Silk Road between Iran, Central Asia and Western China

The main aim of the author in this article is to emphasize how little of the “silk” product up to now was recognized and identified at the level of material culture archaeologically collected in the places and sites from the areas connected to the Road, and to highlight, on the contrary, how much a wonderful and almost untouchable imaginative and often unrealistic narrative about those routes, took over. To do this, the author necessarily starts with an outline of the historiographical concept of the Silk Road and of the way it was used in the scientific tradition.The author also deals with the term Silk Road which, as is known, then, conventionally refers to a network of trade roads across the Eurasian regions, traditionally considered linking the Chinese and Roman political-imperial formations. The study of these roads in the last century has often utilized also some other names including those of Spice Road, Incense Road, Cotton Road, Amber Road, which, in different epochs, have chronologically and geographically, partially, indicated different branches of routes, also whether in a way, to the first ones related. Any way, with the historiographic use of the term Silk Road in the 19th cent., a new era in the relations between East and West, the Roman, the Persian and Chinese empires, was definitely considered opened. Silk sooner or later became the most important commodity traded, and the western names of China were clearly related to its production which is also in details described by the author. Finally, the decline of the terrestrial Silk Road was brought about by the discovery and the adfirmation of the sea routes to and from India and China.