The project “Like Islands in a Sea of Sand” (SilkRoMo) proposes to change the way we understand the Silk Roads. The Silk Roads are frequently held up as a prime example of ancient globalization, envisioned as a vast system of trade routes and networks spanning across Eurasia since at least antiquity. The Silk Roads are usually depicted as a network of routes connecting east and west, passing a multitude of nodes (sites, cities, and kingdoms). Yet few systematic studies exist of how the Silk Roads network might have functioned in practice, and surprisingly little attention has been paid to the role of the nodes in the network, the islands in the sea of sand.
The SilkRoMo project seeks to deepen our understanding of the Silk Roads by conducting a comparative study of five such nodes, namely the kingdom of Kroraina (China), the kingdom of Khotan (China), the kingdom of Rob (Afghanistan), the cities of Palmyra and Dura-Europos (Syria), as well Turfan (China) studied by the PhD student Per Jonas Fikkan Jordfald. The results of these studies will allow the project to test and refine a new analytical model for describing the Silk Roads, namely a “layered network model”. In this model the Silk Roads are conceived as a network of networks, where smaller local networks interacted with and served as the foundation for larger regional and inter-regional ones. This framework, thus, a) considers all the various actors involved, large and small, b) considers the plurality of networks that constituted the Silk Roads, and c) systematically considers the infrastructures and institutions that made movement along the Silk Roads practically possible.
By combining a detailed comparative study of places and polities along the Silk Roads with a new theoretical framework, the SilkRoMo project seeks to rethink the Silk Roads network. The SilkRoMo project will also encourage a rethinking of early globalization processes and ancient trade more generally, by bringing its insights to the debates in these fields.
After a year the SilkRoMo-project is now well under way.
From august 2024 the project was joined by two PhD candidates, Per Jonas Fikkan Jordfald and Lene Ferstad-Løland. Per Jonas Fikkan Jordfald (research program at HF, UiB) is working on the PhD project “From the Global to Local: The Church of the East seen from Turfan”, which is the SilkRoMo project’s fifth case. This project studies the cities and polities of the Turfan depression with a focus on the networks and connections created in this area by the Church of the East. Lene Ferstad-Løland (research program in Bildung and Pedagogical Practises, HVL) is working with the project “The conditions of the past in the Norwegian curriculum & history`s anthropological bildung perspective” which makes up the SilkRoMo project’s history-didactic component. Ferstad-Løland’s project focuses on the extent to which ancient and global history are taught on their own merit in Norwegian classrooms, as opposed to being linked to the student’s own lives. Both projects strengthen the core work of the SilkRoMo project, each in their own way. Jordfald’s project brings Turfan, a much discussed and important Silk Road centre, into the SilkRoMo case study and thus also extends the study’s timeframe. Furthermore, his particular focus on the religious networks in the Turfan case is an important supplement to the main project, which focuses primarily on economic networks. Ferstad-Løland’s project, meanwhile, explores the relatively underexplored field of how global history is taught in school. Her project also aims to translate SilkRoMo’s perspectives and gains into practical classroom use towards the end of the project.
The primary activity of the first year of the SilkRoMo project has been a 10 month research stay at the University of Kyoto in which both the Project Leader Høisæter and later the PhD candidate Jordfald participated. During this stay the work on the source databases has progressed using the excellent library resources of the University of Kyoto, in addition to work in archives and collaboration with several leading researchers in the field, in particular Minoru Inaba, Erika Forte, and Chao-Jung Ching. An important result of the work in Japan was the (re)discovery of several manuscripts from Kroraina. These had been found by the Otani expedition in the early 1900s but are otherwise not known in the literature. The project will seek to publish them for the first time in English in early 2026.
As part of the stay at the University of Kyoto the first SilkRoMo workshop was hosted on the 28th of May 2025. Entitled “Understanding connections and mobility in the ancient and medieval world” the workshop had six presentations centred on how to explain and understand movement and connections across premodern Eurasia.The project will host its second workshop entitled “Going beyond Empires”, which will be held at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David on the 2.-4. October.
The Silk Roads are the prime example of ancient globalization, envisioned as a vast system of trade routes and networks spanning across Eurasia since at least antiquity. The Silk Roads are usually depicted as a network of routes connecting a multitude of sites, cities, and kingdoms, yet within Silk Roads studies surprisingly little attention has been paid to these nodes, the islands in the seas of sand.
This project proposes to change the way we understand the Silk Roads phenomenon by developing a new model with which to conceive of Silk Roads exchange. This model, a layered network model of the Silk Roads, proposes to see the Silk Roads as a series of interconnected networks operating on a number of different scales, from regional networks within one polity to inter-regional diplomatic networks between polities. It furthermore suggests that the fundament that made this global network-of-networks possible were the local networks of those inhabiting the regions across which the Silk Roads are thought to have run.
In order to test this hypothesis, the project will conduct four critical case studies of smaller polities situated along the Silk Roads, namely the kingdom of Kroraina (China), the kingdom of Kucha (China), the kingdom of Rob (Afghanistan) and the city-state of Palmyra (Syria). An attached PhD project will study a fifth case. These case studies will then be analysed to see if the proposed model can be applied. Through this work, by testing and developing the “layered network model”, the project aims to provide a new framework for understanding the Silk Roads.
Finally, the project will critically examining the narratives and frameworks used to study premodern globalization, including a PhD project which will look at how such narratives are applied in history-didactical contexts. By doing this, and bringing its results into these debates, the SilkRoMo project will encourage a rethinking of early globalization processes and ancient trade more broadly.
