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Synn Ilhi, President of Keimyung University, received his Ph.D. at Princeton University in German Literature, 1966. Via Queens College of the City University of New York, Kiel Unversity (Germany), Yonsei University, he finally landed at Keimyung University, later Humboldt Professor at Regensburg, Germany. He was President of the Association of Christian Universities and Colleges in Asia, Honorary Consul of Sweden, Italy, and Poland. Presently, Honorary Member of the Academy of Arts of Uzbekistan, Honorary Consul General of Poland, Honorary Board Member of Confucius Institutes Headquarters (Beijing).

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The reliefs of Taq-i Bustan are an art form that elaborately displays expressions of the Sassanian social state in detail. These lithographic representations entail textiles as accurate and as true to the original shape, that the types of Sassanian costumes can be identified by period and status. It has long been argued that the ancient Persian dynasty, the predecessor of the Sassanian dynasty, was standing in the negotiations with the ancient civilizations of Korea. Therefore, this study is not confined to investigations on the Silk Road region, but also sheds more light on the origins of Korean culture. As a research method, studies of literature in combination with analysis of the depictions as part of the Taq I Bustan reliefs were conducted in parallel. Through the Reliefs of Ardarshir II findings of early costume sets could be delineated, and through the reliefs of Shapur II & III costumes of both the early and late Sassanian Kings could be examined. Moreover, a scene of the crowning ceremony on the reliefs of Kosro II enables the consideration of religion, dynasty culture, and costume culture of the late Sassanian dynasty. In the scope of related mural analysis illustrating hunting scenes and festival settings, the prevalent spirit on social events at that time is graspable as the clothing of various classes can be sorted by type. In addition, objects of observation include a number of patterns which frequently appeared in Central Asia such as pearl rounded patterns, rhombic patterns, as well as plant and animal patterns and particular geometric patterns. Hence, besides help comprehending the phenomena of East-West exchanges that arose on the Silk Road, specifically through costumes, this study provides basic data of an in-depth research in the area of the West Silk Road, which still remains an unexplored field in Korea.

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Youngsoo Chang was born 1956 in Weonju, Korea. Undergraduate Hanyang University (Dept. of Clothing & Textile), Seoul, Korea (Bachelor) and Graduate Hanyang University (Dept. of Clothing & Textile), Seoul, Korea (Master), Ph D, Cologne University (Dept. of Histrory of Art), Cologne, Germany. She was a Research professor in Hanyang University, Visiting Researcher of the German Archaeological Institute(Dept. of The Commission for Archaeology of Non European Cultures in Bonn) and since 2015 is a professor in Dept. of the Cultural Properties, Gyeongju University. Gyeongju, Korea.

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According to some Islamic sources, Taq-i Bustan was an architectonic complex belonging to Bastam, a maternal uncle of Khusraw II (590–628) who was governor of Khorasan before rebelling against the Sasanians. In fact, medieval authors and local legends mentioned sometimes Taq-i Bustan (literally “the Arch of the Garden”) as Taq-i Bastam (“the Arch of Bastam”). Bastam continued at Taq-i Bustan more ancient traditions rooted in very ancient Mesopotamian and (less ancient) Khorasan (that is to say Central Asian) elements. After suppressing Bastam´s rebellion, Khusraw II adopted the monument and modified it. At the same time, Khusraw accepted some non-Persian decorative elements and he even used them to embellish his garments and those of his attendants as a trophy. Such elements included the so-called “senmurv” that is a composite winged creature with a dog face and peacock tail. Recent investigations suggest that the so-called “senmurv” was actually the representation of the “glory” or “charisma” (Middle Persian xwarrah, Persian farr). It was not a genuine Sasanian creation since its origin should be traced in eastern Iran/Central Asia where this concept was highly estimated.

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Matteo Compareti graduated from Venice University “Ca’ Foscari” and defended his Ph.D. at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. After two years in the United States (ISAW–NYU and UC Berkeley), he moved to China where he has been teaching since 2016. He is at present collaborating with Shaanxi Normal University. His interests focus on pre–Islamic Persian and Central Asian arts, especially Sasanian textiles and Sogdian paintings. He also investigates the relations between pre–Islamic greater Iran and neighboring civilizations such as the Byzantine Empire, the Caucasus, India, and China. His main publications are Samarkand the Center of the World. Proposals for the Identification of the Afrāsyāb Paintings (Costa Mesa CA, 2016) and The Elusive Persian Phoenix. Simurgh and Pseudo-Simurgh in Iranian Art (Bologna, 2021).

