Tents, Tombs and Horse Trade, The Tang (AD 618-906 ) and the Turks

Last lecture in of the series Steppe and the Silk Roads, China's Interactions with its neighbours by Professor Dame Jessica Rawson, organised by Asian Modernities and Traditions (AMT) research profile of Leiden University.

The lecture

The Tang period is renowned for its glittering court and the so-called Silk Road, bringing many merchants and foreign goods to the capital, Chang’an. The talk will illustrate the very fine artefacts of this period, but will also consider a much wider context. The Tang were embattled with several Turkish empires, at that period occupying large areas of the steppe. The Chinese were forced to purchase horses to engage with these mounted warriors, and they paid for the horses, which indeed came from the steppe, in silk. This silk drove the silk trade, mainly in the hands of an Iranian people, the Sogdians. Today we have much evidence from archaeological excavations of the lives of the Sogdians who settled in China in the sixth to eighth century. the talk will present the fascinating scenes of these merchants and officials that are documented in carvings on their coffins buried at the capital cities of the Tang. The Tang period, renowned for its art and poetry, is now much better known and even more colourful for the multiple engagements that we now know the court had with its neighbours.

The speaker

Professor Dame Jessica Rawson, DBE, DLitt, FBA is Professor of Chinese Art and Archaeology, University of Oxford. Her research interests involve the archaeology of China and Inner Asia, early Chinese material culture as evidence for religious concepts and beliefs, the development and function of ornament in all parts of Eurasia. Currently, Professor Rawson works on interactions between central China and Inner Asia in the Zhou (c. 1045- 221 BC), Qin (221-210 BC) and Han (206 BC-AD220) periods; on the structure and contents of Chinese tombs; and on exoticism in the Han to Tang periods (200 BC-AD900).

For more information about the lecture series Steppe and the Silk Roads, China’s Interactions with its neighbours go to the AMT website: http://research.leiden.edu/research-profiles/amt/news/jessica-rawson.html