Beyond the Silk Road

A global history of economic exchange across ancient Afroeurasia

Beyond the Silk Road presents a new economic history of ancient empires from East Asia to the Mediterranean and North Africa during a period of intense empire building, transformation, and interaction. Leaving behind the obsolete idea of an ancient Silk Road, the book reveals how transimperial exchange was shaped by special social and political networks, frontier societies, and inner-imperial economic developments involving a wide range of people—including kings, emperors, diplomats, soldiers, pastoralists, and traders. What emerges is a new explanation of why, for example, we find Chinese silk in Palmyra, Egyptian glass goblets in Afghanistan, and Roman coin pendants in Thailand.

Through a detailed examination of a wide variety of evidence about economic behavior in different parts of Afroeurasia from 300 BCE to 300 CE, Sitta von Reden shows that the relationships between imperial centers and their frontiers had a greater effect than trade routes in determining the directions and flows of long-distance exchange. She demonstrates the critical role of frontier zones by introducing some of the most important ones: the Nabataean kingdom of northern Arabia, Barygaza in northwestern India, Sogdiana under the Kangju, and the Eastern Desert of Egypt.

Based on a decade of collaborative research using new approaches to archaeological, monetary, and textual sources in many different languages, Beyond the Silk Road puts ancient economies in a new global perspective.