Special Report: Spotlight on the Silk Road

Author(s): James A. Millward

Source: Archaeology, Vol. 46, No. 4 (JULY/AUGUST 1993), pp. 24-25, 68
Published by: Archaeological Institute of America
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41771050
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- Special Report -

Spotlight on the Silk Road

by J AMES A. MiLLWARD

about a petite, chestnut-haired beauty from

Loulan, the famed Silk Road city in China's
Since Loulan, about northwestern
northwesternlastregia peti
on ofte,Xithenjiang.September,
Perhaps itfamed
's region chestnut-haired Silk all of Japan Xinjiang. Road has city beauty been Perhaps in China's talking from it's
her high cheekbones, round eyes, or her quaint feathered cap that have people crowding in by the hundreds
of thousands to see her. Perhaps it's her exotic name,
"the Beauty of Loulan." Or perhaps it's the fact that
she's 4,000 years old. That this lovely mummy and the
hundreds of artifacts accompanying her are on tour in
Japan at all is a sign that things are happening in Silk
Road archaeology - in the pace and quality of new discoveries and in a new openness to foreigners after a
decades-long freeze.

excavations. The discovery of oil has substantially expanded archaeological work in Xinjiang. Under the an-

tiquities law all major civil engineering projects are

required to conduct archaeological survey and salvage
work before breaking ground. With the onset of oil exploration and the construction of waterworks needed
for the general development of the region, new excavations have become possible in remote areas where ar-

chaeologists had lacked funds and equipment to

An arid region once known as Chinese Turkestan

and a hub of the ancient caravan route that linked

undertake even simple surveys.

The work of Zhang Ping, director of the cultural
relics division of the Xinjiang Archaeology Institute in
Urumchi, is a case in point. He had first surveyed a series of grave sites along the Kizil River outside Kucha
in the mid-1970s, but lacked the resources to study the
area extensively. Now, with construction of a new reser-

China to the West, Xinjiang is one of the world's voir,

fore- he has received a grant of 100,000 yuan (about
most archaeological storehouses. From the turn of$17,400)
the
to survey and excavate in the area. "I had
century until the 1930s a succeswanted to work here for a long
sion of European and Japanese After a decades-long
time, but now God has given me
adventurers and archaeologists
the opportunity," Zhang says. So

made their way to Xinjiang to

survey - and raid - the struc-

tures and artifacts that lie under

the shifting sands of the Takla-

makan Desert. They published

sensational accounts of their

freeze , things are

beginning to happen in

the pace and quality of

findings and displayed their trea-

new discoveries.

far he has unearthed a Bronze

Age pot and 4,000-year-old skeletal remains of the area's nomadic

inhabitants.

A 1988 general survey of the

Taklamakan Desert in advance of

oil exploration involved archaeologists and other scientists in an

the region's remoteness, severe climate, and effort
lack of
to inunderstand the region's climate, past and prefrastructure, as well as the political turmoil sent.
of the
Thelast
Chinese oil companies needed scientists' perhalf century, have limited archaeological work
in the
spectives
on patterns of desertification as revealed by
area. Recently, however, the application of athe
1991
suparchaeological,
geological, and paleobotanical
plement to the Chinese antiquities law and record.
the develThis, according to Zhang Ping, was a case of gu
opment of natural resources, particularlywei
oil,
have- the past serving the present. But the prejinyong
begun to produce exciting discoveries in Xinjiang
sent alsoand
served the past, and archaeologists, in particthroughout the rest of China.
ular, benefited from the use of oil company trucks and
For the most part, Xinjiang archaeologists
between
other
equipment capable of penetrating the Taklathe 1950s and 1980s restricted themselves tomakan's
follow-up
more remote regions. The survey helped them
work at famous sites discovered by their European
developpretheories to explain the desertification that
decessors and at sites in the region's more accessible
overcame many of Xinjiang's city-states in the first mil-

sures in foreign museums. But

lennium
a.d. and led to their abandonment. Scientists
areas. Much attention has been paid to the
famous

