[Dissertation] Cultural Encounters: Ethnic Complexity and Material Expression in Fifth-Century Pingcheng, China

Author:
ZHANG, Fan 張帆

School:
New York University

Defended:
2018

Abstract:

My dissertation focuses on art and material culture produced in the city of Pingcheng, the capital of the Northern Wei dynasty (386–535 CE) during the fifth century. A city of immigrants from diverse social, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, Pingcheng was an unusually fertile land for vigorous cultural exchanges. Through investigation into material remains, from both funerary and religious contexts, and textual sources, both transmitted and excavated, my research delineate multiple ethnicity, artistic innovation, and cross-cultural interactions of Pingcheng. I adopt an interdisciplinary approach that combines art history, archaeology, and history to examine how individuals articulate their identities in a multiethnic society via various visual and material forms. Built on top of a set comprehensive archaeological data, this project highlights three tombs for in-depth case studies, including funerary portraits that display identities of the deceased, innovative burial furniture that crosses ethnic boundaries and showcases Pingcheng’s syncretism, and exotic silverwares that exemplify the intensive cultural exchange between East and Central Asia.

My dissertation challenges the Sino-centric perspective and Han/non-Han binary division. By investigating artistic productions associated with individuals, I explore the mediating role art plays in the social network and the process of identity articulation. My research situates Northern Wei art in a trans-cultural context of Eurasia by tracking movements of objects and migration of people. My emphasis on material culture also expands the scope of art historical study by including less-studied genres and experimenting with a trans-medium approach to conceptualize funerary art.

The Emergence of Civilizational Consciousness in Early China: History Word by Word

Author:
Uffe Bergeton

Publisher:
Routledge

Publication date:
October 2018

Abstract:

This book provides a conceptual history of the emergence of civilizational consciousness in early China. Focusing on how words are used in pre-Qín (before 221 BCE) texts to construct identities and negotiate relationships between a 'civilised self' and 'uncivilised others', it provides a re-examination of the origins and development of these ideas.

By adopting a novel approach to determining when civilizational consciousness emerged in pre-Qín China, this book analyzes this question in ways that establish a fresh hermeneutical dialogue between Chinese and modern European understandings of 'civilization.' Whereas previous studies have used archaeological data to place its origin somewhere between 3000 BCE and 1000 BCE, this book explores changes in word meanings in texts from the pre-Qín period to reject this view. Instead, this book dates the emergence of civilizational consciousness in China to around 2,500 years ago. In the process, new chronologies of the coining of Old Chinese terms such as ‘customs,’ ‘barbarians,’ and ‘the Great ones,’ are proposed, which challenge anachronistic assumptions about these terms in earlier studies.

Examining important Chinese classics, such as the Analects, the Mencius and the Mozi, as well as key historical periods and figures in the context of the concept of ‘civilization,’ this book will useful to students and scholars of Chinese and Asian history.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

1. The Coining of Civilizational Consciousness in Modern Western Europe

2. From ‘Awe-Inspiringly Beautiful’ to ‘Morally Refined’— The Coining of ‘Civility’ in Pre-Qín China

3. Coiners and Critics of ‘Civility/Civilization’ (Wén)

4. Inventing the ‘Barbarian’: From ‘Belligerent Others’ to ‘Civilizationally Inferior Others’

5. Ethnographic Vocabulary of Civilizational Otherness: The ‘Elegant’ ‘Rites’ of the ‘Great Ones’ Versus the ‘Vulgar’ ‘Customs’ of the ‘Barbarians’

Conclusion

Imprints of Kinship: Studies of Recently Discovered Bronze Inscriptions from Ancient China

Editor:
Shaughnessy, Edward L.

Publisher:
Chinese University Press

Publication Date:
2017.3

Abstract:

Recent excavations of bronze artifacts from the Western Zhou dynasty (1046u771 B.C.) provide the focus for this collection of essays, which analyze the nature and patterns of lineages emerging from the tombs of ancient lords of states and historically significant individuals located throughout China, including Beijing, Shandong, Shanxi, and Gansu. The editor and his nine contributors provide detailed textual analyses of the inscriptions found on excavated bronze vessels. Their essays offer careful reconstructions of the genealogies, kinship structures, political identities, and relationship networks of leading court figures from Bronze-Age China. This rich scholarship makes important contributions to ancient Chinese archaeology by bringing to light archaeological evidence in support of new discoveries related to the chronology, warfare, and legal structure of the different realms that existed during the Western Zhou period.

Table of Contents:

Preface
Edward L. SHAUGHNESSY

The Language of the Bronze Inscriptions
Wolfgang BEHR

Shang Emblems in Their Archaeological Context
Olivier VENTURE

Inscribed Bronzes, Gift-giving and Social Networks 
in the Early Western Zhou: A Case Study of the Yan Cemetery at Liulihe
Yan SUN

The Tombs of the Rulers of Peng and Relationships between Zhou and Northern Non-Zhou Lineages (Until the Early Ninth Century B.C.)
Maria KHAYUTINA

Newest Sources of Western Zhou History: Inscribed Bronze Vessels, 2000–2010
Edward L. SHAUGHNESSY

On the Possibility That the Two Western Zhou States Yu and Rui Were Originally Located in the Jian River Valley
CH’EN Chao-jung

A Study of the Bronze Vessels and Sacrificial Remains of the Early Qin State from Lixian, Gansu
LI Feng

Genealogical Statements on Ritual Bronzes of the Spring and Autumn Period
Guolong LAI

Reflections on Literary and Devotional Aspects of Western Zhou Memorial Inscriptions
Robert ENO

Bibliography 287

Finding List of Bronze Vessels Cited 319

Index 331

Reconstructing Ancient Korean History: The Formation of Korean-ness in the Shadow of History

Author:
STELLA XU

Publication Date:
2016 May 

Publisher:
Rowman & Littlefield

Abstract:

This book examines the contested re-readings of “Korea” in early Chinese historical records and their influence on the formation of Korean-ness in later periods. The earliest written records on “Koreans” are found in Chinese documents produced during the Han dynasty, from the third century BCE to the third century CE. Since then, these early Chinese records have been used as primary sources for writing early Korean history in Korea, China, and Japan. 

