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John Gabriel Stedman (1744 – 7 March 1797) was a distinguished British–Dutch soldier and noted author. He was born in 1744 in Dendermonde, which then was in the Austrian Netherlands, to Robert Stedman, a Scot and an officer in the Dutch Republic's Scots Brigade, and his wife of presumed Dutch noble lineage, Antoinetta Christina van Ceulen.<br/><br/> He lived most of his childhood in 'the Dutch Republic with his parents but spent time with his uncle in Scotland. His years in Surinam, on the northern coast of South America, were characterized by encounters with African slaves and colonial planters, as well as the exotic local flora and fauna.<br/><br/> He recorded his experiences in <i>The Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam</i> (1796) which, with its firsthand depictions of slavery and other aspects of colonization, became an important tool in the early abolitionist cause.
Remarkable for their military prowess, their receptivity to Christianity, and their intricate all-embracing kinship network, the Kachins are a hardy mountain people living in the remote hills of northern Burma and on the peripheries of India and China.<br/><br/> 'Kachin' is actually a Burmese word that does not exist in any of the local dialects. Each Kachin tribe has a different name for themselves and their neighbours, but no word to describe the whole group. There are the Jinghpaw (known as Jingpo in China and Singpho in India), the Maru, the Lashi, the Atsi (or Szi), the Lisu and the Rawang—but those represent linguistic groups rather than actual nationalities. Far more important bonds are formed by an intricate system of clans, which cuts across tribal barriers.<br/><br/> Every 'Kachin' belongs to one of five original families: Marip, Maran, Lahpai, N'Hkum and Lattaw. These clans are related in an all-embracing kinship network of extreme complexity. In practice, however, this system binds together the Kachins into a remarkably tight-knit society.
The Pazyryk (Russian: Пазырык) burials are a number of Iron Age tombs found in the Pazyryk Valley of the Ukok plateau in the Altai Mountains, Siberia, south of the modern city of Novosibirsk, Russia; the site is close to the borders with China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia.<br/><br/> The tombs are Scythian-type kurgans, barrow-like tomb mounds containing wooden chambers covered over by large cairns of boulders and stones, dated to between the 6th and 3rd centuries BCE. The spectacular burials at Pazyryk are responsible for the introduction of the term kurgan, a Russian word of Turkic origin, into general usage to describe these tombs. The region of the Pazyryk kurgans is considered the type site of the wider Pazyryk culture. The site is included in the Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO World Heritage Site.<br/><br/> The bearers of the Pazyryk culture were horse-riding pastoral nomads of the steppe, and some may have accumulated great wealth through horse trading with merchants in Persia, India and China. This wealth is evident in the wide array of finds from the Pazyryk tombs, which include many rare examples of organic objects such as felt hangings, Chinese silk, the earliest known pile carpet, horses decked out in elaborate trappings, and wooden furniture and other household goods. These finds were preserved when water seeped into the tombs in antiquity and froze, encasing the burial goods in ice, which remained frozen in the permafrost until the time of their excavation.
Woven cloth with repeated medallion designs, 7th-8th century. The patterns, which form fairly simple geometrical shapes, are similar in design to the mosaic floors found in the Umayyad desert palaces of Jordan and Palestine.
Loulan was an ancient kingdom based around an important oasis city already known in the 2nd century BCE on the northeastern edge of the Lop Desert. Loulan was an ancient kingdom along the Silk Road. In 108 BCE, the Han Dynasty forces defeated the armies of the Loulan kingdom and made it into a tributary state. In 77 BCE, Loulan came under the control of the Han Dynasty and was given the Chinese name of Shanshan. The site is now completely surrounded by desert.
The motif on this fragment of textile, which may be from Iran or Uzbekistan, featuring two bulls in a beaded medallion, is clearly indebted to Sasanian and Sogdian design traditions of the early Silk Road. The bulls stand on a winged palmette, now almost worn away, with a stylized plant between them. The group to which this woven textile belongs has been ascribed on the basis of an inscription on a similar textile to the Central Asian city of Bukhara in present day Uzbekistan. The city was incorporated into the Umayyad caliphate at the beginning of the 8th century.
With its stylized, calligraphic frieze, in which the upstrokes of the letters end in animal heads, its lively lions and griffins rooted in the Sasanian and Byzantine tradition, and its sumptuous, lotus-like imaginary flowers on wildly contorted arabesque vines, the textile combines features from the culture of both East and West. The use of paper for the silver thread points in the direction of China, while the iconography is Western.
The provenance of this textile is uncertain, but motifs with eagles, falcons, lions, and other predators are generally associated with a princely iconography; the becomingly modest inscription on this textile also suggests a princely context.
Zhang Xuan (713–755) was a Chinese painter who lived during the Tang Dynasty (618–907). One of his best known works is 'Court Ladies Preparing Newly-Woven Silk'. A single copy survives, painted by Emperor Huizong of Song (r. 1100–1125) in the early 12th century.