Chinese walls Conference this Thursday and Friday in Vienna

Success and Failure of Wall Building in Human History

Conference 18-20 October 2018

University of Vienna, Institute of Art History, Seminar Room 1

Garnisongasse 13, Court 9 (Uni Campus), 1090 Wien

Programme

Thursday, October 18
10:00-10:15
Welcome and Opening address Lukas Nickel and Robert Rollinger
Panel 1, Panel Chair: Eberhard Sauer
10:15-11:00
Gebhard Selz, Wien,The Martu-Wall of the UR-III period
11:00 coffee break
11:15-12:00
Robert Rollinger, Innsbruck,The Median wall and Xenophon
12:00-12:45
Lukas Nickel, Wien,The Qin and Han Great Wall
12:45-14:30 Lunch BreakPanel 2, Panel Chair: Christoph Schäfer
14:30-15:15
Nicola DiCosmo, Princeton,The Chinese Wall from a Nomadic Perspective
15:15-16:00Krzysztof Nawotka, Wrocław,The „Gates of Alexander“ and the Caucasian Wall of Derbent
16:00 coffee break16:15-17:15
Discussion (Tim Taylor)
19:00 Conference Dinner (Speakers and Discussants only)

Friday, October 19
Panel 3, Panel Chair: Lukas Nickel
9:00-9:45
Lauren Morris, Freiburg,The Iron Gate wall in Uzbekistan
9:45-10:30
Eberhard Sauer et al., Edinburgh,The Wall of Gorgan
10:30-11:00 Coffee Break
11:00-11:45
Dirk Rupnow, Innsbruck,The Berlin Wall
11:45-12:30Discussion (Sitta von Reden)
12:30-14:30 Lunch Break
afternoon:Excursion: Roman Vienna(with Andreas Schwarcz, Wien)
Saturday, October 20
Panel 4, Panel Chair: Robert Rollinger
9:30-10:15Kai Ruffing, Kassel,The Hadrian ́s Wall
10:15-11:00
Christoph Schäfer, Trier,The Rhine and Danube Limes
11:00 Coffee break
11:15-12:15
Concluding Remarks and Final discussion
(Bert Fragner)

 Kontakt

Garnisongasse 13, Universitätscampus Hof 9, 1090 Wien
T: +43-1-4277-41401
F: +43-1-4277-9414
kunstgeschichte@univie.ac.at

In the Wake of the Mongols: The Making of a New Social Order in North China, 1200- 1600 by Jinping Wang

In the Wake of the Mongols: 

The Making of a New Social Order in North China, 1200-1600 (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series) 

Hardcover – 26 Oct 2018

by Jinping Wang 

• Hardcover: 354 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (26 Oct. 2018)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9780674987159

The Mongol conquest of north China between 1211 and 1234 inflicted terrible wartime destruction, wiping out more than one-third of the population and dismantling the existing social order. In the Wake of the Mongols recounts the riveting story of how northern Chinese men and women adapted to these trying circumstances and interacted with their alien Mongol conquerors to create a drastically new social order. To construct this story, the book uses a previously unknown source of inscriptions recorded on stone tablets. Jinping Wang explores a north China where Mongol patrons, Daoist priests, Buddhist monks, and sometimes single women-rather than Confucian gentry-exercised power and shaped events, a portrait that upends the conventional view of imperial Chinese society. Setting the stage by portraying the late Jin and closing by tracing the Mongol period's legacy during the Ming dynasty, she delineates the changing social dynamics over four centuries in the northern province of Shanxi, still a poorly understood region.

Jinping Wang is Assistant Professor of History at the National University of Singapore.