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India has a rich and diverse textile tradition right from the 3rd millennium BCE. The origin of Indian textiles can be traced back from the Harappan period. Owing to the hot and humid climate in most parts of India, the cotton remains India’s favourite choice of fabric for normal use. Thus, India is supposed to be the first nation to have grown, woven, and patterned cotton fabrics. Moreover, India is one of the leading cotton growing countries in the world. The earliest occurrence of cotton thread in India is roughly datable to 4000 BCE and the dyed fabrics about 2500 BCE. Large number of needles and spindles found in the Harappan and early historical sites in India reveal the prosperous state of textile production in the early period. The textile producers had used a wide range of skills to process raw materials and make regionally idiosyncratic dyes, weaves, prints and embroideries. The silk from wild indigenous forms of silkworms was known in the Indian sub-continent roughly contemporary with the earliest clear archaeological evidence for silk in China. The analysis of thread fragments found inside copper bangle and ornament from Harappa and steatite beads from Chanhu-daro, the Harappan sites, have yielded silk fibres, dating to 2500–2000 BCE. Apart from other products, the cotton and silk textiles were the important export materials from India right from the Harappan period. Actually, the sea-borne trade had played an important role in the economic growth and prosperity of the Harappan civilization. Several ancient seaports in the entire coastline of India, played a vital role in the maritime trade right from the Harappan period and the cotton and silk textiles of Indian origin were found in various countries. The contemporary writings and epigraphy have also attested the bust maritime trade work of India and the export of textile materials. The paper discusses in detail the origin and development of cotton and silk textile production in India through the ages and its role in maritime trade network.

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Duraiswamy Dayalan, a notable archaeologist in India, who participated in various explorations, excavations and discovered a large number of archaeological sites in various states in India. He was also responsible for the management and conservation of large number of monuments and sites in India. He is an accomplished scholar and author of thirteen books and also contributed more than 95 research papers in reputed journals on various topics.

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Recent excavations in Qinghai Province, China, have disclosed textiles and artworks from Tuyuhun-Tubo(Tibetan) tombs, dated to the 7th-9th centuries, that suggest artistic and cultural exchanges along an external southern branch of the main Silk Road, between Gansu and Sichuan Provinces, across the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau toward the Himalayas. Many similar textiles, possibly from this area, have appeared lately on the art market and ended up in private collections. Although these textiles, dated to the early Tibetan period, follow popular prototypes established in Central Asia in the 6th century, the technical features, colors, and other indigenous elements suggest that they were woven in workshops different from those established between Sogdiana and Gansu. In light of new data collected in the last couple of years, in this paper, I reevaluate the technical and iconographic analysis carried on a textile fragment held in the China National Museum. The piece analyzed in 2014 is the continuation of a hanging held in the Abegg Stiftung in Switzerland. I argue that such sumptuous panels, which were embellished with gilded silver plaques featuring birds, originally decorated the interiors of nomadic “golden tents,” as described in Chinese sources, for the afterlife. This paper lays the foundations of a new project that has recently received a major grant from the Henry Luce Foundation/ American Council of Learned Societies, with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The new project, titled “Across the Tuyuhun-Tubo Kingdom: Visualizing Material Culture from Dunhuang to Sichuan between the 6th and 9th centuries,” aims to reconstruct the textile entanglement between Gansu to Sichuan and clarifies whether the Tuyuhun-Tubo people produced, commissioned, or only traded these textiles.

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Mariachiara Gasparini is Assistant Professor of Chinese Art and Architectural History at the University of Oregon. Her research focuses on the historical, theoretical, and visual investigation of the history of Eurasian art and culture. She is interested in Central Asian textiles, material culture, wall painting, artists' praxis, and Sino-Iranian and Turko-Mongol interactions. She is the author of Transcending Patterns: Silk Road Cultural and Artistic Interactions through Central Asian Textile Images (University of Hawai’i Press, 2019).

