Silk roads

In the ninth century CE, an Arabian ship sank off the coast of Indonesia. The objects found in the wreckage have provided extraordinary evidence of the nature, scale and diversity of trade between Tang China and the Islamic Abbasid dynasty, revealing the extent of a large-scale operation. This is just one example of the sprawling and extensive networks of contacts and exchanges across Afro-Eurasia, from Japan to Britain, in the period 500 to 1000 CE. This book challenges the concept of the 'Silk Roads' as a simple history of trade between East and West.