Hammer and Anvil: Nomad Rulers at the Forge of the Modern World 

Hardcover – 9 Feb 2019

by Pamela Kyle Crossley

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (9 Feb. 2019)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1442214430

This groundbreaking book examines the role of rulers with nomadic roots in transforming the great societies of Eurasia, especially from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. Distinguished historian Pamela Kyle Crossley, drawing on the long history of nomadic confrontation with Eurasia's densely populated civilizations, argues that the distinctive changes we associate with modernity were founded on vernacular literature and arts, rising literacy, mercantile and financial economies, religious dissidence, independent learning, and self-legitimating rulership. Crossley finds that political traditions of Central Asia insulated rulers from established religious authority and promoted the objectification of cultural identities marked by language and faith, which created a mutual encouragement of cultural and political change. As religious and social hierarchies weakened, political centralization and militarization advanced. But in the spheres of religion and philosophy, iconoclasm enjoyed a new life. The changes cumulatively defined a threshold of the modern world, beyond which lay early nationalism, imperialism, and the novel divisions of Eurasia into "East" and "West." Synthesizing new interpretive approaches and grand themes of world history from 1000 to 1500, Crossley reveals the unique importance of Turkic and Mongol regimes in shaping Eurasia's economic, technological, and political evolution toward our modern world.

Pamela Crossley's magnificent book is a deeply historical study that seeks to compel a profound reassessment of the place of Eurasian thought in the genealogy of modernity. It contends--on the basis of massive evidence quarried from a stunningly capacious and deftly argued reading of the connected histories of Inner Eurasia from the East Asian Steppe to eastern Europe--that we really need to rethink the role of nomads in world history. Is the modern world European? Or is its genealogy more complex and far-reaching? Crossley argues that before it was declared by Renaissance thinkers to be the special heritage of the West, Greek thought was deeply imbricated in the world-bestriding, multiconfessional civilization of Eurasia. And therein hangs a tale. In so doing she provokes a much overdue and critically important historical argument.--

Edmund Burke III, University of California at Santa Cruz

Pamela Crossley takes the reader beyond the comfort zone of civilizations and into a realm of uncommon knowledge, which illuminates the key role played by the nomads of Eurasia in shaping the late medieval and modern world. Premodern and early modern global history cannot be understood without such knowledge, and Crossley's expert weaving of traditions and transformations, religions and beliefs, events, and debates brings the question of nomadic heritage in an engaging dialogue with modernity and to the forefront of a global historical consciousness.--

Nicola Di Cosmo, Institute for Advanced Study

Pamela Crossley demonstrates the vital role of Turkic and Mongolian nomads in shaping the modern world. They constructed a common Eurasian cultural matrix, which connected religious beliefs, technologies, and techniques of political legitimation that crossed civilizational divides. Sweeping over centuries and covering vast spaces, this book is filled with provocative assertions and penetrating insights. It uncovers the large-scale trends that unified states and societies across Eurasia, giving us a remarkably refreshing perspective on our own times.--

Peter C. Perdue, Yale University

Pamela Crossley's remarkable book is an ambitious and original treatment of several centuries of Eurasian history, arguing that nomadic empires and their rulers contributed in important ways to changes which led to 'modernity.' Only a historian of her breadth of knowledge and imagination could write such a book. It is both thought-provoking and persuasive.--

David Morgan, University of Wisconsin-Madison

About the Author

Pamela Kyle Crossley is Charles and Elfriede Collis Professor of History at Dartmouth College. A former Guggenheim and NEH fellow, she was awarded of the AAS Levenson Prize. Her books include The Wobbling Pivot: China since 1800, What Is Global History?, A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology, and The Manchus.

Archaeology and Conservation Along the Silk Road  

Paperback – 3 Nov 2018

by Gabriela Krist (Editor), Liangren Zhang (Editor)

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Bohlau Verlag (3 Nov. 2018)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3205200446

Supported by Eurasia Pacific Uninet, the second international conference on 'Archaeology and Conservation along the Silk Road' was jointly organized by Nanjing University China and Institute of Conservation, University of Applied Arts Vienna and held in May 2016 in China. Silk Road showcases the trans-continental cultural movements between Europe and Asia and this event encouraged researchers to reflect on popular as well as otherwise under-represented topics. This volume includes selected papers from the conference and merges aspects of archaeology with conservation. Subjects vary from field drawings, unique local techniques, spread of diseases and epidemics to DNA studies assessing population migration and mixture. Next Silk Road conference is planned for 2018 to carry forward the initiative of learning and exchange of knowledge.

