By DPA
Berlin : The sensational recent archaeological finds from Xinjiang, China’s most northwestern province, are on show for the first time in Europe at the Origins of the Silk Road exhibition here. Some 190 objects recovered from the Tarim Basin in Central Asia are featured in the show, which brings together extraordinary archaeological finds dating from around 2000 BC – among them items from the Bronze and Early Iron Age as well as the Han Period.
Copper and bronze implements, precious jewellery, a 2,500-year-old Konghou Harp, a gold mask edged with precious stones, a diadem, textiles, and other organic finds feature in the exhibition. One item on show is reputed to be 4,000 years old.
The focal point of the exhibition is the Silk Road, the famous East-West trade route and vehicle for cross-cultural exchange, whose origins go back to the second century BC.
Running east to west, the Silk Road’s main axis ultimately united Asia and Europe, stretching from the ancient capital of Xi’an to the shores of the Mediterranean.
One of the connecting routes’ core areas is the Tarim Basin, in the Taklamakan desert, with its oases and towering massifs.
“The exhibition is like a journey from one archaeological site to the next,” a 35-year-old visitor from Dusseldorf said. “The finds give us an idea of the culture from one archaeological site to the next.”
Gereon Sievernich, the Martin-Gropius director, is thrilled Berlin is the first to show the exhibition, which runs to mid-January.
“Never before outside China has it been possible to see such an extensive presentation of impressive and varied objects,” he said.
Most of the objects displayed in Berlin were found at ancient Chinese burial and archaeological sites – in Hami, Wupu, Yanghai, Qawrighul and Xiaohe.
Hami, a present-day Chinese district capital, is the home of Xinjiang’s largest prehistoric burial site. In 1988, the burial site, dating from the 19th to the 13th century BC, was found by construction workers.
Experts later examined some 700 tombs at the site from four different periods. They found pottery was the most frequent burial offering to the dead, who were mostly buried individually in rectangular shaft tombs.
Centuries old bronze mirrors were also unearthed at the site, similar in style to copper counterparts uncovered in Gansu, a neighbouring Chinese province to the southeast.
Along with discoveries made at other sites in Qawrighul and Xiaohe, they are among the oldest finds from the Bronze Age to be seen.
At another burial site (15th-8th century BC) in Wupu, near Hami on the edge of the Gobi desert, researchers discovered countless mummies, complete with burial offerings, many of them dressed in their everyday clothes.
“Thanks to the constantly dry climate and the particular way they were buried, the organic finds were astonishingly well preserved,” the show organisers said.
“You can see clothing and everyday items whose appearances gives no hint as to their age – around 3,000 years.”
The excellent condition of finds from the Tarim Basin gives a valuable insight into the early cuisine of Xinjiang.
“From the archaeological finds, we know that the basic features of today’s food culture had already evolved 3,000 years ago,” the catalogue says.
It seems that in many graves, food offerings were found, often including animal skulls.
“In present-day Kazakhstan, the presentation of an animal head is still considered as a gesture of respect towards guests,” it says.
The European Culture channel ARTE is simultaneously presenting the film, “The Mummies of the Desert Takla Makan” as part of the Berlin exhibition.
The film accompanies a French-Chinese archaeology team during their excavation of two colonies in the Taklamakan desert in the northwest of China.
They found about 20 mummies, which are more than 2,000 years old and are testimony of the colonies along the Silk Road in the pre-Christian period.
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jieshi, and his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier are patrons of the exhibition.
It is funded by the German Cultural Foundation and organised by the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum Mannheim in cooperation with the Martin-Gropius Building and the Eurasia department of the German Archaeological Institute.