Fantastic Fauna from China to Crimea : Image-Making in Eurasian Nomadic Societies, 700 BCE-500 CE

Author:

Petya Andreeva

Publisher:

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Publication year:

2024

Abstract:

Numerous Iron-Age nomadic alliances flourished along the 5000-mile Eurasian steppe route. From Crimea to the Mongolian grassland, nomadic image-making was rooted in metonymically conveyed zoomorphic designs, creating an alternative ecological reality. The nomadic elite nucleus embraced this elaborate image system to construct collective memory in reluctant, diverse political alliances organised around shared geopolitical goals rather than ethnic ties. Largely known by the term "animal style", this zoomorphic visual rhetoric became so ubiquitous across the Eurasian steppe network that it transcended border regions and reached the heartland of sedentary empires like China and Persia.

This book shows how a shared fluency in animal-style design became a status-defining symbol and a bonding agent in opportunistic nomadic alliances, and was later adopted by their sedentary neighbours to showcase worldliness and control over the "Other". In this study of enormous geographical scope, the author raises broader questions about the place of nomadic societies in the art-historical canon.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction: At a Crossroads on the Eurasian Steppe Route
2. Design Idioms in Steppe Metalwork
3. The Tomb Inside Out: Playing (Mortuary) Politics
4. Animal Style in the Xiongnu Era: The Making of a New Elite
5. Waning and Re-emergence
6. Towards a Resolution

Early Medieval China 29 (2023) Special Issue: The Margins of the Human in Medieval China

Table of Contents:

Editor’s Note
XIAOFEI TIAN

ARTICLES
Mistaken Identities: Negotiating Passing and Replacement in Chinese Records of the Strange
ANTJE RICHTER

Nonhuman Self-Cultivators in Early Medieval China: Re-reading a Story Type
ROBERT FORD CAMPANY

Diverging Conceptions of Apotheosis in Mid-Fourth Century CE Upper Purity Daoism
JONATHAN E. E. PETTIT

Animality, Humanity, and Divine Power: Exploring Implicit Cannibalism in Medieval Weretiger Stories
MANLING LUO

REVIEW ARTICLEBringing Scholarship on the Early Medieval Period to a Broader Audience: A Review of The Cambridge History of China, vol. 2, The Six Dynasties, 220–589, edited by Albert E. Dien and Keith N. Knapp

PATRICIA BUCKLEY EBREY

BOOK REVIEWS
Jack W. Chen, Anecdote, Network, Gossip, Performance: Essays on the Shishuo xinyu
GRAHAM SANDERS

Xurong Kong, Fu Poetry along the Silk Roads: Third-Century Chinese Writings on Exotica
QIULEI HU

Yue Zhang, Lore and Verse: Poems on History in Early Medieval China
FUSHENG WU

Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/yemc20/current

Animals and Plants in Chinese Religions and Science

Author:
Huaiyu Chen

Year:
2023

Publisher:
Anthem Press

Abstract:
In ancient China, the tradition of observing nature is combined with Yin-Yang and the Five-Phase theories, which were later incorporated into the ancient arts of divination, including the technique of predicting weather changes by observing the behavior and health of animals. The observation of the close connection between animals and weather developed into the worship of animals, that is, what can be called the cult of animals. Plant science and technology in medieval China cannot be separated from the developments in agriculture, economics, and medicine, as well as cultural practice. The Chinese empire ruled most of East Asia in the medieval period. Numerous species of plants were observed, cultivated, harvested, and used in the vast land of China that spanned a wide range of biomes from boreal through to temperate and tropical, with most regions classed as subtropical. Besides indigenous plants, many plants from West, Central, South, and Southeast Asia were introduced into China and East Asia in general. Numerous zoomantic practices appeared in two sets of textual documents in the premodern Chinese bibliographical system, namely official documents and popular documents. Official documents were often compiled by government officials and served political governance objectives. These documents included official histories, annals, and institutional documents, as well as Confucian classics. The authorship or editorship of these documents was often explicit. Popular documents included strange writings, tales, legends, and religious documents from Buddhism and Daoism, which were often not compiled under the sponsorship and support of the court or government. They might be compiled by literati but lost original authorship. They did not serve political motivations and objectives, reflecting how people understood and interpreted correlative cosmology by observing animal behaviors at the local or non-bureaucratic level.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; 
Plant Science and Technology in Medieval China; 
Ordering Plants in the Buddhist World: A Medieval Botanical Taxonomy; 
Animal Divination and Climate: An Environmental Perspective on the Cult of the Pig; 
Zoomancy in Medieval China; 
The Changing Images of Zodiac Animals in Medieval Chinese Buddhist Literature; 
The Were-Tigers in Medieval China and Its Asian Context; 
The Animal Turn in Asian Studies and the Asian Turn in the Animal Studies

In the Land of Tigers and Snakes: Living with Animals in Medieval Chinese Religions

Author:
Huaiyu Chen

Publisher:
Columbia University Press

Year:
2023

Abstract: 
Animals play crucial roles in Buddhist thought and practice. However, many symbolically or culturally significant animals found in India, where Buddhism originated, do not inhabit China, to which Buddhism spread in the medieval period. In order to adapt Buddhist ideas and imagery to the Chinese context, writers reinterpreted and modified the meanings different creatures possessed. Medieval sources tell stories of monks taming wild tigers, detail rituals for killing snakes, and even address the question of whether a parrot could achieve enlightenment.

