Jeff mentioned I'm on the board of the Institute for Field Research, which is a program or it's an institute, a nonprofit that coordinates archaeological, and ethnographic, and environmental field schools around the world. Before I get started, I did want to mention one thing. But we'll get there in a second, in terms of my framing of this discussion. I also want to emphasize that these networks of interaction at the origins that I'm going to be talking about for most of the time are really not trade routes per se, as Jane referred to them, and as we often think about the Silk Roads. And so most of the conversation that I'm going to have today will involve discussion of the origins of the Silk Roads, and to a large extent, the proto Silk Road that Jeff referred to from the point of view of the places where I've been working on the kind of eastern parts of these networks of interaction. I wanted to point out from the beginning that my vantage point is decidedly eastern situated in China, where I conduct my fieldwork. Today, I'm going to be talking about the nature of networks and interaction that connect distant places across Eurasia. Despite the weather, you have braved the transition of seasons, and it's nice to have you here. It's delightful to have so many of you here today to join us in this discussion about the origins of the Silk Road in China. And also, thank my collaborators in China, without whom a lot of the work I've been able to do on this project and others I wouldn't be able to accomplish. I wanted to thank the Peabody Museum staff also for putting this program together. Please join me in welcoming Professor Flad. His current research and writing projects focus on several aspects of social complexity, including specialized production and technology, the anthropology value, mortuary analysis, archaeological landscapes, inter-regional interaction, cultural transmission, and animal and plant domestication. This project focuses on technological change in various domains and investigates the formation processes of community interaction involved in the development of the proto Silk Road. He's conducted excavations at a salt production site in eastern Sichuan Basin, a regional archaeological survey in the Chengdu region, focusing on prehistoric settlement patterns and social evolution, and currently directs an international collaborative survey and excavation project in the Tao River Valley in Gansu.

This work incorporates interests in diachronic change and production processes and technology, the interaction between ritual activity and production, the role of animals in early Chinese society, particularly their use in sacrifice and divination, and the processes involved in social change in general. His research has focused on the emergence and development of complex society during the late Neolithic and Bronze Age periods in China. He also serves on the academic board and was a founding board member of the Institute for Field Research and serves on the founding board of the Escherick-Ye Family Foundation. At Harvard, he served as the archeology program director, director of Undergraduate Studies, and department chair for the Department of Anthropology, and the chair of the Standing Committee on Archeology, and he's an affiliated faculty member of the Inner Asian and Altaic Studies department. He holds an AB from the University of Chicago, and an MA and PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles. Hudson professor of archeology and the Department of Anthropology here at Harvard University. Welcome, and it's my pleasure tonight to introduce our speaker.

Presented by Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology. Hudson Professor of Archaeology, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University Rowan Flad will examine the archaeological evidence-from the Qijia Culture of Northwest China-that documents the agricultural, metallurgical, and technological innovations that resulted from the earliest trans-Eurasian exchanges, and how studies of the Silk Road origins are being reinvigorated by China’s One Belt, One Road initiative. These networks eventually gave rise to the Silk Road trade routes connecting the East and West. See also: Public Lectures, Archaeology, History, AsiaĪpproximately 4,000 years ago, the peoples of China and Eurasia gradually began to develop networks of interaction and exchange that radically transformed the cultures of both regions.

Map of slik road