Metals, nomads and the foundations of the Silk Roads
Dr Miljana Radivojević, Lecturer in Archaeomaterials, UCL Institute of Archaeology, London, will deliver a lecture about the foundations of the Silk Roads. The lecture will be followed by a question and answer session.
The Eurasian Steppe has been increasingly recognised as the place where fundamental technologies, languages and ideas originated and spread from the Bronze Age onwards. The intricate system of trade networks at the time paved the way for the routes that long outlived the Bronze Age world, the Silk Roads. Of all items transported along these routes, the exchange of ores and metal objects would have been the largest in volume and the most fundamentally transformative for the steppe communities.
The prehistory of the Silk Roads is therefore intimately related to that of the steppe metallurgy and the technological inventiveness of steppe nomads, leading the field of study of its origins at the crossroads of archaeology and materials science research. The most recent archaeometallurgical studies shed new light on the scale and networks of ores and metal supply, long before silk was in vogue.
Miljana Radivojević holds a Lectureship in Archaeomaterials at the UCL Institute of Archaeology, UK, where she acquired her PhD in Archaeometallurgy. During her previous studies and research posts at the Universities of Belgrade, Cambridge and UCL she has developed a strong research profile in both fieldwork excavations and laboratory analysis of material culture, specifically technology of early metal making. She specialised in the emergence of early copper making in the Balkans before expanding research collaborations across Europe and northern Eurasia, with emphasis on central and southeast Europe, Anatolia, the Russian Federation, China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Dr Radivojević has published in high impact journals on the origins of metallurgy in the Balkans and southwest Asia, relationship of metallurgy and pottery technologies, invention of tin bronze metallurgy, innovation and transmission of copper metallurgy across southeast Europe, use and circulations of Bronze Age metals in Europe, experimental archaeometallurgy and aesthetics of ancient metal objects, as well as co-developed a novel method of re-assessing archaeological phenomena using complex networks analysis of metal supply systems in the Balkans.
Her other research projects include the prehistory of the Silk Roads, linking Central Asia, the Eurasian Steppe and most of Europe during the 4th – 1st millennium BC, and more broadly addressing the pre-modern globalisation of the Eurasian continent by looking at the (technological) knowledge economy at the time.
This is one of the lectures in the on-going China Centre Seminar series, hosted by the China Centre, Jesus College. The lectures, given by eminent speakers, cover a broad range of topics and disciplines.
Booking
This is a virtual seminar. Attendance is free. Advance booking is required by emailing: china-centre@jesus.cam.ac.uk. Priority will be given to members of Jesus College and the University of Cambridge.