buried cities of Loulan (second century B.c.-fourth

cen-that poor land management in antiquity
now believe
tury a.D.) and Niya (first century b.c.), and theplayed
first-cen-.
a role in the deterioration of the environment.
tury b.c. Chinese military outpost of Miran
(under
Geological
and paleobotanical evidence indicates that
Tibetan occupation in the eighth and ninth centuries).
the massive drifting dunes capable of swallowing cities
Because of its proximity to modern Urumchi
and Turformed
in this desert only between 7,000 and 2,000
fan in eastern Xinjiang, the city-state of Gaochang,
years ago.
which flourished under Chinese rule (second century
A second development is China's greater openness
B.c.-seventh century a.d.) and again under the
Uighurs
to foreign
cooperation in archaeological research. This
(ninth to fourteenth centuries), has seen many
recent
has been
slow in coming. "While other organizations in
24 Archaeology

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2
Q

CD

China were already open, only the Bureau of Cultural

Relics remained conservative," says Zhang Ping. After
appeals, however, Xinjiang has been allowed to collaborate with foreign scholars and organizations and take
advantage of international sources of funding. "Now
we are better able to protect the physical legacy of our

past," Zhang Ping says. "But at the same time, we

demonstrate that China's historical and cultural legacy
is not just China's. It's a cultural legacy of the world, of
all humanity."
In recent years, in addition to receiving grants from

UNESCO for Silk Road research, Xinjiang archaeologists enjoy cooperative arrangements with French archaeologists in Hami and Yutien, with a Japanese team
in Niya, and with Americans studying the paleoenvi-

ronments in the piedmont region extending from

Khotan to Minfeng. Since few of Xinjiang's archaeologists have studied outside of China, University of Ari-

zona archaeologist John Olsen, who headed the

Sino-American excavations, believes such foreign contacts will help introduce them to new techniques and

broader perspectives. A planned survey of the Taklamakan Desert using remote-sensing technology carried on the space shuttle in 1994 also promises great
advances in Xinjiang archaeology.
Until recently Chinese schoolchildren were taught to
vilify the foreigners who first surveyed Xinjiang's archaeology as plunderers of Chinese antiquities. However, Chinese archaeologists now recognize that such
figures as Sven Hedin, Aurel Stein, Albert Von le Coq,
and Otani Kozui laid the foundations of Xinjiang's archaeology with their discovery of buried cities and Bud-

dhist caves in and around the Taklamakan. Most recent

work has focused on the Silk Road cities such as Loulan,

whose prosperity was closely tied to Chinese trade and
military outposts in the region. In 1979-1980, for example, the Xinjiang Archaeological Institute traced an
ancient trade route from the Great Wall westward to

Loulan and mapped the layout of the ancient city, including its central aqueduct. Major discoveries of mujian - narrow wooden slips with vertical lines of Chinese
continued on page 68
July/August 1993 25

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lacking in focus and somewhat con-

In The Ancients of North

America,
continued from
page 25

fused in its objectives and message. It

is the least compelling of the series.
Finally, though there is little new
material in The Lost City of Zimbabwe,
this episode deals with a subject long

ground-penetrating radar,
script - aand
sophistidocuments in the Indocated remote-sensing device,
is effecEuropean Karoshti
language have afdetailed
accounts
of life in this
tively illustrated with forded
a series
of
very

neglected by the West and thus

serves to introduce a little-known, but

important and fascinating, site and

to correct the misunderstandings and
misrepresentations of the past.

