Silkroads News

The third International Symposium on Silk Road held in Ningxia

Summary: Inaugural Meeting of the Silk Road Archaeology Committee of ChineseSociety of Archaeology took place concurrently

The third International Symposium on  Silk Road held in Ningxia

 

   Inaugural Meeting of the Silk Road Archaeology Committee of ChineseSociety of Archaeology took place concurrently 

 

The third InternationalSymposium on the Silk Road was held in Yinchuan and Guyuan ofNingxia province from September22th to 25thand concurrently the Inaugural Meeting of the Silk Road ArchaeologyCommittee of Chinese Society of Archaeology wasorganized. The symposium was sponsored by Ningxia Institute ofCultural Heritage and Archaeology and Border Area ArchaeologicalResearch Center of Jilin University. The symposium attracted more than 80experts from America, Japan and universities and institutes of China to gettogether and to share their new archaeological findings and academic fruits onthe subject of the early silk road and the culturalexchanges between the east and the west.

People don’t think of the Silk Road butthey think of the fact that the emperor Liu Che of the Western Han Dynasty(156-87BCE) developed the policy of craving territorial aggrandizement and sentZhang Qian as an envoy to the Western Regions. Itseems as if from then Chinabegan to have communications with the western countries, said Wei Zhong, deputy director of thedepartment of culture and Administration of Cutral Heritage of Ningxia HuiAutonomous Region. In fact, it began earlier than that between the people living in thecentral plains (the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River) and the people in the western region and the west of it,where the cultural exchanges have been corroborated by substantial evidences inthe archaeological findings in recent years.

The topics on the Symposium included the new important archaeologicalfindings and understandings of the early Silk Road, the ancient culture and environment of the early Silk Road, the cultural exchanges and interactionsbetween the east and the west before the Han Dynasty, the comparative study on the origin of the civilizations of the east andthe west, and the role and status of Ningxia region inthe early cultural exchanges between the east and the west, etc.

The experts hold that the Silk Road withtime-honored history can be rated as the aorta of human’s civilization as itstarted as early as from the Old and New Stone Ages, to the ShangDynasty(1600-1046BCE), to the Zhou Dynasty(1046-256BCE), and to the QinDynasty(221-206BCE) when the early cultural exchanges at different scale indribs and drabs went on intermittently in the form ofexchanging staff, crops, livestock, metallurgy, glass and silk, etc., beforethe Han Dynasty when Zhang Qian served as an envoy to the Western Regions andinitiated the continuous cultural communications at large scale spreading overthe officials and the common people.

The foundation of the Silk RoadArchaeology Committee, composed of the experts and scholars on the study of theArchaeologyof the Silk Road and its related areas, aiming at fostering the interflow andcooperation in the area and the development of the Archaeology of the Silk RoadInitiative of China, has been approved by the Chinese Society of Archaeology in the symposium.

The researcher An Jiayao of ArchaeologicalInstitute of Chinese Academy of Social Science (CASS)was chosen as the first chairman of the committee and Luo Feng, the head of theNingxia Institute of Cultural Heritage and Archaeology, etal. as the deputy chairmen. 

Ningxia had held the Symposiums on the SilkRoad twice before with the themes on the archaeology, religion and history of the Silk Road and the people of Sogdiana in China:the new evidences of archaeology and unearthed documents.  

Category: English News Silkroads News
Key words:

img

Add:68 West Youyi Road,Xi'an,Shaanxi,P.R.China
Email:secretariat#iicc.org.cn
Tel:(+86)029-85246378