Colloquium: Thirteen Years That Changed China - 336-323 BCE - Alexander's Expansion into Asia
Event Details:
- Date: Wednesday, 4 December 2024
- Time: Starts: 15:00.
- Venue: John Ioannides Auditorium, Fresnel Building, The Cyprus Institute
Or alternatively, view a livestream of the event on The Cyprus Institute YouTube channel - Speaker: Prof. Alan Mark Pollard, Edward Hall Professor of Archaeological Science, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, UK; Chair of the STARC Scientific Expert Panel
Abstract
We aim to explore a potential technological link between two well-known historical events — Alexander the Great’s conquests in Central Asia in 327 BCE, and the movement of Buddhism from Gandhara and northwest India into China, beginning around the first century CE. We hypothesise that the Hellenistic links with Central Asia facilitated the development of brass-making (copper-zinc alloy) in Central Asia, leading to the casting of brass Buddhist figures in Gandhara, and subsequently to the transfer of the art of making brass into China from Central Asia as part of the spread of Buddhism. The relationship between Gandharan art and that of the Classical world is well-known, but the possible connection in terms of metalworking technology is under-explored. The adoption of Buddhism in the Gandharan region in the third century BCE eventually resulted in the use of brass for the production of Buddhist ‘golden’ statues.
We suggest that the subsequent spread of Buddhism from Gandhara through Xinjiang Province and onwards into Central China in the early first millennium CE was an important vector by which knowledge of the use of brass spread into China. However, what started as a simple unidirectional hypothesis becomes more complicated on further examination. Did brass-making really originate in the Caucasus and diffuse ultimately via the Hellenized west, or was it independently discovered elsewhere, including Iran, India, or China?
The aim is to stimulate further discussions of continental-scale technology transfer in the context of these large-scale events and religious movements.
About the Speaker
Mark Pollard graduated from the University of York in 1975 with a degree in Physics, followed by a DPhil in Physics from York on the degradation of the medieval glass in York Minster. He worked at the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, between 1978 and 1984, on a range of analytical projects including a study of Chinese porcelain technology.
In 1984 he was appointed to a joint lectureship in the Departments of Chemistry and Archaeology at Cardiff University. In 1990 he transferred to the Department of Archaeological Sciences at the University of Bradford as Professor of Archaeological Science and Head of Department. In 2004 he was appointed to the Edward Hall Professorship in Archaeological Science at the University of Oxford, from which he retired in 2022. He is now Professor Emeritus.
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Additional Info
- Date: Wednesday, 4 December 2024
- Time: Starts: 15:00
- Speaker: Prof. Alan Mark Pollard, Edward Hall Professor of Archaeological Science, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, UK; Chair of the STARC Scientific Expert Panel
