Classics 390A - History&Archaeology/Silk Road

The Silk Road is an interconnected web of trade routes between the Ancient Mediterranean and Asia, traversing a vast expanse of the Eurasian heartland. Communities of nomadic shepherds and oasis townsfolk coexisted with itinerant merchants, missionaries, and soldiers. Students will become acquainted with the history and archaeology of this cosmopolitan region and with scholarly debates about the extent of historical interactions between classical world civilizations. Beginning with the first people of the region and its prehistoric economy (before ca. 3000 BCE), students will then study Greek, Persian and Chinese regimes of the Silk Road prior to the ascendance of confederated horse nomads, and the role of shifting geopolitical realities in the economics of long-distance overland trade in antiquity, concluding with the unification of the region under Mongol Empire (after 1200 CE).