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At the beginning of the Roman imperial period, moralizing authors criticized a material from the East that quickly gained popularity among the elites: silk. During Late Antiquity, silk trade, production and the use of purple-dyed silks increasingly became the privilege of the emperors. While literature, court poetry and laws give insights into the discourses surrounding silk, they are rather unspecific with regard to silk qualities. This contribution analyzes the scattered descriptions of silks in Greek and Latin texts in a diachronic perspective, in particular the terminology, products, origins and qualities mentioned. The aim is to build a framework for comparisons with archaeological silk finds and other textile terminologies along the Silk Roads. Taking the silk finds from Palmyra as a comparison, it will be shown that Greek and Latin terminology does not match the variety of silks known in the Mediterranean. Only one text mentions different qualities, which might refer to wild and cultivated silks, although ancient authors do not use the terms in the same way. Rather, linguistic differentiations focus on the forms in which silk reached the Mediterranean, as skeins, yarns and fabrics, as well as on the different kinds of silks that were produced in the West, namely wholly and half-silken fabrics, damasks, purple-dyed and gold-embellished silks. In contrast, silks from the East were subsumized under the term for „silks from the silk people“ or simply „silks“. These findings show the limitations of Western silk terminology and the importance of combining archaeological and written sources.

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Berit Hildebrandt is an ancient historian and classical archaeologist who specializes in research on silk in Antiquity. Currently she is interim professor of Ancient History at the University of Bremen, Germany. She has been teaching and researching at universities in Germany, Copenhagen/DK, Cambridge/GB and Harvard/USA and at museums.

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The study of the archaeological sites of Ukraine today makes it possible to single out the finds of archaeological textiles in a separate group of important sources. Among the archaeological finds are textiles of the first centuries A.D. and the VIII-XVI centuries. The earliest silks in Ukraine are found in the Nogaychik burial mound and on the territory of Tauric Chersonesos (I cent. B.C. - the first centuries A.D.) Circa first centuries ad silk and silk brocade appear in Chersonesos. Most textile artifacts date from the Middle Ages. Such finds are known, for example, in Chernigov and among the finds during excavation of the burials of nomads. An important complex, which makes it possible to draw conclusions about the costume of the nomads of the era of the Golden Horde, are the finds of archaeological textiles found in a burial in barrow 2 near Tokovskoie village on the Kamenka river(the Lower Dnieper basin). All the fabrics found in the burial were made under the Chinese technique. Some fragments of fabrics permit to conclude that the deceased was dressed in an outer robe made of bright red golden brocade. It is obvious that two kinds of red brocade of similar quality were used for tailoring this element of the costume. The use of expensive high-quality fabrics as well as golden decoration in the costume may indicate that the remains of the costume belonged to a representative of the Golden Horde nobility. There are other finds of archaeological silk (very small fragments) of the VIIIXth centuries XIIth century, the 2nd half of the XIIIth – the mid of the XIVth centuries in burials of the Forest-Steppe and Steppe zones of Ukraine. All of them are made using Chinese technology. And only finds in Chernigov allow us to speak of Byzantine origin. All this makes it possible for us to raise the question of analyzing trans-Eurasian contacts on the territory of modern Ukraine in antiquity.

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Year of birth: 1969/06/12. Citizenship: Ukraina. Education: Faculty of History, Kharkov State University (V.N.Karazin Kharkiv National University), specialty: historian. Area of working: Pavlodar (Kazakhstan), Pavlodar Pedagogical University, researcher in Research Laboratory of Experimental Archeology, head of the International Research Laboratory “YMAI”. Research interests: history, archeology, restoration, textiles and textile technologies.

