The Silk Road in Late Antiquity by Peter Brown

Peter Brown spoke on the Silk Road in Late Antiquity:: Politics, Trade, and Culture Contact between Rome and China, 300-700 CE at the Silk Road Symposium held at the Penn Museum in March 2011.
This is a study of the modes of political and cultural communication which led to a rare level of "intervisibility" between the various societies and states along the Silk Road in the Late Antique period (roughly 300-700 CE). It will examine the cultural meanings of the objects which passed along the Silk Road as examples of a form of "archaic globalization". It ends by examining the meaning to contemporaries of the deliberate hybridization of objects taken from distant lands that were put on display in their respective societies. It is this bricolage of objects, to create spaces that were perceived both as local and non-local, which accounts for the passing of cultural and artistic influences along the kingdoms of the Silk Road from Byzantium to China in the Late Antique period.
Peter Brown is the Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History and Director, Program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University.
More at www.penn.museum/silkroad

[@henryjohnfacey8213]

Thank you for such a wonderful lecture. I managed to get the book an English lady in Chinese Turkistan after listening to the BBC radio play based on her journal. Lady Katherine McCartney. A contemporary of and She knew Arial Stien. Thank you for the research. A much treasured lecture. Greetings from a YORKSHIRE. (Bus Driver).

[@Istehomo]

When I studied the later Roman empire twenty years ago this man change my understanding of early Christianity, his writing is brilliant - fascinating to see him give a lecture.

[@daydays12]

He still has his Irish accent which is charming 🙂 He is a really great historian , lovely man

[@nihany7460]

Excellent lecture

[@miguelfeitosa6566]

Extraordinary....this has opened my eyes. Thank you Dr. Peter

[@fulminatus6241]

Love Peter Brown. Thank You.

[@HughJason]

Magical. Thank you.

[@SaerVonG]

Brilliant!!!

[@saburoemon]

this is awesome!!!

[@Artoofeva]

Fascinating.

[@pavelsanda3149]

very interesting

[@anthonyalcock5104]

Brown took up, with great enthusiasm, Alois Riegel's rather desperate description of the period between the division of the empire by Diocletian into the east and west dioceses (284AD) as Spätantike (Late Antiquity). In fairness to him he was not the only one. The diocese of the east could easily be called Byzantine, after the 6th cent. BC Greek colony, but what to do with the west - Roman ? Hardly. So we are stuck with this vacuous description of a period (until the 'Islamic' age) that can apply only to the post-Claasical world. What does 'antiquity' mean with respect to the Indian sub-continent, China, sub-Saharan Africa, the Islamic world ? Not very much, except of course from a Eurocentric viewpoint. When he talks of the Silk Road, his limited understanding of this term focuses on the overland route from China, through Central Asia, Iran, Mesopotamia, the Levant and from there by ship to points west. There were several ways in which the precious commodity of silk reached the west, but they did not turn up 'valuable' (for professional scholars in the west) information about Manichaeism, as the Silk Road did. Brown is clearly familiar with many of the post-Classical sources and for that reason deserves consideration as a serious student of some parts of this world, but equally the travelogue aspect of his studies is not to be underestimated.

[@r.w.6093]

The only thing desperate here is your shrill and failed attempt at a critique of Peter Brown.

[@fopo123456789]

@@r.w.6093 Well said. My god the arrogance of trying to undermine a scholar of Browns caliber.

[@xuyahfish]

I think it was quite rambling and unfocused without any real understanding on any one topic. Also, his Chinese pronunciation is atrocious - I would actually recommend studying Chinese to him, it has been used to improve stuttering as it uses both hemispheres in the brain.

[@StephenMortimer]

Nope.. he is "doddering"

[@mjonhouston]

and you are...?,...oh,... it's "steve mortimer"., ...real classy steve., smooth move ex-lax.

[@r.w.6093]

Brown speaks 16 languages, and he is the most famous living historian in his field. Everyone, knows he is not a China-scholar, so your whingeing is quite exaggerated.

[@henryjohnfacey8213]

@@r.w.6093 Absolutely please see my comment. I'm a Bus driver and found this enthralling. Thank you for posting.