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

壁画墓からみた魏晋十六国時代：中国北部の社会と民族

Author: 三﨑 良章  (Yoshiaki Misaki)

Publisher: 早稻田大学出版部

Publication date: 2026-2-13

Abstract:
墳墓内の壁面等に画像を描いた壁画墓は、中国において前漢前期に築造が始まったものの、後漢末期以降は衰退していった。一方、魏晋十六国時代の間も周縁地域では築造が続いていた。本書ではとくに中国北部の壁画墓群に注目し、その図像の分析から映し出された政治・社会の動向を解き明かす。魏晋十六国時代、中国北部地方では漢族だけではなく、匈奴・羌族・盧水胡・鮮卑等さまざまな非漢族が居住していた。遼寧と河西、遼陽と朝陽など、地域ごとの特徴も検討し、漢族と非漢族をめぐる複雑な居住状況を明らかにする。揺れ動く社会は壁画墓にいかに刻まれたのか。図版多数掲載。

Table of Contents:

序　章
第１部　魏晋十六国時代の壁画墓の実態

第１章　遼陽と朝陽の壁画墓
はじめに
１　遼陽壁画墓
２　朝陽の壁画墓
おわりに

第２章　河西の壁画墓
はじめに
１　河西の壁画墓と壁画の全体像
２　河西の壁画墓の形態の特性
３　河西の壁画の墓主像の特徴
おわりに

第２部　壁画墓画像にみられる魏晋十六国時代の諸民族の動向

第３章　遼東公孫氏政権と非漢族
はじめに
１　公孫氏政権と非漢族との関係
２　遼陽壁画墓における非漢族
おわりに

第４章　朝陽の壁画墓と三燕の民族
はじめに
１　人物像
２　黒犬像
３　三燕における民族
おわりに

第５章　壁画墓画像にみえる魏晋時代酒泉地域の漢族と非漢族
はじめに
１　酒泉地域の壁画墓に描かれた非漢族
２　非漢族が描かれた壁画墓の墓主
３　壁画墓における非漢族の描かれ方
４　酒泉西溝墓群の壁画墓画像における非漢族
おわりに

第６章　魏晋十六国時代における甘粛高台地域の民族状況
はじめに
１　高台出土壁画墓の全体像
２　駱駝城遺址区の壁画墓にみえる人物像
３　地埂坡４号墓にみえる人物像と民族
４　高台の民族状況
おわりに

第３部　壁画墓に現れた魏晋十六国時代の中国北部社会

第７章　遼陽壁画墓にみられる遼東社会の一面
はじめに
１　遼陽における壁画墓の築造
２　遼東公孫氏政権と遼陽壁画墓
３　令支令墓
おわりに

第８章　河西壁画墓に描かれた魏晋十六国時代の「塢」
はじめに
１　河西の壁画墓画像にみられる「塢」の全体像
２　塢の形態と墳墓の関係
３　塢の規模と周囲の画像
４　塢の機能
おわりに

第９章　苦水口１号墓・苦水口２号墓と魏晋時代の高台社会
はじめに
１　苦水口１号墓とその画像
２　苦水口２号墓とその画像
３　苦水口１号墓と苦水口２号墓の関係
４　苦水口１号墓・苦水口２号墓の後室描画塼
おわりに

第10章　甘粛高台出土描画塼にみる五胡十六国時代河西社会の変動
はじめに
１　許三湾西南1999年４月墓とその描画塼
２　前秦の河西進出と河西社会
おわりに

第11章　酒泉小土山墓と魏晋十六国時代の河西
はじめに
１　小土山墓とその画像
２　小土山墓の墓主と築造時期
３　河西魏晋十六国時代壁画墓と小土山墓の関係
おわりに

終　章
補　編　遼陽壁画墓の構造・画像一覧

[Dissertation] Art of Changes: Material Imagination in Early China, c. Third to First Century BCE

Author:

Liu, Ziliang

Year: 

2022

School: 

