The Sogdians are famously known as traders across the “ #SilkRoad,” so you’d expect a ton of foreign goods in their material culture, right?

WRONG

One of the most common imported good in Sogdian #archaeology is (with the exception of coins) ... paper!

Imported Chinese goods are surprisingly rare in Sogdian archaeology. Going off memory, I can only think of 3-4 pieces of silk, a handful of mirrors, & a ceramic rhyton.

Iconography of course paints a different picture, where Chinese silk is often used in garments and furnishings, but artwork is skewed towards idealised, elite representations for the most part.

The point of this is to think deeper about “Middleman” narratives, which both the Sogdians and Kushans suffer from - however, scientific archaeology reveals surprisingly few international traded products in Sogdiana. Most products appear to have been made locally, for local use.

Which is really intuitive, but the prevalence of import/export nowadays, along with poorly understood #SilkRoad narratives can sometimes lead us to believe that more products travelled longer distances more often than was the actual case.

The focus on #SilkRoad Middlemen narrative also reduces entire cultures of histories, customs, art, architecture, food, identity, etc down to one thing only - traders and middlemen, whose sole existence is to shuttle things between China and Europe.

Anyway, if it’s not immediately clear, I’m kinda indirectly responding to this:

“The Kushans, as if racing to meet their destiny as the bridge between East and West” - no.

https://twitter.com/nurussabagarg/status/1264019136054788100?s=21 https://twitter.com/nurussabagarg/status/1264019136054788100

While I’m not a Kushan specialist (I leave that to more intelligent folks like @sasanianshah), to my knowledge there is no indication at all the Kushans saw themselves as “the bridge between East and West,” nor that this was even that this was a big part of their activities.