Huaiyu Chen examines how Buddhist ideas about animals changed and were changed by medieval Chinese culture. He explores the entangled relations among animals, religions, the state, and local communities, considering both the multivalent meanings associated with animals and the daily experience of living with the natural world. Chen illustrates how Buddhism influenced Chinese knowledge and experience of animals as well as how Chinese state ideology, Daoism, and local cultic practices reshaped Buddhism. He shows how Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism developed doctrines, rituals, discourses, and practices to manage power relations between animals and humans.

Drawing on a wide range of sources, including traditional texts, stone inscriptions, manuscripts, and visual culture, this interdisciplinary book bridges history, religious studies, animal studies, and environmental studies. In examining how Buddhist depictions of the natural world and Chinese taxonomies of animals mutually enriched each other, In the Land of Tigers and Snakes offers a new perspective on how Buddhism took root in Chinese society.

TOC:
Introduction
1. Buddhists Categorizing Animals: Medieval Chinese Classification
2. Confucians Civilizing Unruly Beasts: Tigers and Pheasants
3. Buddhists Taming Felines: The Companionship of the Tiger
4. Daoists Transforming Ferocious Tigers: Practical Techniques and Rhetorical Strategies
5. Buddhists Killing Reptiles: Snakes in Religious Competition
6. Buddhists Enlightening Virtuous Birds: The Parrot as a Religious Agent
Epilogue

[Dissertation] Gifts from afar : the creation of an imperial lapdog in Tang-Song China

Author:
Granger, Kelsey

Year: 
2022

School:
University of Cambridge

Abstract:
This thesis directly addresses a significant gap in the fields of sinology and pet studies by exploring pre-modern Chinese pet-keeping practices in detail for the first time in either discipline. More specifically, this thesis centres on the social and economic practice of lapdog-keeping across the seventh to twelfth centuries, i.e. the Tang and Northern Song dynasties. Not only does this study provide an adapted framework for identifying pets in medieval China, but the formation of a definitive corpus of lapdog references from this timeframe closely defines what a lapdog was and what it did, moving beyond prior cursory research into these diminutive trick-dogs. Analysis of how humans talked about, with, and through the lapdog further asserts the relevance of pets in the study of human history - revealing the lapdog to be a potent metonym for women and a medium for articulating male sexual desire. In sharing intimate human spaces and emotions as a living treasure, childhood playmate, and female companion, the lapdog thus uncovers nuanced insight into medieval elite culture. When considering the later trajectory of the lapdog in the Song period, we see an entire industry dedicated to producing and selling ornamental animals and animal accessories. Pets were not just emotional beings but economic products, shaped by the shifting socioeconomic dynamics of commercialisation and commodification. The lapdog, China's first systematic pet, was both a physical creature and an abstract site of complementary, contradicting, and competing meanings. With relevance to the study of medieval Chinese animal studies; early childhood; the male gaze; female isolation; animal commodification; aesthetic connoisseurship; and the writing of official historiography, this thesis reaffirms that the history of humanity cannot truly be written without including the animals which shared their most intimate lives.

Chinese Studies in History , Volume 53, Issue 3 (2020): Dunhuang on the Silk Road: A Hub of Eurasian Cultural Exchange

Table of Contents:

Article 研究論文

Dunhuang on the Silk Road: A hub of Eurasian cultural exchange—Introduction
Huaiyu Chen  &  Q. Edward Wang
陳懷宇、王晴佳：導論

Mani and the Messiah in the Record of the Dharma-Jewel through the Generations—The origins of Manichean and Nestorian elements in Tibetan texts
Rong Xinjiang

榮新江：《歷代法寶記》中的末曼尼和彌師訶：兼談吐蕃文獻中的摩尼教和景教因素的來歷

A reexamination of the reasons for the closure of the Dunhuang Library Cave
Sha Wutian

沙武田：敦煌藏經洞封閉原因再探

The cult of the Cintāmaṇi: The nature and context of the Dunhuang manuscript P. 4518 (10)
Huaiyu Chen

陳懷宇：摩尼寶珠崇拜：試論敦煌出土P. 4518 (10) 紙本畫頁之性質及其背景

On the development of Buddhist scripture illustration form and function from Dunhuang Buddhist texts and murals
Zheng Acai