Harvard University

Abstract:
This dissertation examines the efficacy of material and its impact on early imperial Chinese art. Focusing on a selection of important artworks in jade, bronze, glass, and mercury, I explore how the re-conceptualization of the materials in the Qin (221–206 BCE) and the Western Han (202 BCE–9 CE) profoundly shaped the design and the production of the innovative artworks in the period, while setting new expectations for the relationship between the object and the body. In particular, I highlight the great convergence of artisanal practices and the fangshu 方術 “technical arts” or “occult methods” in the context of court art production. I argue that this body of specialized knowledge played a vital role in the artisanal effort to evoke and harness the power of materials, either through a theoretical re-interpretation of the material’s physical qualities or through symbolic encryptions of the craft process. In doing so, I scrutinize art in early imperial China as a fundamentally intellectualized effort that at once discovered, imitated, and challenged the workings of nature, the process of the zaohua 造化 “Great Transformation.”
The first chapter examines the jade burial suit of Liu Sheng 劉勝, the King Jing of Zhongshan 中山靖王 (d. 113 BCE), which paradoxically mimics his naked body. In the context of the re-imagination of the hardstone as a fluid, ethereal matter capable of corporeal morphing, I uncover the deep ties between the suit’s peculiar design and important ideals in period medical theory, particularly the concept of the “jade body.” Focusing on an oversized bronze dressing mirror excavated in the tomb of Liu He 劉賀 (d. 59 BCE), the Marquis of Haihun 海昏侯, the second chapter demonstrates how methodological encryption of bronze metallurgy, from the selection of raw metals to the process of casting, transformed the alloy into a cosmic matter capable of summoning spirits and healing the body, while also developing a “human dimension” of the material. In light of new findings in conservation science and technical studies, the third chapter scrutinizes a group of translucent glass artifacts from the second century BCE to explore the connection between lead-barium glassmaking and early Chinese alchemy and pharmacology, which imbued glass with cosmic and macrobiotic potencies that in turn inspired the rise of glass vessels and a unique ancient color technology. Following the lead on alchemy, the fourth chapter reveals how a set of fire-gilt metalwork, in evoking the touch of mercury, visually enacted the evolution of the liquid metal toward solid, incorruptible gold in early Chinese imagination, a powerful allegory for corporeal immortalization that enchanted their royal patrons.

The four case studies offer insights into aspects of ancient Chinese culture unavailable through the study of texts alone, while sensitizing us to the materially-based, fangshu-driven artisanal practices and the body-centric modes of perception. In this way, this study aims to contribute to the broader discourses on the efficacy of material in the art of the ancient world, especially how materials mediated ideas — philosophical, religious, political — and in the case of early China presented in this study, the formless cosmic change itself.

The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China

Author:
Michelle H. Wang

Publication date:
November 23, 2023

Publisher:
University of Chicago Press

Abstract:
This is the first English-language monograph on the early history of maps in China, centering on those found in three tombs that date from the fourth to the second century BCE and constitute the entire known corpus of early Chinese maps (ditu). More than a millennium separates them from the next available map in the early twelfth century CE. Unlike extant studies that draw heavily from the history of cartography, this book offers an alternative perspective by mobilizing methods from art history, archaeology, material culture, religion, and philosophy. It examines the diversity of forms and functions in early Chinese ditu to argue that these pictures did not simply represent natural topography and built environments, but rather made and remade worlds for the living and the dead. Wang explores the multifaceted and multifunctional diagrammatic tradition of rendering space in early China.

Spatial Dunhuang: Experiencing the Mogao Caves

Author:
Wu Hung

Publication date: 

February, 2023

Publisher:

Seattle: University of Washington Press

Abtract:

Constructed over a millennium from the fourth to fourteenth centuries CE near Dunhuang, an ancient border town along the Silk Road in northwest China, the Mogao Caves comprise the largest, most continuously created, and best-preserved treasure trove of Buddhist art in the world. Previous overviews of the art of Dunhuang have traced the caves' unilinear history. This book examines the caves from the perspective of space, treating them as physical and historical sites that can be approached, entered, and understood sensually. It prioritizes the actual experiences of the people of the past who built and used the caves.

