[Dissertation] Everyday Stress, Exceptional Suffering: Bioarchaeology of Violence and Personhood in Late Shang, China

Author:
Daniela Wolin

School:
Yale University

Submitted:
2018

Abstract:
The Late Shang period (ca. 1250-1050 BCE) of China is a unique context where archaeological features and artifacts, human skeletal remains, and a coeval writing system (inscribed oracle bones) document the practice of ritual sacrifice, which claimed the lives of more than 10,000 people. Although thousands of human skeletons from sacrificial and non-sacrificial contexts have been systematically excavated over the past 90 years at the urban settlement of Yinxu 殷墟 in Anyang city, Henan province, osteological analyses of direct and indirect violence have only been published for a small fraction of these remains.

My dissertation uses a bioarchaeological framework to study the intersection of violence, gender, and ritual practices during the Late Shang period of northern China. Through the study of human osteology, contextualized with mortuary analysis and oracle bone inscriptions (OBI), I explore how violence in Late Shang society was a culturally constructed and ritually meaningful practice, that was mediated through social identity. To explore how violence influenced the lived experiences of people during this time, I collected osteological data from various locales at Yinxu, including both royal and neighborhood areas.

A spectrum of different types of violence were occurring simultaneously, ranging from exceptional performances of violence – warfare, captivity, and human sacrifice – to small-scale "everyday" and structural violence among the general population. For the residential neighborhood of Yinxu Liujiazhuang 殷墟劉家莊, an overall low prevalence of trauma indicative of interpersonal violence was identified at this site, suggesting that integrative mechanisms, such as religion, feasting, communal ritual activities, and sacrifice, may have promoted social cohesion among the general population. A slightly higher percentage of healed trauma on the skulls of females, however, is suggestive of gender-based violence. Oral pathologies and osteological indicators of health and nutritional stress, while limited, also point toward differences in diet and susceptibility to disease. These results were compared to two regional settlements in Shangdong province: Jinan Liujiazhuang 濟南劉家莊 and Tengzhou Qianzhangda 滕州前掌大. Low levels of trauma were also observed in these collections, however, variation in the prevalence of oral pathologies between Yinxu and Jinan Liujiazhuang indicate differences in diet between these regions.

My analysis of sacrificial victims from royal and residential areas at Yinxu demonstrated that many of the skulls of decapitated victims displayed healed trauma in addition to direct evidence of perimortem beheading. These lesions document a process of physical abuse that likely began at the time of initial confrontation and continued throughout captivity until the individuals were chosen to be ritually decapitated. Through these interactions, personhood was (re)constituted as the Shang captors imposed new social identities on them both in life and in death. Osteological evidence of nutritional deficiencies and mechanical stress suggest that captives may have been forced to carry out taxing labor until the time they were selected for ritual sacrifice.

By focusing on trauma and paleopathology, my research highlights the range of lived experiences among the men and women of Yinxu. This study challenges past reconstructions that see males as the sole perpetrators and recipients of violence and encourages scholars to integrate gender theory into future research. Finally, as one of few anthropologically-oriented studies on violence in the Late Shang that utilizes bioarchaeological methods and theory, this dissertation demonstrates the importance of incorporating all lines of evidence – including human skeletal remains – into reconstructions of ancient societies in order to construct a rich and diverse narrative.