鄭阿財：從敦煌佛教文獻、壁畫論佛經繪圖形式與功能之發展

On the origin and presentation of images of traveling Buddhist monks on pilgrimage for sutras with tame tigers in the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes
Zhou Xiaoping

周曉萍：敦煌莫高窟行僧取經伏虎圖像之源起與表現研究

Infractions of moral precepts by monks and nuns in the Buddhist community of Dunhuang during the late-Tang and Five Dynasties period—The case of alcohol drinking
Zheng Binglin  &  Wei Yingchun

鄭炳林、魏迎春：晚唐五代敦煌佛教教團僧尼違戒：以飲酒為中心的探討

Sources of Han Décor: Foreign Influence on the Han Dynasty Chinese Iconography of Paradise (206 BC-AD 220)

Author:
Sophia-Karin Psarras

Publisher: 
Archaeopress Archaeology

Publication date:
February 29, 2020

Abstract:
Using archaeological data to examine the development of Han dynasty Chinese art (206 BC-AD 220), Sources of Han Décor focusses on three major iconographies (the animal master, the tree of life, and animal predation), together with a series of minor motifs (particularly the griffin and a number of vegetal forms). All of these are combined in what may be considered the most important iconographic creation of the Han: images of paradise. While influence from the Chinese Bronze Age (especially, c. the 14th-3rd centuries BC) on Han art is expected, a surprisingly profound debt to Greece, the Near East, and the steppe is evident not only in the art of the Han era, but in that of the preceding Eastern Zhou (c. 771-221 BC). Initial Eastern Zhou incorporation of this largely-Western influence appears concentrated in chronological parallel to the Orientalization of Greek art (c. the 7th century BC) and the eastern spread of Hellenism (c. the 4th century BC), followed by repeated introduction of foreign motifs during the Han, when these influences were fully integrated into Chinese art.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

I: Major Iconographies

Chapter 1 Eastern Zhou Context

Chapter 2 The Animal Master

Chapter 3 Developments Related to the Animal Master

Chapter 4 Tree of Life

Chapter 5 Animal Predation

II: Decorative Elements

Chapter 6 Fantastic Elements

Chapter 7 Plant Motifs

Conclusion

Early Medieval China 25 《中國中古研究》第25期 (2019)

Table of Contents:

Special Issue: Essays in Honor of Albert E. Dien’s Scholarly Contributions to the Study of the Northern Dynasties on the Occasion of his 90th Birthday

Guest Editors: Jonathan K. Skaff and Scott Pearce

Editors’ Note
JONATHAN K. SKAFF AND SCOTT PEARCE

ARTICLES

Albert E. Dien: A Short Biography of a Scholarly Explorer
JONATHAN KARAM SKAFF

Albert Dien’s Contribution to Study of the Northern Dynasties
SCOTT PEARCE

The Nature of the Hu: Wuhuan and Xianbei Ethnography in the San Guo Zhi and Hou Han Shu
NINA DUTHIE

A Preliminary Study of the Lacquerware of the Northern Dynasties, with a Special Focus on the Pingcheng Period (398–493)
SHING MÜLLER

Tribute, Hostages, and Marriage Alliances: A Close Reading of Diplomatic Strategies in the Northern Wei Period
ARMIN SELBITSCHKA

The Use and Understanding of Domestic Animals in Early Medieval Northern China
KEITH N. KNAPP

Priests and Other Xian 祆 Ritual Performers in Medieval China
PÉNÉLOPE RIBOUD

Bibliography of Albert E. Dien Since 2008

(via Michael Farmer)

The Art and Archaeology of Bodily Adornment: Studies from Central and East Asian Mortuary Contexts

Editor:
Sheri A. Lullo and Leslie V. Wallace

Publisher:
Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge

Publication date:
2019

Abstract:

This book examines the significance of adornment to the shaping of identity in mortuary contexts within Asia, and brings these perspectives into dialogue with current scholarship in other worldwide regions. The mortuary contexts of focus in this volume represent unique sites and events where identity was visualized, and often manipulated and negotiated, through material objects and their placement on and about the deceased body. In both breadth and depth, it will be of interest to students and scholars interested in the archaeology, art, and history of Central and East Asia, as well as anyone interested in the general study of dress and adornment.

