Colloquium, September 12-14, 2013 in Samarkand, co-organized by Prof. Frantz Grenet as part of the labex TransferS, partner of the Collège de France.
Until recently, theoretical reflection on cultural transfers rarely went beyond the framework constituted by European cultures, Russian included, despite the fact that certain elements of this type of analysis have already been applied by archaeologists to Central Asian data. By decompartmentalizing the initial, essentially Eurocentric approach to other types of transfer in other cultural spaces, the colloquium aims to question the effectiveness of theories on cultural transfer and their operational concepts (vectors of communication, processes of reception, innovations, appropriations, reinterpretations, adaptation, re-semantization, transformations, métissages, etc.) in the Central Asian field. In other words, the aim of the colloquium is to study both the concepts, ideas, techniques, religions, etc., that were conveyed along the transcontinental communication routes through Central Asia, and the means that were used and their reception, crossbreeding, transformations and adaptations.
