Textiles have historically functioned not merely as commodities for exchange, but as primary vectors of knowledge transmission. The International Association for the Study of Silk Road Textiles 2026 Symposium, titled “Textile as Knowledge Systems: Practice, Codification, and Transfer,” convening at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG), seeks to shift attention beyond the artifacts themselves to the dynamic processes of making, using, recording, and knowing. 

Submissions are invited that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• The mobility of technical knowledge: The transmission and transformation of weaving, dyeing, spinning, and sericulture technologies across the Silk Roads; mechanisms of apprenticeship and embodied skill transfer.
• Texts, textiles, and technical writing: The relationship between textile artifacts and written sources (e.g., pattern books, agricultural treatises, administrative records, and commercial documents); the codification and systematization of practical knowledge.
• Material and scientific approaches: Fiber analysis, dye and plant identification, experimental archaeology, and other laboratory or technical methods that illuminate historical production processes.
• Standardization and adaptation: How local workshops adopted, recalibrated, or resisted imported techniques, materials, and design conventions; tensions between regulation and innovation.
• Textiles as political and social action: The role of textiles in diplomatic exchange, ritual practice, taxation, gift economies, and the performance of authority.
• Archaeologies of production: Excavated tools, workshop sites, unfinished fragments, and chaînes opératoires that render visible the "action" of making.

Submission and Further Information

All interested scholars are warmly invited to apply for participation in the symposium by April 15, 2026 with a lecture title, an abstract (250–250 words), one key image from lecture (jpeg with caption), a short bio (of no more than 250 words) and a headshot. Accepted proposals will be notified by May 1, 2026.

For submissions, registration, and questions please contact the IASSRT secretariat, Luo Yaomin: luoyaomin118@126.com.

For the latest information, please check the website of the Silk Art & Silk Roads Research Centre.