All the talks from last weekend’s China and the Silk Road Symposium

The Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore organised a weekend-long symposium on the Maritime Silk Road, which was held in conjunction with the Belitung Shipwreck artefacts being exhibited at the Shanghai Museum. The symposium was supposed to have happened in March, but was delayed to last weekend and turned into a webinar. The change in format is not all that bad; there were over 200 participants for each of the five panels, which would have been comprable (if not more) than a physical conference. Perhaps this is a sign of things to come – video-conferencing is very quickly becoming the norm!

The symposium was spread out over five panels over three days, and the videos are from the Asian Civlisations Museum’s Facebook page. I will add a link to these videos to the Online Lecture Library too.

Day One: Keynote and Opening Lecture

• Opening Remarks: Kennie Ting, Director, Asian Civilisations Museum & Peranakan Museum, Group Director of Museums, NHB
• Welcome Address: Mr Teo Chee Hean, Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security
• Keynote Lecture: Floating Cosmopolitanism: Conceptualising Indian Ocean Interactions beyond Silk, Dr Tansen Sen, Director, Center for Global Asia, NYU Shanghai, and Global Network, Professor, New York University, in conversation with Dr Stephen Murphy, Senior Curator, ACM

Day 2, Panel 1 – Ports and Maritime Trade Routes

• Maritime trade and the transformation of the Chinese ceramics industry: Dr Andrew Chittick, Professor, Eckerd College, Florida
• Qinglong City – Shanghai’s Maritime trade port from the Tang to Song dynasties 青龙镇 —上海唐宋时期的对外贸易港口: Dr Chen Jie, Deputy Director, Shanghai Museum
• Archaeological findings of the Nanjing Treasure Shipyard site excavation 南京明代宝船厂遗址考古发掘与相关认识: Dr Qi Haining, Deputy Director and Research Associate, Nanjing Archaeology Institute
• Between diplomacy and commerce: The Pallavas of Kanchipuram and the Tang court: Dr Sureshkumar Muthukumaran, Postdoctoral Fellow in History, Yale-NUS College
• Imported material culture and the hybridisation, adaptation, and cosmopolitanisation of consumption patterns in Malay port cities (10th–14th century): Dr Derek Heng, Professor and Chair of the History Department, Northern Arizona University

Day 2, Panel 2 – Shipwrecks and Archaeology

• Origins reconsidered – Belitung and Phanom-Surin: Dr Tom Vosmer, Research Associate, Department of Maritime Archaeology, Western Australian Museum, Adjunct professor, University of Western Australia
• The Phanom-Surin ship: old remains, new information: Abhirada Komoot, PhD candidate, University of Western Australia
• The Chau Tan Shipwreck: An 8th- or 9th-century Southeast Asian trading vessel: Dr Jun Kimura, Assistant Professor, Tokai University, Japan
• New stories from old cargo: Updates on the 12th- or 13th-century Java Sea Shipwreck: Dr Lisa C. Niziolek, Research Scientist joint presentation with Gary M. Feinman, MacArthur Curator of Anthropology, Field Museum, Chicago
• Song dynasty shipwreck archaeology: The Nanhai One Wreck “南海一号”宋代沉船考古: Mr. Sun Jian, National Center of Underwater Cultural Heritage, Beijing
• An investigation of the porcelains of Ensenada Shipwreck and some reflections on the Manila Galleon Trade: Dr Weng Yanjun, Deputy Director, Jingdezhen Institute of Ceramic Archaeology

Day 3, Panel 1 – Cargoes and Commodities

• Metals across the seas: Ceremonial and display: Dr Himanshu Prabha Ray, Senior Research Fellow, Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies
• Islamic inscriptions on the Belitung bowls: Ninth-century Changsha designs for the Abbasid market: Dr Amanda Respess, Assistant Professor of Premodern World History, Ohio State-Marion
• Green, Blue and White: The Belitung (‘Tang’) ceramic cargo and the nature of West Asian interactions in the 9th century: John Guy, Curator of the Arts of South and Southeast Asia, Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Kraak porcelain and the Maritime Silk Road 海上丝绸之路与克拉克瓷器: Dr Cao Jianwen, Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute
• Circulations in Bombyx silk in the western Indian Ocean in the 19th century: Dr Sarah Fee, Senior Curator, Eastern Hemisphere Textiles & Costume, Royal Ontario Museum

Day 3, Panel 2 – Capacity Development in Asian Archaeology: Challenges and Opportunities

• Challenges in Singapore archaeology: Mr Lim Chen Sian, Associate Fellow, Archaeology Unit, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore
• Can locally managed tourism help in the protection of historic shipwrecks?: Ms. Zainab Tahir, Head of Section of Shipwrecks Management, Directorate of Marine Services, Directorate General of Marine Spatial Management, Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, Indonesia
• Underwater archaeology in China: A thirty-year history 中国水下考古三十年: Dr Xin Guangcan, National Center of Underwater Cultural Heritage, Beijing
• Opportunities and challenges in capacity-building for Underwater Cultural Heritage in Southeast Asia: Dr Noel Hidalgo Tan, Senior Specialist in Archaeology, SEAMEO-SPAFA, Bangkok
• Capacity Building in the Time of COVID-19: The case of HMAS Perth (I): Dr Natali Pearson, Curriculum Coordinator, Sydney Southeast Asia Centre, University of Sydney

See also:

• Covid-19 pandemic reinforced importance of maintaining links between countries and peoples: Teo Chee Hean | Straits Times, 21 Aug 2020