The geocultural heritage of the Silk Roads

Abstract

Today the Silk Road is proclaimed to be a history and heritage shared by more than four-billion people, incorporating oceans and continents. Governments, museums, authors, filmmakers and heritage agencies have become adept at telling a story of pre-modern globalisation that weaves together a multitude of locations and events stretched across dozens of countries. As one of the most compelling geocultural imaginaries of the modern era, the Silk Road has become a remarkably elastic and seductive concept for heritage making; a paradigm to which a plethora of landscapes and cultural forms are being recovered and preserved, displayed and curated to tell stories of trade, exchange, friendship and cosmopolitan cultures. Through China's Belt and Road Initiative, media projects and festivals now celebrate Silk Road cuisine, dress, craft, music, dance, or loftier ambitions of civilisational dialogue. Little attention has been paid to how this fast proliferating narrative of history is emerging as a vast platform for heritage making, museology and cultural policy. This paper takes up such themes, tracing how the concept has evolved since its invention in the late nineteenth century. This provides the foundations for more critical readings of the Silk Road as a unifying concept of heritage and history.

World Heritage Site Tourism and Destination Loyalty along the Silk Road: A Study of U.S. Travelers in Uzbekistan

“…Previous research has been conducted on Silk Road tourism in different countries, including those in Europe, East Asia, and Central Asia [39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47]. This research sheds light on the importance of the ancient Silk Road, conservation, and sustainability, and cooperation to establish new Silk Road initiatives.…”

UNESCO World Heritage Sites in China’s cultural diplomacy: Fostering mutual understanding along the Silk Roads

“…Finally, an additional priority of people-to-people diplomacy efforts is international cooperation in the promotion of CH. In this sense, the inscription of the site Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor in the WHL in 2014 25 , represents the main example that as a natural consequence, spurred other countries' interest in the heritage of the SR and in joining other inscriptions of this kind 26 . It is upon this scholarship, then, that this paper builds further explicitly aiming to relate the WHC and inherent WHS along the SR as strategic assets for China to build its SP and exert its CD.…”

Exploring the Impact of Tropical Cyclones on Oman’s Maritime Cultural Heritage Through the Lens of Al-Baleed, Salalah (Dhofar Governorate)

“…Oman's rich maritime history and archaeology is well documented with evidence of marine resource exploitation as early as the Neolithic age (Beech 2004), and historical references to the land of "ichthyofagi" (fish eaters) that corresponds to the southern Arabian peninsula and probably includes Oman (Arrian, Indica; Anon, Periplus Maris Erithraei). There are also records showing the establishment of Medieval harbours as part of the maritime silk roads (Winter 2020) and a longstanding boat building tradition (Agius 2002). Due to the density and diversity of the available material evidence along its coast, different scopes of investigation have been employed across Oman, with some instances of countrywide documentation (Biagi 1988;Blue et al 2016).…”