Five spatial contexts provide rich material for analysis: Dunhuang as a multicultural historic place; the Mogao Cave complex as an evolving entity; the interior space of caves; interaction of the visual program with architectural space; and pictorial space within wall paintings that draws viewers into an otherworldly time. With its novel approach to this repository of religious art, Spatial Dunhuang will be a must-read for anyone interested in Buddhist art and for visitors to Dunhuang.

[Dissertation] Cosmology, Fashion, and Good Fortune: Chinese Auspicious Ornament in the Han Dynasty (206 BC–AD 220)

Author:
Wang, Shengyu

School:
University of Oxford

Year: 

2020

Abstract: 
This thesis studies 'auspicious ornament' in the tombs of Han dynasty China. It offers a new reading of highly decorated tombs found near the two imperial capital cities, Chang'an (Western Han) and Luoyang (Eastern Han), and the elite tombs in central and eastern China. The thesis argues that a system of varied decorations, motifs, and materials developed in the Han dynasty as a means to convey good wishes and engender favourable outcomes, such as protection and well-being in the afterlife, immortality, and blessings for offspring. It interprets the significance, functions, relevant historical perspectives, and symbolic associations of ornament in China through an account of ornamentation on murals, carvings, jade, and gold objects in tombs, which are contextualised within the cosmological and philosophical background of the Han period. The transition to using more auspicious ornament in the Han period was related to the formation of correlative cosmology around the third century BC and Confucian rationalisation in the Western Han court, as well as other factors, including increasing concerns about an ideal afterlife. This is demonstrated through a critical analysis of pre-Han and Han dynasty historical sources to highlight the ideological development, and a contextual archaeological approach to the development of burial forms, materials and structures. On this basis, the three main analytical chapters discuss ornament on murals, carvings, jade, and gold objects in Han tombs, all of which exhibit changes in their motifs and uses. The discussion compares relevant pre-Han discoveries to establish these changes and to reveal the potential origins of the auspicious ornament. The analysis also incorporates local and foreign traits in the material assemblage suggested to have been adapted by Han dynasty people as popular practices through communications both within the Empire and its border regions populated by outsiders. In addition, this thesis presents a theoretical interpretation of the material agency of objects to understand how ornament acted upon people, i.e. bringing auspiciousness. Overall, the thesis explores the Han repertoire of ornamental motifs which may have provided the basis for the development of the prominent concept of auspiciousness throughout Chinese art and culture.

Kingly Splendor: Court Art and Materiality in Han China

Author:

Allison R. Miller

Publication date:

November 6, 2020

Publisher:

Columbia University Press

Abstract:

The Western Han dynasty (202 BCE–9 CE) was a foundational period for the artistic culture of ancient China, a fact particularly visible in the era’s funerary art. Iconic forms of Chinese art such as dazzling suits of jade; cavernous, rock-cut mountain tombs; fancifully ornate wall paintings; and armies of miniature terracotta warriors were prepared for the tombs of the elite during this period. Many of the finest objects of the Western Han have been excavated from the tombs of kings, who administered local provinces on behalf of the emperors.

Allison R. Miller paints a new picture of elite art production by revealing the contributions of the kings to Western Han artistic culture. She demonstrates that the kings were not mere imitators of the imperial court but rather innovators, employing local materials and workshops and experimenting with new techniques to challenge the artistic hegemony of the imperial house. Tombs and funerary art, Miller contends, functioned as an important vehicle of political expression as kings strove to persuade the population and other elites of their legitimacy. Through case studies of five genres of royal art, Miller argues that the political structure of the early Western Han, with the emperor as one ruler among peers, benefited artistic production and innovation. Kingly Splendor brings together close readings of funerary art and architecture with nuanced analyses of political and institutional dynamics to provide an interdisciplinary revisionist history of the early Western Han.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

1. The Kings and the Court in the Early Western Han

2. From Imitation to Innovation: The Emperor’s Baling Tomb and the Mountain Tombs of the Western Han Kings

3. New Styles from Political Change: The Early Han Kings and the Reimagining of Terracotta Armies

4. The Many Meanings of Jade: Jade Suits and Local Identity in the Early Han

5. The Murals at Shiyuan and the King of Liang

6. The Purple Textiles of Qi: Tracing the Growth of a Provincial Industry

Conclusion

奈良文化財研究所学報第98冊「東アジア考古学論叢Ⅱ－遼西地域の東晋十六国期都城文化の研究－」

Table of Contents:

