Textile Archaeology in China

This is an in-person event hosted by the International Centre for Chinese Heritage and Archaeology (ICCHA), which will take place in Room 612, 6th floor of the UCL Institute of Archaeology. This seminar is free and open to all. All welcome! 

Abstract 

The lecture will provide a brief overview of textile archaeology in China over the past hundred years, beginning with Aurel Stein’s expeditions to Xinjiang and Dunhuang in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It will then examine four significant excavations that unearthed large quantities of textiles and costumes: Mashan Tomb No. 1 (3rd century BCE) in Hubei, Niya and Yingpan (2nd–4th centuries) in Xinjiang, Famen Temple (late 9th century) in Shaanxi, and the Tomb of Zhao Boyun (early 13th century) in Zhejiang. The lecture will also discuss research findings related to the art history of these textiles, as well as traditional weaving and dyeing technologies. 

About the Speaker

Professor ZHAO Feng is the Dean of the School of Art and Archaeology at Zhejiang University. He was the founding director of the China National Silk Museum in Hangzhou, serving as deputy director from 1991 to 2010, director from 2010 to 2022, and now as honorary director since 2022. During his career, Professor Zhao studied the history of silk technology at the Zhejiang Silk Engineering Institute (now Zhejiang Sci-Tech University) in Hangzhou, earning his MA degree in 1984. He then pursued the history of textiles at the China Textile University (now Donghua University) in Shanghai, where he received his PhD in 1997. Professor Zhao has held several prestigious research fellowships. He conducted research at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for one year (1997–1998), at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto for two months in 1999, and at the British Museum in London in 2006. In 2015, he founded the International Association for the Study of Silk Road Textiles (IASSRT) and became its president. Currently, he serves as an Executive Board Member of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and as a board member of the International Center for the Study of Ancient Textiles (CIETA) in Lyon.