Download or read book Art and Archaeology of the Erligang Civilization written by Kyle Steinke and published by Publications of the Tang Cente. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Erligang bronzes and the discovery of the Erligang culture / Robert Bagley -- Erligang : a perspective from Panlongcheng / Zhang Changping -- China's first empire? : interpreting the material record of the Erligang expansion / Wang Haicheng -- Civilizations and empires : a perspective on Erligang from early Egypt / John Baines -- Erligang : a tale of two "civilizations" / Roderick Campbell -- The politics of maps, pottery, and archaeology : hidden assumptions in Chinese Bronze Age archaeology / Yung-ti Li -- Erligang and the southern bronze industries / Kyle Steinke -- Erligang contacts south of the Yangzi River : the expansion of interaction networks in early Bronze Age Hunan / Robin McNeal -- Bronzes and the history of Chinese art / Maggie Bickford.
Download or read book China in the Early Bronze Age written by Robert L. Thorp and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-03-25 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the great breakthroughs in Chinese studies in the early twentieth century was the archaeological identification of the earliest, fully historical dynasty of kings, the Shang (ca. 1300-1050 B.C.E.). The last fifty years have seen major advances in all areas of Chinese archaeology, but recent studies of the Shang, their ancestors, and their contemporaries have been especially rich. Since the last English-language overview of Shang civilization appeared in 1980, the pace of discovery has quickened. China in the Early Bronze Age: Shang Civilization is the first work in twenty-five years to synthesize current knowledge of the Shang for everyone interested in the origins of Chinese civilization. China in the Early Bronze Age traces the development of early Bronze Age cultures in North and Northwestern China from about 2000 B.C.E., including the Erlitou culture (often identified with the Xia) and the Erligang culture. Robert L. Thorp introduces major sites, their architectural remains, burials, and material culture, with special attention to jades and bronze. He reviews the many discoveries near Anyang, site of two capitals of the Shang kings. In addition to the topography of these sites, Thorp discusses elite crafts and devotes a chapter to the Shang cult, its divination practices, and its rituals. The volume concludes with a survey of the late Shang world, cultures contemporary with Anyang during the late second millennium B.C.E. Fully documented with references to Chinese archaeological sources and illustrated with more than one hundred line drawings, China in the Early Bronze Age also includes informative sidebars on related topics and suggested readings. Students of the history and archaeology of early civilizations will find China in the Early Bronze Age the most up-to-date and wide-ranging introduction to its topic now in print. Scholars in Chinese studies will use this work as a handbook and research guide. This volume makes fascinating reading for anyone interested in the formative stages of Chinese culture.
Download or read book The Imperial Network in Ancient China written by Maxim Korolkov and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-18 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the emergence of imperial state in East Asia during the period ca. 400 BCE–200 CE as a network-based process, showing how the geography of early interregional contacts south of the Yangzi River informed the directions of Sinitic state expansion. Drawing from an extensive collection of sources including transmitted textual records, archaeological evidence, excavated legal manuscripts, and archival documents from Liye, this book demonstrates the breadth of human and material resources available to the empire builders of an early imperial network throughout southern East Asia – from institutions and infrastructures, to the relationships that facilitated circulation. This network is shown to have been essential to the consolidation of Sinitic imperial rule in the sub-tropical zone south of the Yangzi against formidable environmental, epidemiological, and logistical odds. This is also the first study to explore how the interplay between an imperial network and alternative frameworks of long-distance interaction in ancient East Asia shaped the political-economic trajectory of the Sinitic world and its involvement in Eurasian globalization. Contributing to debates around imperial state formation, the applicability of world-system models and the comparative study of empires, The Imperial Network in Ancient China will be of significant interest to students and scholars of East Asian studies, archaeology and history.
Download or read book Violence Kinship and the Early Chinese State written by Roderick Campbell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-03 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The violence of war and sacrifice were not the antithesis of civilization at Shang Anyang, but rather its foundation.
Download or read book 7000 Years of Chinese Civilization written by Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Early China written by Li Feng and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-30 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical new interpretation of the early history of Chinese civilization based on the most recent scholarship and archaeological discoveries.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Ancient China written by Michael Loewe and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-03-13 with total page 1192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge History of Ancient China provides a survey of the institutional and cultural history of pre-imperial China.
