Book release: Bulletin for the Museums of Far Eastern Antiquities

Hello, welcome. My name is Eva Myrdal. I'm the editor of the Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, volume 81. The seven chapters in the book are based on papers presented at a symposium held at the museum in 2015, Asia and Scandinavia, new perspectives on the early medieval silk roads. The background to the symposium was the well-known archaeological finds that show that people in the northwestern periphery of Eurasia in Scandinavia had contacts with networks in Asia at times. And research in Asia has shown that areas that has been perceived as a periphery also have their own history as communication roads and areas of innovation, and that certain raw materials had at times been transported from west to east. This volume discusses concrete research on given archaeological sites. It provides examples of material that has been en route, as well as of what made travel possible. But we need cross-border research contacts to interpret the archaeological material and to understand the practice itself. This volume's extensive bibliographies have a regional focus on archaeological research and on the dynamics of cultural heritage management cross-border with a silk road perspective. I hope that the volume, and not least the bibliographies, will be of use for future knowledge building across Eurasia. And now you will have the possibility of listening to some of the authors. Please, the floor is yours. Today it's generally known that the Vikings reached all the way to L'Anse aux Meadows in North America, but few know of their journeys into Central Asia. On a runestone in the Swedish province of Västmanland, we can read that Slagvi, son of Gudleifr, died in the east in Koresm. Koresm is an oasis just south of the Aral Sea, within travelling distance from the great markets of the silk roads, sites like Samarkand, Qara, Merv and Herat. It was undoubtedly the riches of the silk roads that had attracted Slagvi to make the long journey from Västmanland. He would have travelled on the Volga, through the European parts of modern-day Russia, crossed the Ural Mountains into Asia, encountered various groups of steppe nomadic people and cultures north of the Caspian Sea, before arriving in Koresm. In my paper, I present and discuss archaeological evidence of travels like these, retrieved from a number of places in present-day Sweden. It's a spectacular, but heterogeneous material that includes foreign weaponry, like the steppe nomadic composite bow, exotic luxury items like a Buddha from India, silk from China and Persia, and garnets from India that were used to decorate local jewellery. During the Viking Age, Asia was not the end of the world, but rather considered a neighbour. I'm Annika Larsson, and I have a paper in the book dealing with the Viking Age textiles in Eastern Scandinavia. The collections of the textiles from the boat and chamber graves in Scandinavia are kept here in Uppsala University, and the collections are in this building at Museum Vestavianum. Behind me, we have the Valsgade boat grave field on a small hill, and there are 15 boat graves known from the late Iron Age, of which 10 are from the Viking Age. So the boat grave was in the ground, and the boat was filled with objects, with grave gifts, furniture, animals like horses and dogs, and also a tent or a small house where the deceased lied in a bed. The most famous textiles from these graves are silk. It's almost only silk in the graves, in the Viking Age graves, and the most famous is this colour. This is a reconstruction with silver embroidery, and it's displayed in the exhibition on Museum Vestavianum at the university. But there are almost one and a half thousand small fragments of textiles in these graves. The silk was without doubt from Central Asian areas. For example, this pillow is a reconstruction of the ceramite silk with pearl roundel patterns that are typical, typical Persian and post-Sasanian. And we also have Chinese silk, very thin, tabby. It's almost see-through with printed motifs. And we have these small, small silver, not embroidery, but stitch work or passimentary work that are so typical for nomadic people. The boat graves, full of this silk, were situated along waterways that was in connection to the Baltic Sea and further east. In my paper, I discuss these Eurasian cultural contexts during the Viking Age. I hope you will find it interesting. Hello, Dr. Eva and everyone. How are you? I'm Tong Tao from Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. Congratulations for this new wonderful book is released successfully. I'm very glad to have this opportunity to give a brief comment on it. Many thanks for Dr. Eva's inviting us to participate in the conference in September 2015, Asia and Scandinavia, New Perspectives on the Early Medieval Silk Road in Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities. In the next year, I sent my contribution to the bulletin. It is one of proceedings of this conference. My article is a report and study on the silk from West Tibet. My excavation team has discovered a lot of Han Chinese silk in 2012 in this region, which shows that the Silk Road extended to this remote high plateau in the 3rd to 4th century AD. Before that, nobody dared to imagine it. Archaeologists from Nepal and America have also found a similar silk in Mustang, the northmost of Nepal, neighboring West Tibet. This route has very easy access to North India. That means that the Silk Road connected the central plain of China, Central Asia, and South Asia via Himalaya region. It was mentioned that since 2015, more archaeological work has been conducted in West Tibet, yielding more silk pieces. These have been analyzed by experts from Chinese Silk Museum. The results support the view I put forward in this article. So I would say that the scientific excavation and discoveries will bring us new perspectives on many areas of research. It will change our entrenched ideas thoroughly. That is the charm of fieldwork archaeology. Please pay attention to our new research and progress consistently. Many thanks to you. Congratulations. Bye-bye. Hi. My name is Eva Andersson-Staund. I am Associate Professor in Archaeology and the Director for the Center of Textile Research at Copenhagen University. My research focuses on the Viking Age. In the Viking Age society, there was a need for a variety of textiles, textiles for clothing, ranging from everyday dress to elite costumes, textiles for furnishing, wall hangings, carpets, and coverings, as well as textiles for other purposes, such as bags and sacks, and perhaps most importantly, a need for sail and sailcloth. Therefore, knowledge on production, consumption, and trade and exchange of textiles give us important perspectives when integrated into the general discussion on society. The production of a textile includes many steps. Procurement of the fibers, which then have to be prepared for spinning, weaving, and finishing. To make a textile takes time. Analysis of archaeological textiles in combination with experimental archaeology demonstrate that a male costume, including a mantle over an under-tunic, trousers, and puttis could take for one person to produce 155 days, if working eight hours a day. When traveling, especially on sea, more clothes were needed, and we know from the sagas that there were special sea clothes above the everyday costumes, and further, they needed extra clothes when traveling. The sail is of course also necessary. An experiment at the Viking Ship Museum in Rostilde showed that it can take several years for one person to produce a sail, and it's therefore likely that more people were included in this production. On a journey, it's also necessary to bring sacks and bags, and also a big spare cloth if the sail would broke. To conclude, silk is of course important when discussing trade and exchange, but it's also essential to include all other textiles necessary for the travels along the Silk Road. Thank you. My name is Janken Myrdal, and my contribution, Transmission of Technology along the Silk Road, has the aim to show the importance of the material culture and small-scale technology. I have three examples, the wheelbarrow, the plunge yarn to make butter, and a specific mouse trap. When it comes to the wheelbarrow, my point is that this was not as claimed by Didan, a technology borrowed from China to Europe, but independent innovations. The plunge yarn is an efficient tool, and its basic principle is still used in mechanized butter production. The invention was presumably made in Central Asia more than a thousand years ago, and then spread in a region from Tibet to Europe. Also livestock-dominated regions in Inner Asia produced important innovations. The mousetrap was a rather common find among wood artifacts from the Tarim Basin, dated to nearly 2,000 years ago. It was one of the most efficient mousetraps ever developed before modern times. The rat was lured to stick its head into a hole to get the bait, and then an arrow was released which chopped off the head. Rats are intelligent, and if they see or hear that one of their kind has been killed in a trap, then they will avoid the place. But here just a low thump is heard, and then the body can be removed fast. Several rats could be caught in the meanwhile. This invention spread along the land roads and was used in the 19th century from Japan to Hungary. Presumably it was developed where rats was a real threat for precious grain. I do not deny the importance of religious influences or luxury trade, but I want to highlight the whole plethora of smaller inventions. Thank you.