辽宁北票市大板营子墓地的勘探与发掘（续）
魅力与收获：三燕文化研究新进展略议─以北票境内的相关考古发现为例
浅谈辽西地区前燕、后燕政权中的外族居民
龙城新考
三燕龙城宫城南门遗址及其建筑特点
朝阳北塔在东亚佛寺布局演变序列中的地位
初期慕容鮮卑の墓制と親族構造に関する予察─北票大板営子墓地の検討から─
北票大板营子墓地出土陶器研究
三燕文化界格图案瓦当源流考
三燕、高句丽莲花纹瓦当的出现及其关系
金嶺寺遺跡出土瓦の研究
三燕の金工品と倭の金工品
漢～唐代の遺跡で出土した指輪とその出現背景
喇嘛洞墓地出土铜人面饰的再考察
辽宁北票市喇嘛洞墓地IM17铁甲堆积的室内清理
喇嘛洞铁器整理随笔四则
彫金技術を資料化するMacro撮影

Download here:
https://repository.nabunken.go.jp/dspace/handle/11177/7813

Early Medieval China 26 《中國中古研究》第 26 期 (2020)

Table of Contents:

Editors’ Note
J. Michael Farmer 1

Thinking Regionally in Early Medieval Studies: A Manifesto
Andrew Chittick 3

Fashion and Historical Imagination: The Case of Sun Shou’s “Bewitching and Strange Appearances”
Rebecca Doran 19

A Taste of Honey: Early Medieval Chinese Writings about Sweeteners
Olivia Milburn 43

Literary Responses to Religious Debates at the Northern Zhou Court
Yiyi Luo 67

A Selective Bibliography of Mainland Chinese Books (2011–2019) on Early Medieval Chinese Literature
Yue Zhang 88

Book Reviews

Joy Lidu Yi, Yungang: Art, History, Archaeology, Liturgy
Scott Pearce 110

Andrew Chittick, The Jiankang Empire in Chinese and World History
Scott Pearce 114

(via Mike Farmer)

Longmen's Stone Buddhas and Cultural Heritage: When Antiquity Met Modernity in China

Author:
Dong Wang 王棟

Publisher:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Publication date:
June 2020

Abstract:
This thoroughly researched book provides the first comprehensive history of how a UNESCO World Heritage site on the Central China Plain, Longmen’s caves and the Buddhist statuary of Luoyang, was rediscovered in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Drawing on original research and archival sources in Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, and Swedish, as well as extensive fieldwork, Dong Wang traces the ties between cultural heritage and modernity, detailing how this historical monument has been understood from antiquity to the present. She highlights the manifold traffic and expanded contact between China and other countries as these nations were reorienting themselves in order to adapt their own cultural traditions to newly industrialized and industrializing societies. Unknown to much of the world, Longmen and its mesmerizing modern history takes readers to the heartland of China, known as “Chinese Babylon” a century ago. With remarkable depth and breadth, this book unravels both a bygone and a continuing human pursuit of artefacts—shared, spiritual, modern, and above all beautiful that have linked so many lives, Chinese and foreign.

Table of Contents:

How Longmen Was Remembered, Not Remembered and Misremembered as an Ancient Site in Premodern China

Shaping Chinese Modern Identity: Antiquities in Public Opinion at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Voices of Silence: European Discovery of Longmen

"An Influence of the Souls of These Stone Saints": Early American and Japanese Recognition, between Universalism and Nationalism

Longmen and Osvald Sirén (1879-1966)

Blighted Beauty: Cultural Heritage Law in Early-Twentieth-Century China

UNESCO's Longmen and Chinese Urbanization: Better City, Better Life?