Download or read book Archaeology of the Chinese Bronze Age written by Roderick B. Campbell and published by Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. This book was released on 2014-12-31 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeology of the Chinese Bronze Age is a synthesis of recent Chinese archaeological work on the second millennium BCE--the period associated with China's first dynasties and East Asia's first "states." With a focus on early China's great metropolitan centers in the Central Plains and their hinterlands, this work attempts to contextualize them within their wider zones of interaction from the Yangtze to the edge of the Mongolian steppe, and from the Yellow Sea to the Tibetan plateau and the Gansu corridor. Analyzing the complexity of early Chinese culture history, and the variety and development of its urban formations, Roderick Campbell explores East Asia's divergent developmental paths and re-examines its deep past to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of China's Early Bronze Age.
Download or read book Writing and the Ancient State written by Haicheng Wang and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-12 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing and the Ancient State explores the early development of writing and its relationship to the growth of political structures. The first part of the book focuses on the contribution of writing to the state's legitimating project. The second part deals with the state's use of writing in administration, analyzing both textual and archaeological evidence to reconstruct how the state used bookkeeping to allocate land, police its people, and extract taxes from them. The third part focuses on education, the state's system for replenishing its staff of scribe-officials. The first half of each part surveys evidence from Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Maya lowlands, Central Mexico, and the Andes; against this background the second half examines the evidence from China. The chief aim of this book is to shed new light on early China (from the second millennium BC through the end of the Han period, ca. 220 AD) while bringing to bear the lens of cross-cultural analysis on each of the civilizations under discussion.
Download or read book The Formation of Chinese Civilization written by Kwang-chih Chang and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paleolithic sites from one million years ago, Neolithic sites with extraordinary jade and ceramic artifacts, excavated tombs and palaces of the Shang and Zhou dynasties--all these are part of the archaeological riches of China. This magnificent book surveys China's archaeological remains and in the process rewrites the early history of the world's most enduring civilization. Eminent scholars from China and America show how archaeological evidence establishes that Chinese culture did not spread from a single central area, as was long assumed, but emerged out of geographically diverse, interacting Neolithic cultures. Taking us to the great archaeological finds of the past hundred years--tombs, temples, palaces, cities--they shed new light on many aspects of Chinese life. With a wealth of fascinating detail and hundreds of reproductions of archaeological discoveries, including very recent ones, this book is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Chinese antiquity and Chinese views on the formation of their own civilization.
Download or read book Liangzhu Culture written by Bin Liu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-07 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Liangzhu Culture (3,300-2,300 BC) represented the peak of prehistoric cultural and social development in the Yangtze Delta. With a wide sphere of influence centred near present-day Hangzhou City, Liangzhu City is considered one of the earliest urban centres in prehistoric China. Although it remains a mystery for many in the West, Liangzhu is well known in China for its fine jade-crafting industry; its enormous, well-structured earthen palatial compound and recently discovered hydraulic system; and its far-flung impact on contemporary and succeeding cultures. The archaeological ruins of Liangzhu City were added to the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List in July 2019. Liangzhu Culture contextualises Liangzhu in broad socio-economic and cultural backgrounds and provides new, first-hand data to help explain the development and structure of this early urban centre. Among its many insights, the volume reveals how elites used jade as a means of acquiring social power, and how Liangzhu and its centre stand in comparison to other prehistoric urban centres in the world. This book, the first of its kind published in the English language, will be a useful guide to students at all levels interested in the material culture and social structures of prehistoric China and beyond.
Download or read book The Zoomorphic Imagination in Chinese Art and Culture written by Jerome Silbergeld and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2016-10-31 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China has an age-old zoomorphic tradition. The First Emperor was famously said to have had the heart of a tiger and a wolf. The names of foreign tribes were traditionally written with characters that included animal radicals. In modern times, the communist government frequently referred to Nationalists as “running dogs,” and President Xi Jinping, vowing to quell corruption at all levels, pledged to capture both “the tigers” and “the flies.” Splendidly illustrated with works ranging from Bronze Age vessels to twentieth-century conceptual pieces, this volume is a wide-ranging look at zoomorphic and anthropomorphic imagery in Chinese art. The contributors, leading scholars in Chinese art history and related fields, consider depictions of animals not as simple, one-for-one symbolic equivalents: they pursue in depth, in complexity, and in multiple dimensions the ways that Chinese have used animals from earliest times to the present day to represent and rhetorically stage complex ideas about the world around them, examining what this means about China, past and present. In each chapter, a specific example or theme based on real or mythic creatures is derived from religious, political, or other sources, providing the detailed and learned examination needed to understand the means by which such imagery was embedded in Chinese cultural life. Bronze Age taotie motifs, calendrical animals, zoomorphic modes in Tantric Buddhist art, Song dragons and their painters, animal rebuses, Heaven-sent auspicious horses and foreign-sent tribute giraffes, the fantastic specimens depicted in the Qing Manual of Sea Oddities, the weirdly indeterminate creatures found in the contemporary art of Huang Yong Ping—these and other notable examples reveal Chinese attitudes over time toward the animal realm, explore Chinese psychology and patterns of imagination, and explain some of the critical means and motives of Chinese visual culture. The Zoomorphic Imagination in Chinese Art and Culture will find a ready audience among East Asian art and visual culture specialists and those with an interest in literary or visual rhetoric. Contributors: Sarah Allan, Qianshen Bai, Susan Bush, Daniel Greenberg, Carmelita (Carma) Hinton, Judy Chungwa Ho, Kristina Kleutghen, Kathlyn Liscomb, Jennifer Purtle, Jerome Silbergeld, Henrik Sørensen, and Eugene Y. Wang.