Table of Contents:

Dimensions of personal adornment / Sheri A. Lullo and Leslie V. Wallace

Adornments at Odake Shell Midden Site: perceptions of early Jomon hunter-gatherer gender and identities / Ilona R. Bausch

Some features of "Xiongnu" composite belts / S.S. Miniaev

Adornments of golden Silla / Sarah Milledge Nelson

The Yayoi-Kofun transition as seen from the exchange network of beads in the Japanese archipelago / Ari Tanizawa

Why wear dolphins? Greek imagery among the pastoralists along the ancient Oxus / Karen S. Rubinson

The power and authority of exotic accessories: ornamentation of human and equine haniwa at Tsukamawari tomb 4, Gunma, Japan / Karen M. Gerhart and Katheryn M. Linduff

Jade age adornment of the Liangzhu elite / Elizabeth Childs-Johnson

Does a feather in your hat a barbarian make? Headgear and hairstyles in Han Dynasty tomb murals in the Ordos / Leslie V. Wallace

Dressing the dead in Jin China / Sarah Laursen

Mouse vs. Cat in Chinese Literature Tales and Commentary

Translator:
Wilt L. Idema

Publisher:
University of Washington Press

Publication date:
Feb 28, 2019

Abstract:

In literatures worldwide, animal fables have been analyzed for their revealingly anthropomorphic views, but until now little attention has been given to the animal tales of China. The complex, competitive relationship between rodents (vilified as thieves of grain) and the felines with whom they are perennially at war is explored in this presentation of Chinese tales about cats and mice. Master translator Wilt Idema situates them in an overview of animal tales in world literature, in the Chinese literary tradition as a whole, and within Chinese imaginative depictions of animals.

The tales demonstrate the animals’ symbolism and their unusually prominent—and verbal—role in the stories. These readings depict cats and mice in conflict, in marital bonds, and in litigation—most centrally in a legal case of a mouse against a cat in the underworld court of King Yama. Many of the stories adopt the perspective of the mice as animals merely trying to survive, while also recognizing that cats are natural hunters.

This entertaining volume will appeal to readers interested in Chinese literature and society, comparative literature, and posthumanist consideration of human-animal relations.

Table of Contents:

Introduction p. 3
Chapter 1 Thieving Rats and Pampered Cats p. 22
    Rapacious Rats p. 23
    Deserving Mice p. 27
    Performing Mice p. 28
    Revered Rats p. 31
    Wildcats and Pussycats p. 34
    Buddhist Cats p. 38
    Good Mousers and Lazy Pets p. 41
    Demonic Cats p. 48
    Cat Lovers and Cat Lore p. 53

Chapter 2 The White Mouse and the Five Rats p. 56
    The White Mouse p. 57
    The Five Rats p. 65
    The Execution of the Five Rats p. 70

Chapter 3 A Wedding and a Court Case p. 82
    The Marriage of the Mouse p. 82
    The Court Case p. 90
    Other Genres p. 102
    The Mutual Accusations of the Cat and the Mouse p. 103
    The Scroll of the Accusation of the Mouse against the Cat p. 108

Chapter 4 A Tale without Shape or Shadow p. 114
    Expanding the Court Case p. 114
    Prequels: Creation and Pride p. 118
    Prequels: The Crashed Wedding p. 123
    Prequels: The War of the Mice against the Cat p. 127
    A Tale without Shape or Shadow p. 131

Chapter 5 Peace Negotiations and Dystopias p. 154
    Actualized Versions of the Court Case p. 156
    Modern and Contemporary Authors on Cats and Rats p. 163

Epilogue: Cats and Mice in Love and War from East to West

A Zooarchaeological Study of the Haimenkou Site, Yunnan Province, China

Author:
Juan Wang

Publication Year:
2018

Publisher:
British Archaeological Reports Oxford Ltd

Abstract:

Haimenkou was an important location, with trade and cultural links connecting parts of modern Southeast Asia and northwestern China in ancient times. This book is based on an analysis of the faunal assemblage recovered from the Haimenkou site during the 2008 field season in Yunnan Province, China. It investigates the human-animal relationships at Haimenkou through a time span running from the late Neolithic Period to the middle Bronze Age (ca. 5000-2400 BP). The animal exploitation patterns, local animal domestication processes, human subsistence strategies and communication networks linking Haimenkou and other regions in prehistoric China are studied. Domesticated pig, dog and sheep bones were identified. Over sixteen wild mammal species as well as bird and fish bones and mollusc shells were also recovered. The results suggest that the Haimenkou people developed a mixed subsistence economy, consisting of crop farming, plant food gathering, animal husbandry, hunting and fishing.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Environmental setting and archaeological background of the Haimenkou Site
3. Procedure of faunal analysis
4. Range and relative importance of identified taxa
5. Skeletal part representation and bone modification
6. Kill-off patterns for domestic animals
7. Discussion and conclusion

Insects in Chinese Literature: A Study and Anthology

Author:
Wilt L. Idema

Publication date:
2018

Publisher:
Cambria Press

Abstract:
Despite the “nonhuman” turn in the humanities, studies of animals in Chinese culture are still quite limited in number, while studies of insects in literature are even rarer and tend to focus on only a few aspects, such as cricket fights. The available studies on insects in Chinese literature are almost exclusively limited to insects in Chinese classical poetry, and so provide only a very limited view of the many ways in which insects have been viewed in Chinese culture at large.