仏像の着衣と僧衣の研究

Author: 
吉村怜 (Yoshimura, Rei )

Publisher:
法藏館

Publication date:
May 2019

Abstract:
彫像の背縫い線の歪みや衣端の揲の表現も見逃さない徹底した作品観察と律蔵文献をはじめとする膨大な史料を駆使し、古代の仏像彫刻が纏っている衣の呼称や実態、さらには現代の僧侶が着用している衣との関係を解明する。

Table of Contents:

序（肥田路美）
自序（吉村怜）
第一部　仏像の着衣と僧衣
第一章　古代仏像の着衣と名称―僧祇支と偏衫について―
第二章　古代比丘像の着衣と名称―僧祇支・偏袒・偏衫・直?について―
第三章　中国仏像の着衣の基本―袈裟・裙・僧祇支・偏袒について―
第四章　仏・菩薩像の衣服と名称
第五章　鑑真和上像の着衣、唐式偏衫について―竹下繭子氏の批判に答えて―
第六章　青州龍興寺址出土・北斉のインド風仏像の起源
第二部　個別研究
第七章　東大寺大仏の仏身論―蓮華蔵荘厳世界海の構造―
第八章　東大寺大仏・梵網教主説批判
第九章　雲岡・曇曜五窟の大仏
第十章　龍門古陽洞仏龕にみられる荘厳意匠の意義
第十一章　行像考
第十二章　中国奇岩怪石趣味の起源―霊璧石と太湖石について―

Modeling Peace: Royal Tombs and Political Ideology in Early China

Author:
Jie Shi

Publisher:
Columbia University Press

Publication date:
March, 2020

Abstract:
Among hundreds of thousands of ancient graves and tombs excavated to date in China, the Mancheng site stands out for its unparalleled complexity and richness. It features two juxtaposed burials, of the first king and queen of the Zhongshan kingdom (dated late second century BCE). The male tomb occupant, King Liu Sheng (d. 113 BCE), was sent by his father, Emperor Jing (r. 157–141 BCE), to rule the Zhongshan kingdom near the northern frontier of the Western Han empire, neighboring the nomadic Xiongnu confederation. Modeling Peace interprets Western Han royal burial as a political ideology by closely reading the architecture and funerary content of this site and situating it in the historical context of imperialization in Western Han China. Through a study of both the archaeological materials and related received and excavated texts, Jie Shi demonstrates that the Mancheng site was planned and designed as a unity of religious, gender, and intercultural concerns. The site was built under the supervision of the future royal tomb occupants, who used these burials to assert their political ideology based on Huang-Lao and Confucian thought: a good ruler is one who pacifies himself, his family, and his country. This book is the first scholarly monograph on an undisturbed and fully excavated early Chinese royal burial site.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
Part I
1. The Embrace of Body and Soul
2. The Union of Husband and Wife
3. Integration of Ethnic Han and Non-Han
Part II
4. The Public King
5. The King of Peace
6. The King Under the Gaze
Conclusion

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

Metalworking in Bronze Age China: The Lost-Wax Process

Author:
Peng Peng 彭鵬

Publication date:
2019

Publisher:
Cambria Press

Abstract:
Metalworking in Bronze Age China is the first study that adopts a comprehensive, thorough, and interdisciplinary approach toward early Chinese lost-wax castings. It shows that the dominant belief that the lost-wax process as the optimal method for casting bronzes deserves more rigorous examination. In a broader sense, the book provides a study on the “norms,” which are seldom questioned. By examining the reasons why Chinese founders often chose not to use the lost-wax process they had clearly mastered, the book refutes the idea that lost-wax technology is the only “right way” to cast bronzes. This study demonstrates that a “norm” is in many ways an illusion that twists our comprehension of art, technology, civilization, and history.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
Chapter 1. What Is Lost-wax Casting?
Chapter 2. Metalworking in Bronze Age China
Chapter 3. Was Lost-wax Casting Used in Bronze Age China?
Chapter 4. Further Confirmed Lost-wax Castings I: The Xiasi Jin
Chapter 5. Further Confirmed Lost-wax Castings II: Certain “Diatrete” Vessels and Mirrors
Chapter 6. Further Confirmed Lost-wax Castings III: Objects with “Interpenetrating” Openwork Appendages
Chapter 7. Design as the Driving Force
Chapter 8. The Origin of the Lost-wax Technique in Bronze Age China
Chapter 9. Coda: Additional Issues and Comments