Download or read book Social Memory and State Formation in Early China written by Min Li and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-24 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking book on the archaeology of power, knowledge, social memory, and the emergence of classical tradition in early China.
Download or read book The Archaeology of China written by Li Liu and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-30 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Past, present and future "The archaeological materials recovered from the Anyang excavations ... in the period between 1928 and 1937 ... have laid a new foundation for the study of ancient China (Li, C. 1977: ix)." When inscribed oracle bones and enormous material remains were found through scientific excavation in Anyang in 1928, the historicity of the Shang dynasty was confirmed beyond dispute for the first time (Li, C. 1977: ix-xi). This excavation thus marked the beginning of a modern Chinese archaeology endowed with great potential to reveal much of China's ancient history.. Half a century later, Chinese archaeology had made many unprecedented discoveries which surprised the world, leading Glyn Daniel to believe that "a new awareness of the importance of China will be a key development in archaeology in the decades ahead (Daniel 1981: 211). This enthusiasm was soon shared by the Chinese archaeologists when Su Bingqi announced that "the Golden Age of Chinese archaeology is arriving (Su, B. 1994: 139--140)". In recent decades, archaeology has continuously prospered, becoming one of the most rapidly developing fields in social science in China"--
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Early China written by Elizabeth Childs-Johnson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-23 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook on Early China brings 30 scholars together to cover early China from the Neolithic through Warring States periods (ca 5000-500BCE). The study is chronological and incorporates a multidisciplinary approach, covering topics from archaeology, anthropology, art history, architecture, music, and metallurgy, to literature, religion, paleography, cosmology, religion, prehistory, and history.
Download or read book Understanding Collapse written by Guy D. Middleton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-26 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this lively survey, Guy D. Middleton critically examines our ideas about collapse - how we explain it and how we have constructed potentially misleading myths around collapses - showing how and why collapse of societies was a much more complex phenomenon than is often admitted.
Download or read book China written by Deborah A. Bekken and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-02-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the entrance of The Field Museum’s Cyrus Tang Hall of China, two Chinese stone guardian lions stand tall, gazing down intently at approaching visitors. One lion’s paw rests upon a decorated ball symbolizing power, while the other lion cradles a cub. Traditionally believed to possess attributes of strength and protection, statues such as these once stood guard outside imperial buildings, temples, and wealthy homes in China. Now, centuries later, they guard this incredible permanent exhibition. China’s long history is one of the richest and most complex in the known world, and the Cyrus Tang Hall of China offers visitors a wonderful, comprehensive survey of it through some 350 artifacts on display, spanning from the Paleolithic period to present day. Now, with China: Visions through the Ages, anyone can experience the marvels of this exhibition through the book’s beautifully designed and detailed pages. Readers will gain deeper insight into The Field Museum’s important East Asian collections, the exhibition development process, and research on key aspects of China’s fascinating history. This companion book, edited by the exhibition’s own curatorial team, takes readers even deeper into the wonders of the Cyrus Tang Hall of China and enables them to study more closely the objects and themes featured in the show. Mirroring the exhibition’s layout of five galleries, the volume is divided into five sections. The first section focuses on the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods; the second, the Bronze Age, the first dynasties, and early writing; the third, the imperial system and power; the fourth, religion and performance; and the fifth, interregional trade and the Silk Routes. Each section also includes highlights containing brief stories on objects or themes in the hall, such as the famous Lanting Xu rubbing. With chapters from a diverse set of international authors providing greater context and historical background, China: Visions through the Ages is a richly illustrated volume that allows visitors, curious readers, and China scholars alike a chance to have an enduring exchange with the objects featured in the exhibition and with their multifaceted histories.