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Traditional Kurdish weavings are among the world's most ancient living textile traditions. One of the largest ethnic and linguistic groups, Kurds have inhabited a significant part of Western Asia for millennia. Historically, Kurdish territories were crisscrossed with important and oldest trade routes, including the Silk Roads. This led to the formation of some of the most significant Kurdish artistic and cultural traditions, including textiles, which influenced and were being influenced by those of other non-Kurdish ethnic groups from Caucasia to Central Asia and beyond. One example of Kurdish carpet traditions born in the eighteenth century at the cross-sections of the Safavid (150-1736) urban carpets workshops and centuries-old indigenous Kurdish tribal/rural weaves is senneh gelim or sojaee. A finely flatwoven carpet that was being exchanged regionally and internationally as a diplomatic gift and a highly prized commodity. Although in decline, senneh gelims continue to be made by Kurdish women weavers in its original birthplace Sanandaj, the provincial capital of Iranian Kurdistan to date. This study adopts an inter-disciplinary approach to present an image of senneh gelim and women gelim weavers, tracing the developmental trajectories of the craft from the eighteenth century to the present time by drawing on extant art-historical and social studies and primary ethnographic data collected by the author during her fieldwork in Iranian Kurdistan (2018-2019). It investigates the craft tradition's historical origin, various aspects such as techniques, materials, aesthetics, functions, and meanings, and how these transformed over time. Additionally, the paper looks at the social contexts of production, focusing on women carpet weavers and how their socioeconomic and cultural situation has formed the senneh carpet production in the past and present and the implications for long-term preservation. Keywords: senneh gelim/kilim, sojaee, traditional flatwoven carpets, Iranian Kurdish textile craft heritage, Near Eastern/Western Asia textiles, women carpet weavers

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Reyhane Mirabootalebi is an objects and textiles conservator. She has a PhD in Preservation Studies from the University of Delaware, USA (2021) and an M.A. in Cultural Materials Conservation from the University of Melbourne, Australia (2011). She has broad experience relating to conservation and preservation of cultural heritage, and worked with several national and international institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, the Oriental Institute Chicago University at the National Museum of Kabul Afghanistan, the Heritage Conservation Centre Singapore, and the National Museum of Australia. Her research interest focuses on Middle Eastern textile traditions, women weavers, and the politics of carpets making in Iranian societies.

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This paper presents the results of a research project focused on animal materials accompanying Central Asian silk costumes of the 11-12th centuries. A number of museum and private collections possesses textile burial sets of a specific type including rider’s robes with a fitted waist, narrow sleeves and a long slit on the back, pointed-top felt hats crowned with feathers, richly decorated hip covers, square covers with ties in the center (so cold ‘face covers’), felted bags, and soft skinny boots. In these objects silk textiles from Jīn China and Islamic lands were combined with animal style embroideries, felt and fur, feathers, wool and hairs. Although in some publications these costumes were attributed as Seljuq from Iran, the only documented archeological finding of such garments occurred in the 1950s in Alar cemetery of Rouqiang (Xinjiang) in a burial dated to the first half of the 12th century. For a number of features the costumes belonged to Turkic nomads of the East Turkestan under Qarakhanid rule. Six objects from the Museum of Islamic Art (Qatar, Doha) and the Mardjani Foundation (Russia, Moscow) collections were analyzed with the aim to identify animal species used as a source for fur, wool, hairs and feathers. Basing on 21 samples eleven domestic and wild animals were identified, some of which are extinct. The research reveals a number of aspects of the nomadic life, culture and traditions along the Silk Road. It confirmed the age and authenticity of some questionable parts of the costumes and helps to reconstruct their initial appearance.

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Galina Lasikova is an Islamic art historian specialized on textiles. From 2000 to 2011 she served in the State Museum of Oriental Art (Moscow) as a researcher and a carpet curator. In 2011 she moved to Qatar and served as the curator for textiles of the Museum of Islamic Art. Since 2013 she is curating the Mardjani Foundation collection of textiles and manuscripts.

Olga Chernova, DS, is an expert in the field of comparative, functional, and evolutionary morphology of the skin and its derivatives in vertebrates. Since 1970 she has been working at the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Currently she is a chief researcher in the laboratory of “Ecology, physiology and functional morphology” of the Institute.

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Before the tenth century, the dress of elite women in and around China often reflected “Han”Chinese fashions and preferences. In funerary paintings and relief sculptures of Sogdian and Xianbei couples from the sixth century, for example, women wear “Han” Chinese style clothing.Even in the Tang dynasty (ca. 618-907), when exchange with Central Asia via overland Silk Road trade impacted the styles and patterning of elite dress, and men incorporated clear Central Asian attributes into their dress, elite women in the Tang sphere wore recognizably Tang fashions. Chinese style dress in these centuries clearly conveyed cultural import and likely, political power, especially after the founding of the Tang dynasty. However, the straightforward borrowing of Tang women’s dress shifted in the Khitan Liao dynasty (ca. 907-1125). The Liao, in contrast to other states that shared a border with China in previous centuries, saw themselves as political equals to the Song dynasty (ca. 960-1278) court in the south. The Liao court was interested in Song customs and culture and incorporated artistic motifs and practices from the Song court. However, the Liao courtly idiom was never fully subsumed into the greater world of the Song – rather, the Liao used facets of Song courtly culture for their own ends. One way this is manifested is through the dual administrative system, a bureaucratic organization that, among other things, regulated and distinguished between who was permitted to wear Khitan and nonKhitan dress. In this paper, I will examine the material evidence from funerary contexts for how the dress of elite Liao women both engaged with the dress of the Song, while also maintaining a certain amount of cultural autonomy. Through their dress, elite Liao women signaled clear messages about their status, identity, and difference to their Song counterparts.