This book helps to fill this gap. The first part of this volume begins with the fascination of modern author Lu Xun with entomological literature and satiric animal tales from the West. The book then traces the characterization of individual insects in three thousand years of classical Chinese poetry, from the ancient Book of Odes to the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), as emblems of virtues and vices. Separate chapters are dedicated to the selfless and diligent silkworm, the pure and outspoken cicada, the social organization of the ants and the bees (as well as the philandering tendencies of bees and butterflies), fighting crickets and disastrous locusts, slanderous flies, and sly mosquitoes, as well as body parasites as lice, fleas, and bedbugs. Each chapter includes extensive translations, highlighting lesser-known aspects of well-known poets and introducing original works by lesser-known authors.

Preceding the second part of the book is a short intermezzo devoted to insects in classical and vernacular narrative literature, which shows a preference for tales in which insects appear in human shape. The second part of the book delves into the popular literature of late imperial China, in which insects spoke their minds in the formal settings of weddings, funerals, wars, and court cases. A representative selection of such ballads and plays is discussed and translated and is followed by an epilogue, which contrasts the treatments of insects in Chinese and Western literature.

By contrasting the ways in which traditional Chinese belles lettres, traditional classical and vernacular literature, and popular songs and ballads treat insects, it becomes clear that each of these written traditions portrays insects in particular in its own way: as examples of virtues and vices, as fairies and demons in human guise, and as contentious characters speaking in their own voice. While some insects basically remain the same in all three traditions, other insects show unique characteristics in each tradition. Spiders, for instance, transform from wily hunters in classical poetry, to exhibitionists maidens in vernacular narrative, and to champions of justice in popular songs and ballads. Last but not least, the search for texts on insects reveals many works of considerable literary value which are presented in highly readable renditions.

Insects in Chinese Literature will be of interest to all persons who are interested in Chinese literature and comparative literature, all those who are interested in insects in Chinese culture at large, and all those who are interested in cultural entomology and animal studies.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Portrayal of Insects

Part I: Insects in Belles Lettres
Chapter 1: The Silkworm
Chapter 2: The Cicada
Chapter 3: Lessons Learned from Insects
Chapter 4: Fables on the Praying Mantis and the Spider
Chapter 5: The Ant, the Bee, and the Butterfly
Chapter 6: The Cricket, the Grasshopper, and the Locust
Chapter 7: The Fly and the Mosquito
Chapter 8: The Scorpion, the Louse, the Flea, and the Bedbug
Chapter 9: Group Portraits
Intermezzo
Chapter 10: Insects in Narrative Literature

Part II: Insects in Popular Literature
The Names of the Thirty-Six Kinds of Insects

Chapter 11: Weddings
The Precious Scroll of the Marriage of the Mantis
The Dragonfly’s Abduction of the Bride
The Mantis Abducts His Bride
The Dung Beetle Abducts His Bride

Chapter 12: Funerals
The Hundred-Day Insect
The War of the Insects

Chapter 13: Battles and Wars
The Battle of the Insects
The Song of the War of the Fly against the Mosquito

Chapter 14: Disputes and Court Cases
Southern Window Dream
The Louse Cries out his Grievances [followed by The Court Case of the Bedbug against the Mosquito]
The White Louse Voices his Grievances

Epilogue: Some Comparative Perspectives

[Dissertation] The Origins of Horse Herding and Transport in the Eastern Steppe

Author:
William Taylor

Date:
2017

School:
The University of New Mexico

Abstract:

In the dry steppes of eastern Eurasia, domestic horses (E. caballus) provide the economic and cultural foundations of nomadic life. With no written records and sparse archaeological data from early nomadic societies, however, the ecological context of the first horse herding and transport, and its role in the formation of herding societies is poorly understood. Some of the earliest evidence for domestic horses in the region come from small ritual horse burials at sites belonging to the Deer Stone-Khirigsuur (DSK) culture, a late Bronze Age cultural often linked with the first mobile pastoral societies in Mongolia. This dissertation employs archaeological and archaeozoological techniques to assess how DSK people used domestic horses, and evaluates the role of horse herding and transport in the emergence of mobile herding in eastern Eurasia. I present results in five discrete published studies. The first study identifies evidence for selective culling of young and old animals as part of maintaining a breeding herd, with the selective burial of adult male transport horses in prominent ritual mounds along the eastern perimeter of DSK monument sites. A second set of three closely related studies investigates the skulls of contemporary wild and domestic horses, identifying anthropogenic changes to the equine skull caused by exertion, bridling, and pressures related to horseback riding. Applying these criteria to the late Bronze Age DSK archaeological record indicates that DSK people bridled and used horses for transport, and may have engaged in early mounted horseback riding. Finally, a precision radiocarbon model suggests a rapid expansion of DSK horse use around ca. 1200 BCE–during a period of climate amelioration and increased rainfall, and concurrent with major changes in ritual practice and the spread of horses to new parts of the continent. These results provide compelling links between the adoption of horseback riding, new ecological opportunities, and the development of mobile pastoralism in eastern Eurasia.

