West and East: Archaeological objects along the silk Roads

The volume on which Chinese scholars of the Department of Archaeology and Museology of Peking University and Italian scholars, belonging to different universities, and referring to IsIAO (now New ISMEO) and to the Dipartimento Asia, Africa e Mediterraneo of the Università di Napoli “L'Orientale” have been working for several years, had as its main purpose to provide a documentary and original interpretative framework related to 49 objects jointly selected and proposed to the attention of the scholars and readers. The objects presented, mainly found in tombs in western and northern China, and referring, on the basis of context of the discovery and or of technical, stylistic and decorative patterns, to a cultural “foreign” ground, especially Saka/Scythian, Central Asian, Iranian, Buddhist and Islamic, represent a very interesting and significant collection of items in bronze, silver, gold, ceramic, glass, tissue, wood, stone. They are mainly dating from the middle of the 1st millennium BC to the middle of the 1st Millennium AD, with a few chronological exceptions; some are already well known in the scientific debate, and also have been the subject of descriptive and interpretative notes in some catalogues of exhibitions in China and West.