The Tang Shipwreck: Art and Exchange in the 9th Century

Editors:
Alan Chong and Stephen A. Murphy

Publication date:
December 2019

Publisher:
Singapore : Asian Civilisations Museum

Abstract:
This book tells the story of the Tang Shipwreck, discovered off Belitung Island in Indonesia in 1998, and now housed at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore. It is one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of recent times. Found at the site was a remarkable cargo of some 60,000 Chinese ceramics dating from the Tang dynasty (618-907), along with finely wrought gold and silver objects, bronze mirrors, and more ordinary objects belonging to the crew. Just as remarkable were the remnants of the ship itself, which consisted of wooden planks sewn together with rope. This construction technique clearly indicated that the vessel had been built in the Persian Gulf or western reaches of the Indian Ocean, and had sailed all the way from the Middle East to China, and was on its way home when it ran aground in the Java Sea. The ten essays in this profusely illustrated volume discuss the ceramics and other commodities on board, the ship's construction and possible origin, China's maritime trade in the Tang period, Chinese ceramic production, ports of call in Asia and Southeast Asia, and life on board the ship.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
Alan Chong

Asia in the ninth century: The context of the Tang Shipwreck
Stephen A. Murphy

The origin of the Tang Shipwreck: A look at its archaeology and history
Michael Flecker

A Middle Eastern ship in Southeast Asia

Ceramics from Changsha: A world commodity
Kan Shuyi

The kilns of Changsha

Green, white, and blue-andwhite stonewares: A precious ceramic cargo
Regina Krahl

As green as jade: Celadons

As white as snow: White ceramics

Green-splashed ceramics for the Middle East

The art of tea

The Tang Shipwreck and the nature of China’s maritime trade during the late Tang period
Derek Heng

Hollow and useless luxuries: The Tang Shipwreck and the emerging role of Arab traders in the late first millennium Indian Ocean
John Guy

Middle Eastern taste: Lozenges and flowers

Gold and silver on the Tang Shipwreck
Qi Dongfang

Gold and silver luxuries

Metal objects on the Tang Shipwreck
François Louis

Mirrors

Sinbad, shipwrecks, and Singapore
John N. Miksic

Ports of call in ninth-century Southeast Asia: The route of the Tang Shipwreck
Stephen A. Murphy

Life on board

Chinese on board

Middle Easterners on board

Southeast Asian sailors

Gambling at sea

Storage jars

磚画・壁画からみた魏晋時代の河西

Editors:
關尾史郎 (Sekio Shiro)、
町田隆吉 (Machida, Takayoshi)

Publication date:
September 2019

Publisher:
汲古書院

Table of Contents:

はしがき/關尾史郎

第一部　総　論

河西各地の魏晋墓出土画像磚について――出土資料の問題点と今後の展望――/北村　永

河西磚画墓とその時代――新城墓群を中心として――/關尾史郎

敦煌祁家湾古墓出土「五胡十六国」時代の磚画をめぐって――敦煌地区における来世観とその周辺――/町田隆吉

魏晋時代河西の壁画墓と壁画の一面――遼陽との比較を通して――/三﨑良章

第二部　各　論

河西出土文物から見た朝服制度の受容と変容――魏晋・五胡期、胡漢混淆地帯における礼制伝播のあり方――/小林　聡

魏晋時代の河西にみられる楽器――琵琶系楽器・琴瑟系楽器・洞簫系楽器を中心に――/荻　美津夫

画像資料に見る魏晋時代の武器――河西地域を中心として――/内田宏美

甘粛省河西地方出土の犂耕関係画像一覧（稿）/渡部　武

引用文献目録

あとがき（町田隆吉）

Refiguring East Asian Religious Art: Buddhist Devotion and Funerary Practice

Editors:
Wu Hung & Paul Copp

Publication date:
2019

Publisher:
Chicago : Art Media Resources : The Center for the Art of East Asia, University of Chicago

Abstract:

Within the realm of Buddhist art, death is often portrayed not as the end but instead as a new beginning. Examining how pre-modern East Asians related to death as a broad concept is often just as impactful in the study of their culture and artwork as is the study of how they lived from day to day. This volume of twelve chapters is divided into four sections titled "Death of the Buddha and Buddhist Icons," "Kinship and Commemoration," "Filial Piety and Politics," and "Constructing Ritual Space." These chapters explore the powerful transformations that took place within ancient Buddhist societies when the life an individual came to an end and took on new life in unique forms of religious art and architecture. Dealing with concrete historical examples, these essays not only delve deep into the tightly woven interpersonal relationships, loyalties, and intense devotion that led to the creation of these religious and societal practices, they also challenge both the modern scholar and general reader to see with fresh eyes and refigure how we experience, conceptualize, and understand East Asian religious art.

Table of Contents:

Death of the Buddha and Buddhist icons

Strike a chord: the principle of resonance in early East Asian Buddhist reliquaries / Akiko Walley

"King Aśoka" reliquaries and stupa burials in medieval China / Katherine Tsiang 

Broken bodies: the death of Buddhist icons and their changing ontology tenth- through twelfth-century China / Wei-Cheng Lin

Kinship and commemoration

Kinship and the commemoration of the dead in medieval Chinese Buddhist monuments / Kate Lingley

Ancestors, politicians, and patrons: portraits of the dead in nights- and tenth-century Dunhuang Mogao Caves / Madeleine Boucher

Tomb and cave: reconstructing the commemorative space of the death of Cao Yijin / Liu Cong

Filial piety and politics

Rethinking patronage and filial piety at Sŏkkuram and Pulguksa in Kyŏngju, Korea / Sun-ah Choi

Pagodas for the deceased: the intersectionn of Buddhism and funerary art in unified Silla / Youn-mi Kim

Female bodily sacrifice and the absence of men: representing filial offspring in Song, Jin, and Liao tombs / Winston Kyan

Constructing ritual space 

A landscape fit for the great Buddhas: on cliff tombs and Buddhist cave temples in Leshan / Sonya S. Lee

Hall of the underground palace of the Tianfeng Pagoda: changing form, function, and meaning of reliquary space in southern Song China / Seunghye Lee

"How grand are the uses of texts!": visions of paperwork in the water-land retreat / Philip E. Bloom

The Cambridge History of China Volume 2: The Six Dynasties, 220–589

Editors:
Albert E. Dien & Keith N. Knapp

Publisher:

Cambridge University Press

Publication date:

2019

Abstract:

The Six Dynasties Period (220–589 CE) is one of the most complex in Chinese history. Written by leading scholars from across the globe, the essays in this volume cover nearly every aspect of the period, including politics, foreign relations, warfare, agriculture, gender, art, philosophy, material culture, local society, and music. While acknowledging the era's political chaos, these essays indicate that this was a transformative period when Chinese culture was significantly changed and enriched by foreign peoples and ideas. It was also a time when history and literature became recognized as independent subjects and religion was transformed by the domestication of Buddhism and the formation of organized Daoism. Many of the trends that shaped the rest of imperial China's history have their origins in this era, such as the commercial vibrancy of southern China, the separation of history and literature from classical studies, and the growing importance of women in politics and religion.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
Part I. History:
1. Wei   Rafe de Crespigny
2. Wu   Rafe de Crespigny
3. Shu-Han   J. Michael Farmer
4. Western Jin   Damien Chaussende
5. Eastern Jin   Charles Holcombe
6. The Sixteen Kingdoms   Charles Holcombe
7. Cheng-Han State   Terry F. Kleeman
8. Northern Wei   Scott Pearce
9. Eastern Wei-Northern Qi   Albert E. Dien
10. Western Wei-Northern Zhou   Albert E. Dien
11. The Southern dynasties   Andrew Chittick

Part II. Society and Realia:
12. The art of war  David A. Graff
13. Foreign relations  Charles Holcombe
14. The Northern economy  Victor Cunrui Xiong
15. The Southern economy  Liu Shufen 劉淑芬
16. Agriculture  Francesca Bray
17. The history of Sogdians in China  Rong Xinjiang 榮新江
18. Northern material culture  Shing Müller
19. Southern material culture   Annette Kieser
20. Women, families, and gendered society  Jen-der Lee 李貞德
21. Local society Hou Xudong 侯旭東