At their best, these programs re-

clear and useful cutaway

desert city-state
diagrams.
between the second
andis
fourth
centuries. In one such
But Custer's last stand
extensively
discussed in Secrets of the
Little
Bighorn
Karoshti
document,
the king of the
using the battlefield Loulan
as a backdrop,
city-state reprimands his
while only minimal use"Cozbo"
is made
of the
- a minister
- for not expecomputer images that
are
the basis
diting
a shipment
of ten camels. "If

for a new theory concerning

the
you still have not sent
them, you must
events on that fatefulconsign
day in
the 1876.
ten camels immediately

veal how archaeology can make a

significant contribution to our understanding of the past. The Death
March of DeSoto, Secrets of the Little
Bighorn , and The Lost City of Zimbabwe

are among the best in this series be-

cause they accomplish this purpose

with skill and alacrity. They are well

organized, well focused, and well argued. They do not get sidetracked
with extraneous matters, but stick
to the point and effectively inform
the viewer.

On the other hand, several of the

Archaeology, the brainchild

oftoawardto Subiye
drive to

the city of

winning filmmaker Qiemo!"

Tom Naughton
In another, he orders the
and Peter A. Young, Editor-in-Chief
Cozbo to look personally into the reof Archaeology magazine,
cent courtwas
purchase
proof a woman for
duced under the supervision
ofWas
the
40 bolts of silk.
she really paid
for? "Lower
officials must not abduct
Archaeological Institute
of America.
Overall, it is a good women
series.
Most of
illegally."
Buddhist cave frescoes
have likethe professional archaeologists
who
wise
attracted
much
attention.
appear do a good job of explaining
the issues at hand and,
although
it
These
lush polychrome
images of
might have been helpful
the Buddhist
if some
pantheon,
of
episodes
them were a bit more animated,
from the Buddha's life, flying angels,
most are engaging as well as compe- and visiting dignitaries from the

tent. Ultimately these programs countries of Central, South, and

episodes deal with very complex sub-

convey the excitement and impor- East Asia have been found at three

jects and 22 minutes is hardly ade-

tance of archaeology without resort-

quate to provide more than just

superficial coverage of them. This is

particularly true of The Search for Ne-

anderthal and Who was Cleopatra ?,

where the viewer is exposed to matters that are the subject of serious
and complex scholarly debates. Nei-

ther program manages to convey

much more than the most funda-

ing to the hype and sensationalism

that so often characterizes the representation of archaeology to the
general public. Whatever mysteries
and riddles appear in this series are
genuine, not cooked up to titillate or

main sites in northwestern China -

Dunhuang, Bezeklik, and Kizil.

Until recently the kind of comprehensive, comparative analysis that
takes into account not only the fres-

coes but also related paintings from

India and Central Asia has been

hook the viewer. Series host John greatly inhibited by Chinese inabilRhys Davies is occasionally overly ity to travel to foreign sites and mudramatic, but in general his reso- seums and the difficulty faced by for-

mental ideas of a few of the protagonant authoritative tone is just right.

nists in the controversies.

Professional audiences might have

On the whole these programs are preferred an archaeologist in this

well researched and make excellent

eigners in gaining access to the

caves in China. This is changing

now, and major projects such as a

role, but Indiana Jones was not avail- joint Japanese-Chinese publication
use of archival material including hisable and frankly there are few pro- on the wall paintings of the Kizil
toric stills and moving footage as well
fessional archaeologists with the caves and a conference to be held

as vignettes from other documen-presence of Rhys Davies. The Learn- this October in Dunhuang, sponing Channel will air a second series sored by the Chinese government
(clips from Quest for Fire and The Clan
of episodes beginning this Fall.
and the Getty Conservation Instiof the Cave Bear appear in The Search for
tute, will further promote internaNeanderthal). There are also some
tional cooperation.
minimal re-enactments, such as
scenes of combat between Romans
James A. Millward is assistant proand Germans in Caesar's Nightmare
fessor of Asian history at the University of
Don't Leave
Arizona in Tucson and a specialist on
that give some life to what might othtaries and even commercial films

MOVING?]

ARCHAEOLOGY
ages. Maps and graphics are also
Behind
used to good advantage in several of

Xinjiang as a participant in the Interna-

the programs with occasional lapses.

Studies and the Legacy of Sven Hedin.

erwise be rather vapid and static im-

China's borderlands . In 1992 he visited

tional Symposium on Central Asian

68 Archaeology

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