Department of Archaeology

Questions of identity are of paramount importance in research of the Western Zhou period, both in the central plain and among its vassal states. Yet most research done to date has focused on the Zhou bureaucratic order and government. These analyses have been very successful in delineating political culture, administration, and kinship ties, and have provided important information on elite taste and customs. However, they have paid less attention to uncovering other social groupings and relations, and do not systematically address the ways in which local identities were exercised or displayed. This article presents a multivariate statistical analysis of the Liulihe cemetery of the Western Zhou state of Yan. This analysis uncovers new elements comprising the complex social makeup and identity of the Liulihe occupants. These findings provide a richer understanding of the Yan society compared with the traditional approach that centered on the delineation of Zhou political elements and ethnic characteristics. A more intricate society emerges, one not solely defined by the amount of Zhou style it exhibited.

This paper challenges the recurring theme in archaeological research that places religions at the core of social identity, and investigates the theoretical literature that has influenced how archaeologists understand the study of religion, and has subsequently reinforced this idea. It surveys the changing religious attitudes and ritual practices in ancient China during the first millennium BC to demonstrate their surprising instability. A model is presented where ritual is an ever-changing source of ideological tensions and religion is but one facet of social identity, not its basis. Consequently, religion is seen as naturally susceptible to both rapid and slow changes, driven by both inner social processes and external stimuli.

In this chapter I employ globalization theory to provide a more nuanced approach to the  study of the Western Zhou expansion. I begin by discussing the Zhou bronze rituals vessels ‒ the single most important artifact of study for the Western Zhou period. These artifacts are often closely linked with Zhou domination and when found outside of the central Zhou territories, are believed by most scholars to reflect Zhou colonization and evidence for the acculturation of local
peoples. The state of Yan 燕 ‒ an important polity established by the Zhou only a few decades after the Shang were conquered ‒ provides a case study for this new perspective on Western Zhou expansion. The bronzes found in the realm attributed to the Yan polity, are shown to have been locally used in a variety of ways that exemplify a continued incorporation of Zhou material culture into indigenous communities, rather than reflecting the expansion of the Zhou power and the subsequent assimilation of local peoples into their political order.
More than just a unique period of colonization, this paper finds the Western Zhou influence to represent an increased stage of interaction and connectivity within the larger process of globalization of this region.

Dramatic technological changes occurred in China during the period from the third to the second millennium BC.  These include developments in specialized pyrotechnology, including metallurgy, and also significant changes in subsistence technologies with the introduction into China of new species of plants and animals.  The region of Gansu Province, in northwest China, played an important role in the processes by which some of these technologies spread, stimulating developing social complexity.  This paper outlines the background to these transformations and considers whether it is appropriate to consider these changes as constituting globalizing processes, as some have done.  If we consider these developments part of an early globalization, what else is implied? How did different groups of agents contribute to these processes? In this paper, we outline the background to potentially “globalizing” transformations in the Gansu region and consider whether it is appropriate to consider these changes as constituting an example of globalization, as some have done. 

We begin by providing an in-depth discussion of globalization theories and the way they are understood by contemporary scholars. We discuss some studies that have oversimplified globalization as well as those who have embraced the real potential of the concept, which we argue lies in the consideration of  technologies that create novel networks of connectivity in a new global reality

We suggest that current data do not support the use of the concept of globalization to describe and understand the increasing long-distance interactions in northwest China during this era, but nevertheless, certain specific globalizing processes do seem to have taken place, particularly those related to technological transfer. Among these processes, interactions among groups engaging in different subsistence practices were integral to the transformations, and it is suggested that generally, economic heterogeneity is a critical aspect of the way that globalizing processes develop and transform regional social networks.

This is the Chinese translation for our 2014 paper published in JAR : The Earliest States in China: A Long-term Trajectory Approach.
The paper was presented at the the 'International Symposium on Theories and Methods for Studies on Origin of States', Shanghai  November 2015, and was translated by the organizers 

中国最早的国家形式的社会及其起源、发展和组成一直以来都是研究的热点所在，而最近中外考古学界对于这个课题的关注也再度升级。研究主要是为了将公元前两千年留下的二里头遗址确定为中国最早国家的中心，也就是我们常说的夏朝。近期，为了给传统历史叙事提供客观的标准，几位学者采用了新进化理论的准则来证明二里头社会就是中国最早的国家。关于文明的演变，笼统的社会学和生态学的模型被人类考古学家们广泛批评，许多研究古代社会发展的考古学家更倾向于研究个体案例或者是具体的制度，而非国家。与最近考古学界号召彻底废除这一模型的呼声相反，我们认为―国家‖对于理解当地的发展轨迹和跨文化比较来说是一个非常有用的概念。这篇文章中，我们提出一种新的办法，既吸收了对于笼统模型过度简单化的批评，又保留了把突发的社会政治变革和国家形成相联系的观念。基于长期轨迹的分析，我们证明了在中国北方存在两阶段的快速变革：一是起于公元前2500年，此时几个不稳定的地区国家2产生又消亡了；二是公元前1600 年左右，此时一个统一的区域内的国家迅速发展，也就是史料记载的商朝。