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"Taizong (Li Shimin), 2nd emperor of the Tang Dynasty, commissioned six statues of his favorite warhorses to be carved in stone and serve as part of his political legacy at his mausoleum, Zhao Ling. This work traces the history and significance of these statues, from their creation in 7th century China, through their removal from the mausoleum in the early 20th c., when two made their way to the United States antiquities market through the dealer C.T. Loo, and ultimately to the Penn Museum. Their time on the antiquities market and subsequent stewardship by the Penn Museum are also explored. Relying on contemporaneous sources and archival records, this book reconstructs the roles of antiquities dealers, Chinese officials, and Western collecting museums in the sale of and competition for these stone horses. While underlining their exceptional significance and reconstructing the historical path on which they journeyed, this book serves to bridge the gaps in the shared knowledge of the historical facts pertaining to these horse reliefs and build a common foundation for intercultural dialogue and cooperation surrounding cultural heritage preservation and changing museum practice"--
The University Museum has been involved in Mesoamerican archaeology for more than a century. Its collections include material from northern Mexico to Costa Rica and represent all of the major cultures of the region. This guide allows the visitor to gain on-site understanding and the off-site reader to grasp how the Museum's collections fit into current archaeological theory. The text underscores some of the pan-Mesoamerican aspects of pre-Columbian peoples and the way each group interpreted underlying similarities to create individual customs and beliefs, burials and caches, beauty and adornment. The guide focuses on the unique aspects of the collection, much of it stemming from the Museum's...
The Penn Museum has a long and storied history of research and archaeological exploration in the ancient Middle East. This book highlights this rich depth of knowledge while also serving as a companion volume to the Museum's signature Middle East Galleries opening in April 2018. This edited volume includes chapters and integrated short, focused pieces from Museum curators and staff actively involved in the detailed planning of the new galleries. In addition to highlighting the most remarkable and interesting objects in the Museum's extraordinary Middle East collections, this volume illuminates the primary themes within these galleries (make, settle, connect, organize, and believe) and provid...
From the Publisher: In a lively tour around the world and through the millennia, Uncorking the Past tells the compelling story of humanity's ingenious, intoxicating quest for the perfect drink. Following a tantalizing trail of archaeological, chemical, artistic, and textual clues, Patrick E. McGovern, the leading authority on ancient alcoholic beverages, brings us up to date on what we now know about how humans created and enjoyed fermented beverages across cultures. Along the way, he explores a provocative hypothesis about the integral role such libations have played in human evolution. We discover, for example, that the cereal staples of the modern world were probably domesticated for thei...
A captivating history of civilization that reveals the central role of the horse in culture, commerce, and conquest. No animal is so entangled in human history as the horse. The thread starts in prehistory, with a slight, shy animal, hunted for food. Domesticating the horse allowed early humans to settle the vast Eurasian steppe; later, their horses enabled new forms of warfare, encouraged long-distance trade routes, and ended up acquiring deep cultural and religious significance. Over time, horses came to power mighty empires in Iran, Afghanistan, China, India, and, later, Russia. Genghis Khan and the thirteenth-century Mongols offer the most famous example, but from ancient Assyria and Per...
The Nanputuo Temple in the southeastern Chinese city of Xiamen has been a cherished site for the worship of the bodhisattva Guanyin for centuries. It was a center of modernizing Buddhism in the early twentieth century and a flagship for the revival of Buddhism after state suppression during the Cultural Revolution. The Space of Religion takes readers inside the Nanputuo Temple in order to explore the practice of Buddhism in modern China and the complex relationship between Buddhism and the Chinese state. Based on three decades of ethnographic research, Yoshiko Ashiwa and David L. Wank tell the story of Nanputuo against the backdrop of a dramatic stretch of Chinese history. They vividly depic...
A comparative history that reconsiders China's relations with the rest of Eurasia, Sui-Tang China and Its Turko-Mongol Neighbors challenges the notion that inhabitants of medieval China and Mongolia were irreconcilably different from each other.
"An edited volume of interdisciplinary, collaborative research on Tlingit culture, language, and history"--