Dr. Jason Neelis (Wilfrid Laurier University)

Graffiti inscriptions and rock drawings mark an ancient network of capillary routes that connected Central Asian Silk Routes with major South Asian arteries for religious mobility and trade. The presentation aims to showcase developments of digital imaging and mapping techniques to document and promote the tangible cultural heritage of epigraphic and petroglyphic complexes in the Upper Indus transit zone of northern Pakistan. In order to better explain patterns of religious, cultural and commercial exchanges, paradigms of long-distance transmission provide useful alternatives to gradual diffusion by point-to-point contact expansion based on models of “Old Roads” between Chinese, Central Asian and Indian empires.