Looking for the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Globalisation of Sino-foreign Maritime Exchange: Ocean Cultures", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In the year 2020 the world was hit by a devastating pandemic. Centuries later a team of marine archaeologists set out to establish the truth behind the myth that China had once recreated a maritime silk road stretching from the East China Sea, through the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean and ending on the shores of the North Sea. What wrecks will they uncover, what conclusions will they draw and how accurate are they likely to be? How will moving on land and exploring the coast enhance their understandings? Will they discover the mythical ship’s graveyard, still haunted by the ghosts of 2019? And did their findings support the descriptions found in the AI-translated fragments in the legendary ancient text by an unknow author, ‘The Maritime Silk Road. China’s Belt and Road at Sea’?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Globalisation of Sino-foreign Maritime Exchange: Ocean Cultures   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow