The Silk Roads in the Bronze Age: critical links between Eurasia and China

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The early rise of China's great civilization owed its rapid momentum to important technological innovations that were brought in from the far distant Eurasian steppes, but almost nothing is known of how or why this process took place. The project aims to explore these questions through excavations at one of China's most important Bronze Age archaeological sites in western Xinjiang. The innovations include the cultivation of wheat and barley, complex metallurgical techniques in bronze, silver and gold, the domesticated horse and the spoke-wheeled chariot, which became a universal weapon of war across the ancient world. The project aims to test theories of cultural transmission through interactive GIS modelling of environment and land use potential.