Fragility and Resilience in Bronze Age China

Journal of Archaeological Research, 2022

This article builds on recent archaeological theorizing about early complex societies to analyze the political anthropology of Neolithic and Bronze Age China in a culture-specific trajectory over the longue durée. Synthesizing the latest archaeological discoveries, I show that a series of successive declines, beginning around 2000 BC, took place throughout lowland China. This put an end to the lowland states of the Longshan period (2400–1900 BC) and provided the context for the constitution of the Erlitou secondary state (1900–1500 BC). Following the shift in “archaic states” studies from identifying “what” to investigating “how,” I focus on the strategies, institutions, and relations that undergirded and sustained the Erlitou secondary state. I explore how heterogeneous lowland populations were reorganized after collapse, how a new collective identity was created through ritual and religious performance at the household level at Erlitou, and how Erlitou’s ideologies, political system, and economic network were shaped by the upland polities and societies. Through a series of innovative practices, the Erlitou secondary state did not replicate the preceding Longshan states but instead pioneered a sociopolitical order that was repeatedly reenacted and referred to as a source of legitimacy in successive Bronze Age Central Plains polities.

Journal of Urban Archaeology, 2021

Multiple episodes of urban abandon- ment took place in Bronze Age China, each with its consequences for reconfiguration of socio-political networks. By exploring the causes and the dynam- ics of these ruptures in urban traditions, this paper reveals the political nature of Bronze Age cities through the vantage point of their demise, where drastic actions of planned urban abandonment were initiated by new regimes to sever the symbolic ties connecting the population of the fallen regimes with their ancestral places. The emergence of com- mercial cities that outlived the regime change was a relatively late phenomenon of the late first millen- nium bc. The study of urban development in early China, therefore, needs to address these political ruptures and recognize the cultural significance of urban ruins in the making of the historical land- scape, especially how the core components of old cities were transferred to new locations, and how such urban relocation processes changed through time.

Journal of Archaeological Research, 2021

In this article we argue that several of the dominant narratives concerning the political economy of the Chinese Bronze Age are in need of major revision, including its chronological divisions and assumptions of unilineal development. Instead, we argue that for many parts of China, the Bronze Age should begin in the third millennium BC and that there was significant political economic heterogeneity both within and between regions. Focusing on the issues of centralization and commercialization, we argue that, in spite of the tendency in the Chinese archaeological literature to equate complexity with centralization and hierarchy and to posit top-down redistributive economic models, there is little evidence of such institutions. To the contrary, our survey of nearly 2000 years of development turns up significant investment in public goods, especially before the Anyang period, as well as ample evidence of horizontal exchange and increasing commercialization.

The Neolithic (ca. 8000–1900 B.C.) underpinnings of early Chinese civilization had diverse geographic and cultural foundations in distinct traditions, ways of life, subsistence regimes, and modes of leadership. The subsequent Bronze Age (ca. 1900–221 B.C.) was characterized by increasing political consolidation, expansion, and heightened interaction, culminating in an era of a smaller number of warring states. During the third century B.C., the Qin Dynasty first politically unified this fractious landscape, across an area that covers much of what is now China, and rapidly instituted a series of infrastructural investments and other unifying measures, many of which were maintained and amplified during the subsequent Han Dynasty. Here, we examine this historical sequence at both the national and macroscale and more deeply for a small region on the coast of the Shandong Province, where we have conducted several decades of archaeological research. At both scales, we examine apparent shifts in the governance of local diversity and some of the implications both during Qin–Han times and for the longer durée.

