Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, The University of Hong Kong

As a portable wealth, gold was highly valued by mobile pastoralists for its monetary and aesthetic values in ancient Eurasia. The gold making in ancient China underwent an important development during the early Iron Age following the arrival of new decorative motifs and technological skills from foreign lands. Comparing the stylistic features of goldwork discovered at burial sites (9th-1st c. BCE) in China, Central Asia, and far west to the Mediterranean world, demonstrates that there were extensive contacts between China and the Hellenic world that occurred much earlier than the opening of the commercial Silk Roads, while the micro-analyses of some gold objects and their manufacturing techniques attest to local inventions that occurred as response to outside stimuli. Drawing from scientific data, archaeological record and epigraphic evidence, this interdisciplinary research investigates how material culture informs us of the changing patterns in the transnational flows of people, objects, technologies and ideas over time through individual case studies. Examining the production, consumption and distribution of prestige gold artefacts in early China is essential to investigating the variability of economic and political powers at the regional scale in Eurasian antiquity.