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Eiren L. Shea is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Grinnell College. Her recent book, Mongol Court Dress, Identity Formation, and Global Exchange investigates the role of dress in the Mongol Empire and the impact of Mongol textiles on Asian and European art and society.

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Amanda Phillips is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Virginia. She received her doctorate from the University of Oxford, and has held positions at the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin and at the University of Birmingham and has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the British Academy. Her work focuses on the material culture of the Ottoman Empire, with a specialty in textiles. Everyday Luxuries (2016), her first book, showed that consumers in Ottoman Constantinople helped drive the production of dishes, upholstery, devotional objects, carpets, and other objects, and had access to goods from around the world. Her second book, Sea Change (2021), argues that textiles woven in the Ottoman lands were shaped by migration, trade, technology transfer, and consumption, as well as social, economic, and religious practices. She is currently working on a project about gardens, flowers, and decorative arts in the eighteenth century.

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Currently working on a new book on the Silk Road arts as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Dunhuang Academy, Lanlan Kuang is an Associate Professor and the Director of Humanities and Cultural Studies Program at the University of Central Florida’s Philosophy Department. Specializing in Asian humanities, aesthetics, and heritage studies, her research focuses on China’s media and cultural policies and their impacts on the country’s socioeconomic developments. As a Florida State Department’s Folklife Council Member, Kuang also serves as the current President of Florida Folklore Society and is a Center for Ethnic and Folk Literature and Arts (CEFLA) Distinguished Fellow appointed by China's Ministry of Culture and Tourism for her contributions to safeguarding folk arts and heritage culture. A prize-winning documentary film producer, she worked with organizations such as the USIA and SCOLA Educational Network as liaison and project director. Kuang holds a Ph.D. in Folklore and Ethnomusicology from Indiana University, Bloomington and was on a Fulbright in China in 2008-2009. Her monograph on the expressive arts from along the Silk Road, The Dunhuang Performing Arts in Global Context (2016) is available in Harvard-Yenching Library, Princeton-Marquand Library of Art and Archaeology, and other research venues.

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Robert J. Dickey is Assistant Professor in the School for Public Service (Public Administration Department) at Keimyung University. He holds a Doctor of Laws (JD) from Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, California, along with a BA in Political Science (International Relations) from UCLA and a Master of Public Administration. His research encompasses many disciplinary areas, including community studies, migration, non-governmental organizations, public-private partnerships, language teaching, history, and law. He is the current editor of The International Journal of Law, Language & Discourse.

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Many knotted carpets from western China and Central Asia of from 1000-700 BCE to 700 CE demonstrate strong resemblances to the Assyrian-Persian stone reliefs and Hellenistic-Roman mosaics, in their overall composition, design, and iconographic motifs. The essay compares and analyzes the design of these stone/mosaics and the carpets, and discusses their stylistic connection and esthetic interaction. Keywords: Carpets, mosaics, Central Asia, Hellenistic-Roman art, Pazyryk, Assyrian stone thresholds

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Dr. He ZHANG（张禾）is Professor of Art History at William Paterson University, US, and Fulbright Scholar in Central and South Asia. Her special field is Pre-Columbian Art, and her teaching responsibilities include Pre-Columbian Art, Asian Art, Silk Road Art, and Western Art History survey. Grown up in Khotan, a little oasis town on the ancient Silk Road deep in the Taklamakan Desert in west China, Zhang has dedicated her recent research studies and publications on the archaeological artifacts from Central Asia, focusing on the interactive cultural relationships as reflected in the arts between the East and West. Zhang had several NEH awards for the study of Asian Art, Silk Road, and Maya World, and published numerous studies on the ancient carpets and Pre-Columbian arts and writings.

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