Archaeological Research in Asia

Journal of Archaeological Research, 2014

The origins, development, and makeup of early state societies in China have long been a favorite topic of research, though there has recently been an upsurge of attention among archaeologists in China and abroad. Research has been dominated by the identification of the Erlitou site from the early second millennium BC as the center of the earliest state in China, sometimes identified with the Xia Dynasty. Recently, several scholars have employed neo-evolutionary criteria for the identification of Erlitou society as China's earliest state in an attempt to provide objective criteria for the traditional historiographical narrative. Overarching social and ecological models of cultural change have been severely criticized by anthropological archaeologists, and many archaeologists studying the development of ancient societies prefer to focus on individual case studies or specific institutions rather than on the state. In contrast to recent archaeological scholarship that has called for its total abandonment, we find the "state" a useful concept for understanding local trajectories as well as cross-cultural comparisons. In this article we suggest a way of incorporating the warnings against simplistic overarching models while maintaining the notion of rapid sociopolitical change associated with state formation. Based on an analysis of the long-term trajectory, we identify, in north China, two phases of rapid transformations: the first, starting around 2500 BC, when several unstable regional states evolved and declined, and the second, around 1600 BC, when an intraregional state, usually identified with the historical Shang, rapidly evolved.

2018

Chinese History and Civilization, 2022

The previous 12 chapters have traced the evolution of the Chinese city, taking it as the container as well as a critical factor in the development of civilisation in the country. As early agricultural cultures emerged in Neolithic times, permanent human settlements gradually appeared. In the early Longshan city-state period, China entered the legendary epoch of sage kings as represented by Yao and Shun. By 2500 BC, in the riverine of the mid Huanghe reach-Zhongyuan (中原), the regional culture advanced into the Huaxia civilisation leading to the founding of the early dynasties of Sandai (i.e. Xia, Shang, and Zhou). These were much more powerful empires of centralised rule than the former loose confederation of tribal states. It was a period of Chinese "feudalism". Then, "Di" (帝), the emperor appeared and was later referred to as the Son-of-Heaven in the Zhou Dynasty. Yet the territory directly administered by the Son-of-Heaven was still small compared to the vast expanse of China today. Most of the "rest of China" were directly ruled by semi-independent feudal lords. It was not until the Qin Dynasty that China became a genuine empire of centralised control, as the former feudal states were replaced by provinces (fu) and counties (xian) with their administrators assigned by the emperor. Thus, from Qin Dynasty until the present, with few exceptional periods such as the North South Dynasties, China has been a huge territorial state under centralised rule. Over the immense space of China, the multi-culture complex that started in the mid-Neolithic era had evolved, about 4,500 years ago,

2016

Recent publications show that scholars in the China field pay growing attention to China's second or third-tier cities, especially those that form the heartland of Chinese civilization. The book under review, by Victor Cunrui Xiong, a highly prolific historian of early and medieval China, also ventures beyond metropolises such as Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, and Guangzhou that offer foreign scholars fewer obstacles and well-established background knowledge. With a nod to Rome, Italy and to other Chinese cities, Xiong's historical study focuses on Luoyang from 1038 B.C.E. to 938 C.E.-the imperial and divine capital of thirteen Chinese dynasties on which the expanse of the Yi-Luo river basin converges. Located in the western part of today's Henan Province, Luoyang enjoyed strategic importance in history on the North China Plain. A work of diligence and sound intellect, Xiong's thorough book examines Luoyang's urban layout, landmark structures, demography, and administrative organization as well as its political, economic, social, religious, and cultural life before the eleventh century. The splendor of early Luoyang can only be imagined today. In Victor Xiong's words, "Luoyang was not merely a Weberian 'princely residence,' but a world-class urban center of political power, social interaction, business transactions, and cultural enrichment" (p. 53). Composed of eight main chapters in chronological order, the book narrates Luoyang's rise and fall and role over nearly two millennia, grounded

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015

The Neolithic (ca. 8000-1900 B.C.) underpinnings of early Chinese civilization had diverse geographic and cultural foundations in distinct traditions, ways of life, subsistence regimes, and modes of leadership. The subsequent Bronze Age (ca. 1900-221 B.C.) was characterized by increasing political consolidation, expansion, and heightened interaction, culminating in an era of a smaller number of warring states. During the third century B.C., the Qin Dynasty first politically unified this fractious landscape, across an area that covers much of what is now China, and rapidly instituted a series of infrastructural investments and other unifying measures, many of which were maintained and amplified during the subsequent Han Dynasty. Here, we examine this historical sequence at both the national and macroscale and more deeply for a small region on the coast of the Shandong Province, where we have conducted several decades of archaeological research. At both scales, we examine apparent shi...