NARA--An eighth-century pantry unearthed in the ancient Silk Road city of Samarkand suggests the influence of Eastern and Western dietary cultures on the dinner table of a Sogdian king ...

There are also many miniature wooden farm animals and tools once used as funerary objects — evidence of the thriving ...

The Sogdian people, whose control over Silk Road trade peaked from the 4th to the 8th centuries, are represented by pottery figurines wearing big beards and the equivalent of modern-day windbreakers.