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2: Horse demography and use in Bronze Age Mongolia

Chapter 3: Equine cranial morphology and the archaeological identification of riding and chariotry in Bronze Age Mongolia

Chapter 4: Reconstructing equine bridles in the Mongolian Bronze Age

Chapter 5: Horseback riding, asymmetry, and anthropogenic changes to the equine skull: evidence for mounted riding in Mongolia’s late Bronze Age

Chapter 6: A Bayesian chronology for early domestic horse use in the Eurasian Steppe

Chapter 7: Conclusions

[Dissertation] Biological Classification in Early Chinese Dictionaries and Glossaries: from Fish to Invertebrates and Vice Versa

Author:
Federico Valenti

School:
Università degli Studi di Sassari

Defended:
2018

Abstract:
This dissertation problematises the classification of chong 蟲 (invertebrates) and yu 魚 (fish) in Early Chinese texts. The loci classici analysed will range from the Warring States (ca. 453 – 221 BCE) to the Eastern Han period (dong Han 東漢, 25 – 220 CE). The focus is on the lexical ambiguity between these two zoological categories: despite being perceived as different, they include a more or less loose set of “dynamic” words that shift from one category to the other.

The project concentrates on two early Chinese texts: the Erya 爾雅 (III century BCE) and the Shuowen jiezi 説文解字 (100 CE). These works had a pivotal role during the development of Chinese lexicography and gave the lexical basis of later texts. They are also the first texts that deal with the problem of taxonomical classification in Early China.

By systematically applying a philological approach (Coblin 1972, Carr 1979) to a selection of zoological glosses preserved in these sources, this study aims at reformulating the way in which early Chinese “proto-zoological categories” are organised (Needham 1986, Sterckx 2002). Through the analysis of selected case studies, it aims at showing that even if there are fairly well attested categories that constitute a dichotomous system (such as “quadrupeds” versus “winged creatures” or “wild beasts” versus “domestic animals”), Early Chinese taxonomies represent a dynamic and unstable attempt at zoological classification for what we call today “fish” and “invertebrates”.

[Dissertation] Isotopic Analysis of Dietary Patterns in Northern China from the Proto-Shang Period to the Qin Dynasty

Author:
MA, Ying

Defended:
2017

School:
Leiden University

Abstract:

The stable isotope ratios of carbon (d13C), nitrogen (d15N) and sulphur (d34S) are measured to examine human diet, social stratification, mobility and animal husbandry practices. Three locations comprising four sites from the Yellow River Valleys of north China are investigated: Nancheng (Hebei Province), Xishan (Gansu Province), Liyi and Shanren (Shaanxi Province), and this work represents one of the largest and most detailed isotopic research projects ever conducted in China. This thesis focused on time periods and cultures that were previously underrepresented, in the literature such as the early Bronze/Iron Ages to the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC). Further, this thesis found new evidence concerning dietary patterns, social stratification (or lack thereof), animal husbandry practices and human mobility during these formative pre-Qin Empire periods.

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1 – Introduction 

Chapter 2 – Paleodiet Reconstruction and Stable Isotope Ratio Analysis

Chapter 3 – Introduction to the Cultural Prehistory and History of China

Chapter 4 – Isotopic Perspectives (d13C, d15N, d34S) of Diet, Social Complexity, and Animal Husbandry during the Proto-Shang Period (ca. 2000 – 1600 BC) of China

Chapter 5 – Reconstructing Diet of the Early Qin (ca. 700 – 400 BC) at Xishan, Gansu Province, China (Article published in International Journal of
Osteoarchaeology)

Chapter 6 – Tracing the Locality of Prisoners and Workers at the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang: First Emperor of China (259-210 BC) 

Chapter 7 – Conclusions and Future Work

[Dissertation] Fantastic Beasts Of The Eurasian Steppes: Toward A Revisionist Approach To Animal-Style Art

Author:
Petya Andreeva

School:
University of Pennsylvania

Defended:
2018

Abstract:

Animal style is a centuries-old approach to decoration characteristic of the various cultures which flourished along the Eurasian steppe belt in the later half of the first millennium BCE. This vast territory stretching from the Mongolian Plateau to the Hungarian Plain, has yielded hundreds of archaeological finds associated with the early Iron Age. Among these discoveries, high-end metalwork, textiles and tomb furniture, intricately embellished with idiosyncratic zoomorphic motifs, stand out as a recurrent element. While scholarship has labeled animal-style imagery as scenes of combat, this dissertation argues against this overly simplified classification model which ignores the variety of visual tools employed in the abstraction of fantastic hybrids. I identify five primary categories in the arrangement and portrayal of zoomorphic designs: these traits, frequently occurring in clusters, constitute the first comprehensive definition of animal-style art. Each chapter focuses on the materiality and strategic placement of a different type of animal-style object: headdresses, torques and plaques often embellish the body of the deceased whereas felt, leather and silk textiles used as ceiling hangings, rugs, and coffin covers serve to define the tomb’s spatial parameters. Lastly, the dissertation also delves into the continuous retention of animal-style motifs in the arts of the Eurasian steppes after the dawn of the first millennium BCE thus challenging the narrative that animal art disappeared after the Iron Age. I demonstrate that elite members of the various pastoral societies perched along the peripheries of sedentary empires invented local interpretations of a common visual language made of tropes and devices (such as “visual synecdoche” and “frame narrative”) resulting from ingenious interpretations of the above-mentioned five categories. In so doing, they aimed to tackle an identical conceptual problem: the attendance of a real audience of a certain social stature during the funerary ceremony and the presence of an imagined (divine) one in the afterlife. The dissertation thus deconstructs the politically-motivated role of animal-style items in elite burials and argues that animal art was a constructed visual language intelligible to a small nucleus of elites whose sociopolitical status and network of influence were in fact inextricably linked to their level of fluency in it.

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1: Mapping out The Early Narratives: Animal Art at a Crossroads

Chapter 2: The Cosmic Headdress: The Theater of Politics of Animal-style Regalia

Chapter 3: The Tomb Inside Out: The Political Dimensions of Mortuary Space

Chapter 4: Revisiting the “Disappearance” Narrative

Chapter 5: Animal Art Revisited

Ships of the Silk Road: The Bactrian Camel in Chinese Jade

Author:
Angus Forsyth

Publication date:
December 2018

Publisher:
Philip Wilson Publishers

Abstract:

For hundreds of years the Bactrian camel ploughed a lonely furrow across the vast wilderness of Asia. This bizarre-looking, temperamental yet hardy creature here came into its own as the core goods vehicle, resolutely and reliably transporting to China – over huge and unforgiving distances – fine things from the West while taking treasures out of the Middle Kingdom in return. Where the chariot, wagon and other wheeled conveyances proved useless amidst the shifting desert dunes, the surefooted progress of the camel – archetypal 'ship of the Silk Road' – now reigned supreme. The Bactrian camel was a subject that appealed particularly to Chinese artists because of its association with the exotic trade to mysterious Western lands. In his lavishly illustrated volume, Angus Forsyth explores diverse jade pieces depicting this iconic beast of burden. Almost one hundred separate objects are included, many of which have not been seen in print before. At the same time the author offers the full historical background to his subject. The book will have a strong appeal to collectors and art historians alike.

Animals Through Chinese History: Earliest Times to 1911

Editors:
Roel Sterckx, Martina Siebert, Dagmar Schafer

Publisher:
Cambridge University Press

Publication planned for: 
January 2019

Abstract:

This volume opens a door into the rich history of animals in China. As environmental historians turn their attention to expanded chronologies of natural change, something new can be said about human history through animals and about the globally diverse cultural and historical dynamics that have led to perceptions of animals as wild or cultures as civilized. This innovative collection of essays spanning Chinese history reveals how relations between past and present, lived and literary reality, have been central to how information about animals and the natural world has been processed and evaluated in China. Drawing on an extensive array of primary sources, ranging from ritual texts to poetry to veterinary science, this volume explores developments in the human-animal relationship through Chinese history and the ways in which the Chinese have thought about the world with and through animals.

Table of Contents:

Knowing Animals in China’s History: An Introduction  

1. Shang sacrificial animals: material documents and images 
Adam C. Schwartz

2. Animal to edible: the ritualization of animals in early China 
Roel Sterckx

3. Noble creatures: filial and righteous animals in early medieval Confucian thought 
Keith N. Knapp

4. Walking by itself: the singular history of the Chinese cat 
Timothy H. Barrett and Mark Strange

5. Bees in China: a brief cultural history 
David Pattinson

6. Where did the animals go? Presence and absence of livestock in Chinese agricultural treatises 
Francesca Bray

7. Animals as text: producing and consuming 'text-animals' 
Martina Siebert

8. Great plans: Song dynastic (960–1279) institutions for human and veterinary healthcare 
Han Yi and Dagmar Schäfer

9. Animals in nineteenth-century eschatological discourse 
Vincent Goossaert

10. Reconsidering the boundaries: multicultural and multilingual perspectives on the care and management of the emperors' horses in the Qing 
Sare Aricanli

11. Animals as wonders: writing commentaries on monthly ordinances in Qing China 
Zheng Xinxian

12. Reforming the humble pig: pigs, pork and contemporary China 
Mindi Schneider

Guicheng: An Archaeological Study of the Formation of States on the Jiaodong Peninsula in Late Bronze-Age China, 1000-500 BCE