This study analyzes the various reinterpretations and utilizations of these early records that became more diverse by the late nineteenth century, when the reconstruction of ancient history became a crucial part of the formation of Korean national consciousness. Korea’s modern historiography was complicated by a thirty-five year colonial experience (1910–1945) under Japan. During this period, Japanese colonial scholars attempted to depict Korean history as stagnant, heteronymous, and replete with factional strife, while Korean nationalist historians strove to construct an indigenous Korean nation in order to mobilize Koreans’ national consciousness and recover political sovereignty. 

While focused on Korea and Northeast Asia, the links between historiography and political ideology investigated in this study are pertinent to historians in general.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

Chapter 1: From Others to Barbarians: The Conceptualization and Evolution of Yi 夷

Chapter 2: Negotiating the Past, Reinterpreting Ancient History: Legitimacy in the Lineage of Ancient Korean History

Chapter 3: Ancient History Reinvented: Another Battleground for National Prestige and Political Legitimacy 

Chapter 4: From a Marxist Universal History to an Ultra-Nationalist Approach: Studies on Ancient History in North Korea

Chapter 5: In the Name of History: Laying Claim to the Historical Sovereignty of Manchuria (Northeast China)

Conclusion: Living with the Legacy of the Past

Ancient China and the Yue：Perceptions and Identities on the Southern Frontier, c.400 BCE–50 CE

Author: 
Erica Brindley

Publication Year:
2015

Publisher:
Cambridge Press

Abstract:
In this innovative study, Erica Brindley examines how, during the period 400 BCE–50 CE, an embryonic Chinese empire interacted with peoples referred to as the Yue/Viet along its southern frontier. Brindley provides an overview of current theories in archaeology and linguistics concerning the peoples of the ancient southern frontier of China, the closest relations on the mainland to certain later Southeast Asian and Polynesian peoples. Through analysis of warring states and early Han textual sources, she shows how representations of Chinese and Yue identity invariably fed upon, and often grew out of, a mutually defining process of centering the self while de-centering the other. Examining rebellions, pivotal ruling figures from various Yue states, and key moments of Yue agency, Brindley demonstrates the complexities involved in identity formation and cultural hybridization in the ancient world and the ancestry of cultures associated with southern China and Vietnam to the present day.

Table of Contents:

Part I. Orientations: Definitions and Disciplinary Discussions: Introduction: concepts and frameworks
1. Who were the Yue?
2. Linguistic research on the Yue/Viet
3. The archaeological record

Part II. Timelines, Maps, and Political Histories of the Yue State and Han-Period Yue Kingdoms, 500 BCE–110 BCE:
4. Political histories of the Yue state and Han-period Yue kingdoms, 500 BCE–110 BCE

Part III. Performing Hua-Xia, Inscribing Yue: Rhetoric, Rites, and Tags:
5. The rhetoric of cultural superiority and conceptualizations of ethnicity
6. Tropes of the savage: physical markers of Yue identity
7. Savage landscapes and magical objects

Part IV. Performing Yue: Political Drama, Intrigue, and Armed Resistance:
8. Yue identity as political masquerade and ritual modeling
9. Yue identity as armed resistance to the Han imperium

Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

[Dissertation] Mortuary Art in the Northern Zhou China (557–581 CE): Visualization of Class, Role, and Cultural Identity

Author:
Wu, Jui-Man

School:
University of Pittsburgh. 

Publication Year:
2010.

Primary Advisor: 
Katheryn M. Linduff.

Abstract:

The period of Six Dynasties (221-581CE) has traditionally been thought of as a time when "the Five Barbarians brought disorder to China." During this period, present-day Northern China was ruled by non-Han leaders, including the Xianbei, a pastoral people from China's northern frontier who founded the Northern Zhou Dynasty. In addition, Chinese historical texts from the Six Dynasties refer to "merchant barbarians" generally assumed to be Sogdians, who lived in oasis states in Central Asia in present-day Uzbekistan and came to China across the Silk Road. Most scholarship has assumed that the period of Northern Zhou ruled by non-Chinese leaders was "sinicized," and the adoption of Chinese features in burial and artifacts in foreigners' tombs is evidence of that acculturation process. 

This dissertation, however, uses newly excavated materials from tombs dated to the Northern Zhou period, including the tombs of Xianbei leaders, Xianbei and Chinese generals, and Sogdian merchants, and proposes that visual arts and mortuary ritual played a role in creating and/or maintaining multiple sociopolitical and cultural identities for these residents of Northern Zhou. The theorization of power, agency, and cultural identity in recent publications has helped me analyze the processes involved in the construction of individual identity, group boundaries, and the interrelationships between socio-cultural groups. Theories of agency have helped me focus on choices made by different social and occupational groups. 

This dissertation has explored how the patterns of use of mortuary objects documented multiple identities for these three classes listed above with specific ethnic backgrounds: the sovereigns who were Xianbei; the military class of Xianbei and Han-Chinese; and the merchant class of Sogdians. I have discussed how aspects of political, military, and merchant life in the Northern Zhou period created a setting that contributed to multiple roles and identities in each group. My study has demonstrated the construction of multiple identities among elites and how they consistently distinguished themselves from other members of society. This dissertation will be the first contextual analysis focused on the visualization of class, social roles and cultural affiliation by examining mortuary art in the Northern Zhou.