This book explores the history of foreign astral science in China from the unique viewpoint of the knowledge introduced to the Middle Kingdom by monks, travellers, and merchants from different parts of Eurasia throughout the first millennium CE.

By comparing the extant works in Chinese with parallel materials in their original languages, including texts in Sanskrit and Pāli for the Buddhist materials, and in other languages for works by the Nestorians, Zoroastrians, and Manicheans, this book fills a lacuna in the understanding of the role foreign scientific ideas played in Chinese and East Asian societies.

Including full English translations of a number of Chinese texts of foreign origin for the first time, together with commentaries and the critically edited original Chinese texts, this book will appeal to students and scholars of the history of science and Chinese history.

ISBN 9781138477599

SPONSORED BY THE JING BRAND CO., LTD

To be held by kind permission of the Master and Fellows of Clare College, Cambridge at the
Riley Auditorium, Gillespie Centre, Memorial Court
6th March 2026, 5.00 pm.

To this day, the Qinling mountains in Shaanxi province, which separate the basin of the Yellow River from that of the Yangzi River, constitute a formidable geographical obstacle to interregional traffic. Along their almost unimaginably vertical cliffs, cantilevered plankways (zhandao 棧道) were constructed under state auspices since shortly after the middle of the first millennium BC. The late Joseph Needham called them the “endoskeleton of the Empire.” Similar thoroughfares were also constructed in mountainous regions elsewhere in China, and they were maintained more or less continuously until the early 20th century. The lecture will present some of the currently known archaeological remains of these extraordinary achievements of ancient Chinese engineering, and it will attempt to trace the origins of the techniques involved in their construction.

Lothar von Falkenhausen is Distinguished Professor of Chinese Archaeology and Art History at UCLA, where he has taught since 1993. He is also on the faculty of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, of which he served as Associate Director from 2004 to 2014, and he holds a concurrent part-time appointment as Visiting Professor (formerly Changjiang Chair, 2017-20) at Xibei University in Xi’an (China). Falkenhausen was educated at Bonn, Peking, Kyoto, and Harvard Universities, receiving his PhD in anthropology from Harvard in 1988. His research mainly concerns the archaeology of Bronze Age China, focusing on large interdisciplinary and historical issues on which archaeological materials can provide significant new information. His major books are Suspended Music: Chime Bells in the Culture of Bronze Age China (1993) and the award-winning Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius (1000-250 BC): The Archaeological Evidence (2006; also published in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese translations). A new monograph on the economic archaeology of Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age China is in press. Falkenhausen was co-Principal Investigator of an international archaeological project on ancient salt production in the Yangzi River basin (1999-2004) and has been serving as Instructor of Record of the International Archaeological Field School at Yangguanzhai (2010-). He has served on the Scientific Council of the French School of Far Eastern Studies (2005-2011) and on the US President’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee (2012-2020). He is a Full Member of the German Archaeological Institute, an Honorary Research Fellow of the Shaanxi Archaeological Academy, an Honorary Professor of Zhejiang University, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society, and a Corresponding Member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Institut de France).

The Trustees of the Needham Research Institute gratefully acknowledge the support of the Master
and Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, the
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, and the Department of Archaeology and
Anthropology in the establishment of this annual lecture.

Super quality black cotton T-shirts with the famous NRI logo printed in red.

Available in sizes small, medium and large.

Price: £16.00 each + p&p.

To order, contact Susan Bennett at Susan.Bennett@nri.cam.ac.uk and pay through the paypal button on the home page.

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          Length 66 cm (26 inches)

Medium: Width 50 cm (20 inches)
              Length 71 cm (28 inches)

Large: Width 54 cm (22 inches)
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