這部由美國耶魯大學韓森(Valerie Hansen)教授編選的絲綢之路研究文集,是《絲綢之路研究精選集》系列叢書的第一部分《前伊斯蘭時期分册》的兩卷。全書共收集了歐美、中國、日本學者與絲綢之路相關的論文29篇,除法國學者童丕(Eric Trombert)的一篇爲法文外,其餘皆爲英文文章。29篇文章被歸入六編:一、絲綢之路的序幕(The beginnings of the Silk Road);二、貴霜帝國及其影響(The Kushan Empire and Beyond); The silk road research anthology compiled by Professor Valerie Hansen of Yale University in the United States is a two-part volume of the pre-Islamic period which is the first part of the Selected Works of the Silk Road series. The book collected a total of 29 papers about the Silk Road from Europe, the United States, China and Japan. Except for French essay by one of the French scholar Eric Trombert, the rest were written in English. 29 articles are grouped into six series: I. The Silk Road (The beginning of the Silk Road); Second, the impact of the Empire and the Kushan (The Kushan Empire and Beyond);