book about the Silk Road. The lavish illustrations leave little room for text. Consider the “Deserts and Oases” section, which covers the traditional Silk Road through Central Asia. A full-page illustration of the Taklamakan Desert’s black poplars in autumnal foliage and a half-page of camels in the Sahara precede more detailed photos of the Keriya oasis, Petra’s pools, and the ruins of Palmyra, Merv, Jiaohe, and Khotan.In the overview chapter, Tim Williams describes the main deserts of Afro-Eurasia—the Gobi, the Taklamakan, the Lop, the Kizilkum and the Karakum, the Thar, the Dasht-e Lut and Dasht-e Kavir, the Syrian, the Sahara—in less than two pages. The tight word count means that the lead authors can sketch the geography and highlight a dynasty or an individual, all the while emphasizing the book’s theme of connectivity. Top experts in the field write the individual pages devoted to specific sites; these descriptions, too, are brief, but they list as many as five suggestions for further readings, for which the bibliography provides full references (447–465).The field of Silk Road studies has always drawn on multiple disciplines—most importantly, archaeology, history, art history, and religious studies—and the contributors to this volume (and the authors of the many items in the bibliography) do so as well. The volume’s entries are too brief to give readers much sense of the debates that continue to guide the field. Yes, objects, ideas, and religions moved across regions, but who carried them? Why did they move in one period but not in another? Where did they have the greatest impact? Scholars who are interested in such questions will have to consult the remarkably detailed bibliography.Much more than yet another coffee-table book about the Silk Roads, this volume offers a first-rate illustrative program supported by cutting-edge scholarship. Readers of all types, from the merely curious to scholars who have devoted their careers to the field, will find themselves returning to its lavishly illustrated pages and maps time and time again.