Dr. Annie Chan

Education:
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2017

Research interests:
Region: Archaeology of Inner Asia (present-day Xinjiang, eastern Kyrgyzstan, western Mongolia)
Period: Bronze and Iron Ages — early medieval period — contemporary
Topic: architecture and built environment; pastoral mobility and spatial practice; technologies of ancient pastoral subsistence; cultural transmission; cosmopolitanism; contemporary material cultures of pastoral nomads, political ecology; science and geopolitics of the ‘Silk Road’.

[For the latest updates, please refer to my CV below.]

Courses taught (selected):
• Cultural transmission and exchange: practice and theory
• ‘Silk Road’: its history, science and politics
• Tales of first cities in East Asia
• (Ethno)archaeology of the Eurasian steppe
• Borders and identity in early China
• China and beyond (1500 BCE- 800 CE): Archaeological perspectives
• Writing about ancient nomads
• Life with animals in prehistoric China
• Turfan through the ages
• Travel and mobility before Marco Polo

Selected grants and awards:
2023 LMUExcellent Junior Researcher Fund (Nachwuchsförderungsfonds)
Summer 2022 Researcher in Residence, Center for Advanced Studies, LMU
2018-19 Social Science Research Council Transregional Research Junior Scholar Fellowship
2017 Tang Post-Doctoral Research Award in Early China, Columbia University
2015-2016 Bradley Fellowship, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
2014 Henry Luce Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies Predissertation- summer Grant
2012-2015 Penn Museum field research grants

Selected publications:
*Chan, A. 2025. Silk Road orientations in Xinjiang archaeology and shifting implications for Eurasian studies. Modern Asian Studies, published online 1-32. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X24000568

Chan, A. and Pamela Kyle Crossley (eds). 2025. Special issue: Cosmopolitanisms in China’s Eurasian history, Modern Asian Studies 58 (4), July 2024. Cambridge University Press.

Chan, A. and Pamela Kyle Crossley. 2025. Cosmopolitanisms in China’s Eurasian history: A critical approach. Special issue: Cosmopolitanisms in China’s Eurasian history, Modern Asian Studies 58 (4), July 2024: 1005-1016. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X25000083

Chan A, Sadykov T, Blochin J, Hajdas I, Caspari G. 2022. The polymorphism and tradition of funerary practices of medieval Turks in light of new findings from Tuva Republic. PLOS ONE 17(9): e0274537. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274537

Li, Li, Sam C. Lin, Shannon P. McPherron, Aylar Abdolahzadeh, Annie Chan, Tamara Dogandžić, Radu Iovita, George M. Leader, Matthew Magnani, Zeljko Rezek, and Harold L. Dibble. 2022. A synthesis of the Dibble et al. controlled experiments into the mechanics of lithic production. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-022-09586-2

Chan, A. and Dexin Cong. 2020. Results of field research of ancient stoneworks in the River Valleys of Bortala and Ili in Western Tian Shan (Xinjiang, China). Special Section: Prehistoric Stone Remains in Xinjiang (China) and Mongolia and Their Symbolic Landscapes: Updates from Field Research, Asian Perspectives 59 (2): 385-420. https://doi.org/10.1353/asi.2020.0019

Chan, A. 2020. (ed.). Special Section: Prehistoric Stone Remains in Xinjiang (China) and Mongolia and Their Symbolic Landscapes: Updates from Field Research, Asian Perspectives 59 (2): 330-337.

Chan, A. 2017. From Milk and Wool: Vital Pastoral Crafts and their Vitality in 21^st Century Xinjiang. Journal of Ethnobiology 37 (3): 542-560. https://doi.org/10.2993/0278-0771-37.3.542

CV: AChan_CV