Central Asian Cultures, Arts, and Architecture: Inner Eurasia from Prehistory to the Medieval Golden Ages by Ardi Kia

Central Asian Cultures, Arts, and Architecture: 

Inner Eurasia from Prehistory to the Medieval Golden Ages

Hardcover – 15 Dec 2018

by Ardi Kia

• Hardcover: 150 pages
• Publisher: Lexington Books; Second edition (15 Dec. 2018)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1498589057

Central Asia Cultures, Arts, and Architecture presents a journey through time, analyzing the history of Central Asian cultures, arts, and architecture since prehistoric times. It includes documentation of historical, cultural, artistic, and architectural accomplishments, and combines writings based on archaeological excavations and research of prehistoric, ancient, and medieval sites, as well as translations of ancient and medieval historical sources by Russian, Chinese, and other indigenous scholars. For over seven thousand years, Central Asian residents have left a record of distinguished cultural artifacts. Like creators of any age or period, they sought to respond as creatively as possible to the necessities of their societies as a whole, and those of their individual patrons. In doing so, as this book reveals, they have given us a timeless source through which we can detect the dynamic stages of their creativity throughout history, as well as the breath of our own rich cultural and artistic heritage.

Dr. Ardi Kia is co-director of Central and Southwest Asian Studies Program at the University of Montana.

Artifacts from the Ancient Silk Road 

(Daily Life through Artifacts) 

Hardcover – 28 Feb 2019

by William E. Mierse

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Greenwood Publishing Group Inc (28 Feb. 2019)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1440858284

Artifacts from the Ancient Silk Road explores the interconnectivity of the Eurasian continent from 4000 BCE to 1000 CE. It focuses on the role played by Central Asia through which passed the major trade routes, the Silk Roads.

Artifacts from the Ancient Silk Road covers life along the Silk Road over 5000 years as it can be understood by considering objects. In this first object-based study to consider all of the peoples involved on the Silk Roads, objects provide the vehicles for explorations of different aspects of life for the various peoples of the Silk Roads, including the sedentary peoples who established urban life on the Silk Roads, the steppe nomads who regularly interacted with the settled peoples, and the peoples at either end of the Silk Roads who drove certain kinds of economic exchanges.

The book looks at Central Asia as an international zone during ancient times when multiple religious, political, and technological ideas found acceptance in the region and allows for a better understanding of how some ideas and forms developed in Central Asia while others passed through or were modified.

Features

• Places important objects and artifacts within the context of the history of the Silk Road
• Provides readers with guidance on how to assess and analyze artifacts
• Offers an innovative way for readers to learn about history through material culture
• Enables fuller historical understanding by clarifying how the meanings of artifacts are created through the interactions of objects and people and how these meanings change over time

William E. Mierse, PhD, is Richard and Pamela Green and Gold Professor of Art History at the University of Vermont. He is coeditor with Alfred Andrea of "Classical Traditions 1000 BCE–300 CE, the second volume in ABC-CLIO's World History Encyclopedia.

Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Foods We Eat by Robert N. Spengler

Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Foods We Eat 

Hardcover – 12 Jun 2019

by Robert N. Spengler 

• Hardcover: 440 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (12 Jun. 2019)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520303636

The foods we eat have a deep and often surprising past. Many foods we consume today-from almonds and apples to tea and rice-have histories can be traced along the tracks of the Silk Road out of prehistoric Central Asia to European kitchens and American tables. Organized trade along the Silk Road dates to at least Han Dynasty China in the second century B.C., but the exchange of goods, ideas, cultural practices, and genes along these ancient trading routes extends back five thousand years. Balancing a broad array of archaeological, botanical, and historical evidence, Fruit from the Sands presents the fascinating story of the origins and spread of agriculture across Inner Asia and into Europe and East Asia. Through the preserved remains of plants in archaeological sites, Robert N. Spengler III identifies the regions where our most familiar crops were domesticated and follows their routes as people carried them around the world. Vividly narrated, Fruit from the Sands explores how the foods we eat have shaped the course of human history and transformed consumption all over the globe.

Robert N. Spengler III is the Archaeobotany Laboratory Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, a Volkswagen/Mellon Foundations Fellow, and a former Visiting Research Scholar at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.