Chief Editors: 
Li Feng, Liang Zhonghe

Editors: 
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University
The Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Shandong Provincial Academy of Cultural Relics and Archaeology

Publisher:
Beijing: Science Press

Publication date:
2018.10

Abstract:

Guicheng is an important Bronze-Age city-site of 8 km2 located in Longkou in eastern Shandong. Guicheng enjoyed a high degree of political dominance and cultural diversity until its conquest by the state of Qi in 567 BCE. This Chinese-English full-text bilingual monograph presents the results of the international collaborative archaeological survey and test excavations conducted by Columbia University, the Institute of Archaeology (CASS), and the Shandong Provincial Academy of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in 2007-2011. The book has two volumes: Volumes I includes ten chapters that describe the fieldwork and its results, and related analyses. Volume 2 includes five chapters that review the archaeological discoveries made at the city-site and the surrounding region in 1896-2006, mainly of bronzes, ceramics, and jade objects. 

The book also has three appendices: I. “C14 Dating of the Guicheng City-Site”; II. “Results of Flotation at the Guicheng City-Site”; III. “Animal Remains Discovered during the 2009 Test Excavations”.

Table of Contents:

绪论 李峰 梁中合 (1)

上编

第一章 自然地理环境和地域文化背景 梁中合 (29)

第二章 内城城墙的钻探 唐锦琼 韩辉 李峰 (62)

第三章 内城及城外建筑基址的钻探 韩辉 (102)

第四章 外城城墙的勘察 唐锦琼 (196)

第五章 内城的试掘 徐明江 (321)

第六章 归城全覆盖地面采样调查 李峰 贝丽姿 (478)

第七章 黄水河流域的区域考古调查 梁中合 (565)

第八章 归城考古中的地理配准及钻探数据管理 Jeremiah Trinidad-Christensen 侯昱文(Paul Nicholas Vogt) (641)

第九章 归城陶器的岩相学分析 James B.Stoltman (665)

第十章 构建边缘文化：归城陶器分析 李峰 (689)

下编

第一章 2002年归城内城北部和平村遗址的发掘 赵娟 孙兆锋 (749)

第二章 归城及周边区域青铜器的考古发现与研究综述 王富强 闫旭东 刁鹏 (789)

第三章 归城城址历年出土青铜器调查综述(1980—2010) 刘玉涛 马志敏 (823)

第四章 归城遗址历年发现青铜器出土经过的调查综述 蒋惠民 唐锦琼 (882)

第五章 归城考古的收获和胶东半岛青铜器时代的社会变迁 李峰 (920)

附录

附录一 山东龙口归城城址的碳十四测定 张雪莲 (987)

附录二 山东烟台龙口归城城址浮选结果 赵志军 (988)

附录三 山东龙口市归城城址2009年试掘出土动物遗存研究 李志鹏 任乐乐 TomA Stidham (1001)

Hidden and Visible Realms: Early Medieval Chinese Tales of the Supernatural and the Fantastic

Author: 
Liu Yiqing 劉義慶

Translator: 
Zhenjun Zhang

Publisher:
Columbia University Press

Publication Date:
May 2018

Abstract:

Chinese culture of the Six Dynasties period (220–589) saw a blossoming of stories of the fantastic. Zhiguai, “records of the strange” or “accounts of anomalies,” tell of encounters with otherness, in which inexplicable and uncanny phenomena interrupt mundane human affairs. They depict deities, ghosts, and monsters; heaven, the underworld, and the immortal lands; omens, metamorphoses, and trafficking between humans and supernatural beings; and legendary figures, strange creatures, and natural wonders in the human world.

Hidden and Visible Realms （幽明錄）, traditionally attributed to Liu Yiqing, is one of the most significant zhiguai collections, distinguished by its varied contents, elegant writing style, and fascinating stories. It is also among the earliest collections heavily influenced by Buddhist beliefs, values, and concerns. Beyond the traditional zhiguai narratives, it includes tales of karmic retribution, reincarnation, and Buddhist ghosts, hell, and magic. In this annotated first complete English translation, Zhenjun Zhang gives English-speaking readers a sense of the wealth and wonder of the zhiguai canon. Hidden and Visible Realms opens a window into the lives, customs, and religious beliefs and practices of early medieval China and the cultural history of Chinese Buddhism. In the introduction, Zhang explains the key themes and textual history of the work.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
Chapter 1. The Wonder of Love
Chapter 2. A Garden of Marvels
Chapter 3. The Spectacle of Monsters
Chapter 4. The Realm of Ghosts
Chapter 5. The Netherworld and This World
Chapter 6. Animals and Men
Chapter 7. Anecdotes of Notable Figures
Chapter 8. Local Legends
Appendix
Tales Appearing in Other Renditions
Works Cited
Index