Part III. Culture, Religion and Art:
22. Confucian learning and influence   Keith N. Knapp
23. Qingtan and Xuanxue   Y. K. Lo
24. Buddhism   John Kieschnick
25. Daoism   Stephen R. Bokenkamp
26. Popular religion   Robert Ford Campany
27. The world of prose literature   Antje Richter
28. The world of poetry   Cynthia Chennault
29. Art and visual culture   Wu Hung 巫鴻
30. Music   Bo Lawergren

Workshop on Migration and Border-crossing in Early Medieval China

Co-organizers: 

Wen-Yi Huang & Xiaofei Tian

Date:

May 23, 2019

Location: 

The Common Room, 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA

Harvard University

Program

9:30-9:40         Opening Remarks

Panel I. Going South

9:40-10:40

Evan Nicoll-Johnson (University of Alberta), “Guo Pu (276-324) the Wanderer: Magic and Migration in the Jin Dynasty”

Lu Kou (Williams College), “Detainees and Letters to Request Release in Early Medieval China”

Panel II. The Mobility of Texts and Images

10:40-11:40

Keith N. Knapp (The Citadel), “Cultural Baggage: The Transmission and Spread of Accounts of Filial Offspring during the Northern and Southern Dynasties”

Fan Zhang (NYU-Shanghai), “Between Hexi and Pingcheng: Migration of Image, Style, and People”

11:40-1:00        Lunch [Workshop Participants Only]

Panel III. Looking Back and Around

1:00-2:00

Jack W. Chen (University of Virginia), “Looking Back across the River: Nostalgia as Migrancy in the Shishuo xinyu”

Xiaofei Tian (Harvard University), “The Worlds on the Edge between Darkness and Light: Fifth-century ‘Supernatural’ Stories of a Migrant Community”

Panel IV. Rootedness, Relocation, and Identity

2:00-3:00

Andrew Chittick (Eckerd College), “Borderlands and Migration to North and South: A Study of the Qing-Qi Region in the Fifth Century CE”

Wen-Yi Huang (Harvard University), “How to Name People on the Move: A Case Study of the Northern Wei”

3:00-3:15         Coffee Break

Panel V. Moving Monks and Merchants

3:15-4:15

James Robson (Harvard University), “Monks, Movement, and Migration: A Preliminary Assessment of the Large-Scale Movement of Buddhist Monks in Early Medieval China”

Jin Xu (Vassar College), “Following in the Footsteps of Siddhartha: Shi Jun Sarcophagus and the Picturing of an Allegorical Biography”

4:15-4:45         General Discussion and Concluding Remarks

6:30                 Dinner for Workshop Participants

＊For more details, please visit our website:

https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/2019emcmigration/home-0

Early Chinese Jades in the Harvard Art Museums

Author:
Jenny F. So

Publication date:
February 2019

Publisher:
Published by Harvard Art Museums
Distributed by Yale University Press

Abstract:
Jade has long played a major role in Chinese social, cultural, and political life. From personal ornamentation to funerary practice, from palace decoration to private devotion, this exquisite material has been revered by commoners and rulers alike. This book charts that vast story, beginning with an in-depth exploration of the stone itself—its unique material qualities and the challenges they raise for workmanship—and then moving chronologically to reveal exactly how jade developed its special moral, ritual, and political significance over millennia in China. The book draws particular attention to the peoples and the communities who quarried and worked the material, passing on their knowledge in a tradition that now spans Neolithic times to the present day.

This sweeping narrative is told in part through high-quality examples selected from Harvard’s Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, which includes some of the finest examples of ancient or archaizing jades outside China. The volume highlights around one hundred of these jades, carefully chosen for the ways in which they help advance the broader historical narrative the book provides. Interwoven through the book’s main chapters, the Winthrop objects are further explored through engaging catalogue entries that detail the latest available information based on conservation analysis and archaeological finds.