Table of Contents

Preface Introduction: Silk on the Silk Roads. Exchange between East and West in Antiquity. Berit Hildebrandt

• Looking towards the West – how the Chinese viewed the Romans

        Liu Xinru   2. Textiles and Trade in South Asia during the Proto-Historic and Early Historic Period J. Mark Kenoyer   3. Word migration on the Silk Road: the etymology of English silk and its congeners Adam Hyllested   4. Silk production and trade in the Roman Empire Berit Hildebrandt   5. Perspectives on the wide world of luxury in later Antiquity: silk and other exotic textiles found in Syria and Egypt Thelma K. Thomas   6. Decoration, astrology and empire: inscribed silk from Niya in the Taklamakan Desert Lillian Lan-ying Tseng   7. Domestic, wild or unravelled? A study on tabby, taqueté and jin with spun silk from Yingpan, Xinjiand, thierd-fourth centuries Zhao Feng   8. Chinese silks that circulated among people north and west: implications for technological exchanges in early times? Angela Sheng   Dr. Irene Lee Good (April 24 1958 – February 3 2013). An appreciation Robert E. Murowchick, Angela Sheng and Kaoru Ueda

About the Author

Berit Hildebrandt is a researcher at the Danish National Research Foundation's Centre for Textile Research at Copenhagen University, Denmark, where she specialises in the study of ancient silks and the silk trade. She is currently involved in a major project exploring changes in the costume of the Roman emperor, his family and his court from Augustus to the emperor Honorius (1st century BCE-5th century CE).

Reviews

Hildebrandt’s eleven-page introduction observes that silk, more than other traded commodities, allows us to understand both the economic and political dimensions of trade in ancient cultures, and permits insights into the development and transfer of textile technologies between East and West.
*New Testament Abstracts*

This volume will appeal to the specialist focused on ancient textiles, but there is more on offer here. The lines of communication and extent of knowledge about and between the cultures at the eastern and western limits of the Silk Road and in the many regions that acted as intermediaries are topics that will have wider significance to scholars and students.
*Ancient Near Eastern Studies*

There is much here to engage the expert but we might hope that others may also learn more about a subject which was far more conspicuous in antiquity than most that occupy archaeologists, and therefore perhaps a more valuable guide to our understanding of people, places and motives.
*Ancient West & East*