The Archaeology of Early China: From Prehistory to the Han Dynasty

Author:
Gideon Shelach

Publisher:
Cambridge University Press

Abstract:

This volume aims to satisfy a pressing need for an updated account of Chinese archaeology. It covers an extended time period from the earliest peopling of China to the unification of the Chinese Empire some two thousand years ago. The geographical coverage includes the traditional focus on the Yellow River basin but also covers China's many other regions. Among the topics covered are the emergence of agricultural communities; the establishment of a sedentary way of life; the development of sociopolitical complexity; advances in lithic technology, ceramics, and metallurgy; and the appearance of writing, large-scale public works, cities, and states. Particular emphasis is placed on the great cultural variations that existed among the different regions and the development of interregional contacts among those societies.

Table of Contents:

1. The geographic and environmental background

2. Before cultivation: human origins and the incipient development of human culture in China

3. The transition to food production: variability and processes

4. The development of agriculture and sedentary life in north China

5. The shift to agriculture and sedentism in central and south China

6. The emergence and development of sociopolitical complexity

7. Stepping into history

8. The Shang dynasty: the emergence of the state in China

9. Regional variation and interregional interactions during the Bronze Age: 'center and periphery' or 'interaction spheres'?

10. The societies and cultures of the Zhou period: processes of globalization and the genesis of local identities

11. The son of heaven and the creation of a bureaucratic empire.