ASIAN ART The newspaper for collectors, dealers, museums and galleries • june 2005 • £5.00/US$8/€10 The newspaper for collecTors, dealers, museums and galleries • winTer 2024 • £5.00/us$10/€10


UZBEKISTAN SILK ROADS CITIES DISCOVERED


A


rchaeologists have found the remains of two medieval cities in the grassy mountains of


eastern Uzbekistan, a discovery that could change our understanding of the nature of the Silk Roads. Using drone- based lidar, researchers mapped two medieval cities,


Tashbulak and


Tugunbulak, revealing detailed urban structures significant to the Silk Road’s history. It was also the first use of drone- based lidar in Central Asia. Lidar is a remote-sensing tool that uses reflected light to create three-dimensional mappings of the environment. Te research,


led by Michael Frachetti,


professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and Farhod Maksudov, director of the National Center of Archaeology in Uzbekistan,


was


recently published in Nature magazine. Lidar enabled the archaeologists to


uncover details of the medieval trade cities situated at over 2,000 metres in the mountains of Uzbekistan. It mapped the archaeological scale and layout of the cities, which are among the largest ever documented in the


mountainous regions along the broad network of ancient trade routes that connected Europe, the Middle East, and Eastern Asia. Tese trade routes were long believed to have linked lowland cities, but this discovery adds to the existing network. Only 3% of the world’s population


live above this altitude today – Lhasa in Tibet and Cusco in Peru are among the rare examples. Archaeologists consider high-altitude urban sites rare as the population often face unique challenges in settling in such a hostile areas. Te smaller city, today called


Tashbulak, covered about 12 hectares, while the larger city of Tugunbulak reached 120 hectares, ‘making it one of the largest regional cities of its time,’ Frachetti


said. ‘Tese would have


been important urban hubs in central Asia, especially as you moved out of lowland oases and into more challenging


high-altitude settings,’


he added. ‘While typically seen as barriers to Silk Roads trade and movement, the mountains actually were host to major centres for interaction. Animals, ores, and other


 ‘Mesmerising’ The Guardian


 ‘Astonishing’ The Times


The high altitude sites of Tashbulak and Tugunbulak that were recently discovered in the grassy mountains of eastern Uzbekistan


precious resources likely drove their prosperity’. Te team first discovered Tashbulak


in 2011 while trekking in the mountains. Tey found burial sites, thousands of pottery shards, and other signs that the territory was populated. Both cities were believed to have been bustling settlements between the 8th and 11th centuries, during the Middle


Ages, when the area was controlled by the


powerful


Historical records allude to cities in the region, but the team had not expected to find a 12-hectare medieval city some 2,200m above sea level. In 2022, they returned with the


drone. Lidar calculates dimensions by using reflected laser light. allowing them to build a 3-D model to reveal


NEWS IN BRIEF


RUBIN MUSEUM OF ART NEW YORK Te Rubin Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum have announced a long-term partnership to display the Rubin’s beloved Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room in the Brooklyn Museum’s acclaimed Arts of Asia galleries, making the installation accessible to a wider public. Te Rubin Museum officially closed to the public in October 2024. Since it first opened in 2015, the Tibetan Buddhist


Silk Roads


Until 23 February Members/under 16s free


Supported by


Shrine Room has been one of the most popular exhibitions at the Rubin Museum’s 17th Street building in New York, attracting over one million visitors. More than 100 works of art and ritual objects from the Rubin’s collection will be presented as they would be in an elaborate private household shrine, where devotees would make offerings, pray, contemplate, and perform rituals. Te design of the Shrine Room showcases these objects in an immersive environment that incorporates elements of traditional Tibetan architecture and the colour schemes of Tibetan homes. Te Rubin Museum’s Tibetan Buddhist Shrine


Room evokes the aesthetics and atmosphere of a traditional Tibetan sacred space, offering visitors the opportunity to experience Tibetan religious art in its cultural context. It will enhance the Brooklyn Museum’s important collections of Asian art, which have beeb fully reimagined in a major gallery renovation that was unveiled gradually from 2017 to 2023. Te room will open in a custom space in the


Brooklyn Museum’s Arts of Asia Galleries in June 2025, as the start of a six-year collaboration.


Additional supporters


James Bartos The Ruddock Foundation for the Arts


Book now


NATIONAL MUSEUM OF ASIAN ART, WASHINGTON DC A $5 million gift from Gretchen Welch and Career Ambassador David Welch to the Smithsonian’s


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walls, Samanid dynasty.


guard


towers,


intricate


architectural features and other fortifications in Tugunbulak. Te archaeology suggests that communities may have chosen to settle in Tugunbulak and Tashbulak to tap strong winds to fuel fires needed to smelt iron ores - which the region was rich in. Preliminary excavations have also uncovered production kilns.


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Profile: the artist Du Zhenjun The narrative charm of Along the River During the Qingming Festival Soviet Socialist Realism and art in the Asia Pacific region Travel: the history of hanok, Korean traditional houses, and where to stay in Seoul The Great Mughals, the courts of Akbar, Jahangir, and Shah Jahan – India comes to the V&A in London Our annual survey of recently published books from the Asian and Islamic art worlds Mandalas, mapping the Buddhist art of TIbet, and Kazakhstan, treasures from the Great Steppe, in Paris Vintage photographs of China, in Hong Kong; pioneers of modern Vietnamese art in France, in Paris; and Chinese contemporary art, in Paris Islamic Arts Diary


Next issue March 2025


includes our annual guide to Asia Week New York


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