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2024, Asian Perspecitves
A new generation of scholars has called into question the homogeneous nature of Western Zhou culture and the sweeping imposition of this culture over a large region that covers much of present-day China. Our study contributes to this debate by focusing on a coherent group of bronze vessels dated to the end of theWestern Zhou and beginning of the Spring and Autumn periods. He (盉) vessels with drum-shaped bodies, bird-like lids, and human-like legs are among the most unique and artistically innovative artifacts of this period. While these unique artifacts have been found in and near the center of the Western Zhou polity, they are not associated with the rituals of the royal house, but rather with those of other aristocratic lineages. We argue that the artistic style of the vessels was part of the culture developed around the royal Zhou house and in areas close to it, although it is not strictly representative of the royal culture of the Western Zhou, being instead associated with minor lineages. A multi-dimensional analysis of this group of vessels, addressing their geographical distribution, location within their archaeological context, and social associations, combined with an analysis of their decorative scheme and the inscriptions cast inside them, enables us to better understand the sociocultural landscape of this period. Our study suggests that diversity existed not only in remote border areas or among the lower strata of society, but also within the cultural core of the Western Zhou polity and among the highest echelons of the aristocracy. Such processes of diversification are associated with the development of local and regional identities and with the growth of the political independence of aristocratic lineages during the final years of the transition from the Western Zhou to the Spring and Autumn periods.
2016 •
Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 139, 2005 Lectures
The Inscribed Bronzes from Yangjiacun: New Evidence on Social Structure and Historical Consciousness in Late Western Zhou China (c.800 bc)2007 •
This chapter discusses the twenty-seven inscribed ritual bronze vessels, which were uncovered in Yangjiacun, Mei Xian. The place where these vessels were discovered may have been near the seat of the powerful Shan lineage — several names of Shan family members are inscribed on the vessels. The chapter reveals that the inscriptions on the bronze vessels provide new insights into the structure and internal organisation of lineages in the Late Western Zhou-period China. These inscriptions also convey a feeling of shared identity among the members of the Shan lineage, particularly the male members. It is also shown that they illuminate the contexts in which a sense of history was beginning to form during the final half-millennium of pre-Imperial China.
Journal of The Royal Asiatic Society 3, Vol.14, Issue 3
From Exclusive Xia to Inclusive Zhu-Xia: The Conceptualization of Chinese Identity in Early China2004 •
Asian Perspectives
Materializing Identity — A Statistical Analysis of the Western Zhou Liulihe Cemetery2012 •
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.
Oriens Extremus 47 (2008): 25-65
Western ‘capitals’ of the Western Zhou dynasty (1046/5 – 771 BC): historical reality and its reflections until the time of Sima Qian2008 •
The present paper aims to reveal how the “western period” of the Zhou dynasty (1046/5-256 BCE) was remembered, forgotten, and later reconstructed from pieces of memory. By juxtaposing the data of epigraphic sources against reminiscences about of the past in received texts from several centuries up to the Western Han (206 BC – AD 9) period, it addresses the following questions: 1) How was the geopolitical constitution of the Zhou polity before 771 BC reflected in various literary texts: – in the Poetry and Documents Classics, possibly manifesting representations of the edge between the Western and Eastern Zhou periods; – in the Zuo zhuan, possibly reflecting representations of the Spring and Autumn period (770–403 BC); – in various texts of the Warring States period (403–221 BC)? 2) How was the early Zhou period remembered during the Western Han times and how were available memories about its “western period” selected, manipulated and integrated in Sima Qian’s Records of the Historiographer ? Surveying many sources of a heterogeneous nature and different origins, this paper makes some preliminary observations about alternative tendencies in the process of construction of the past in early China and tentatively discusses their possible political and social backgrounds.
2012 •
The Western Zhou period (ca. 1045-771 BCE) saw the dissemination of a particular style of ancestral ritual across North China, as the Zhou royal faction leveraged its familiarity with the ritual techniques of the conquered Shang culture to complement its project of state formation. Looking back on this era as the golden age of governance, Eastern Zhou and Han thinkers sought to codify its ritual in comprehensive textual treatments collectively known as the Sanli and, in particular, the Zhouli, or "Rites of Zhou." Later scholarship has consistently drawn on the Sanli as a reference point and assumed standard for the characterization of Western Zhou rites. Current understandings of the formative era of early Chinese ritual are thus informed by the syncretic and classicizing tendencies of the early empires. To redress this issue, the present study explores the ritual practices of the Western Zhou based on their records on inscribed bronzes, the most extensive source of textua...
Taking the cemetery of Liangdaicun as a starting point, the paper analyses the impact of Inner Asian artefacts on the material culture of the central Zhou elites, c. 1000-700 BC
The Family Model in Chinese Art and Culture, eds. Jerome Silbergeld and Dora C. Y. Ching (Princeton, NJ: The P. Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for East Asian Art, the Department of Art and Archaeology, in association with Princeton University Press, 2013)
Family and Gender in Burial Custom: the Case of Western Zhou Aristocracy2013 •
2008 •
2017 •
2011 •
2014 •
How Did Yongzhong Become So Important? Beyond Cores and Peripheries in Early China
How Did Yongzhong Become So Important? Beyond Cores and Peripheries in Early China2023 •
2012 •
Historical Consciousness and the Use of the Past in the Ancient World, edited by John Baines, Henriette van der Blom, Y. S. Chen, and Tim Rood
Reflections and Uses of the Past in Chinese Bronze Inscriptions from the Eleventh to Fifth Centuries BC: The Memory of the Conquest of Shang and the First Kings of Zhou2019 •
1996 •
Harvard journal of Asiatic studies
Funerary ritual and the building of lineages in late imperial China1989 •
Asian Perspectives. The Journal of Archaeology for Asia and the Pacific, 53 (2)
Lopes, R. O. (2014) Securing the Harmony Between the High and the Low. Power Animals and Symbols of Political Authority in Ancient Chinese Jades and Bronzes. Asian Perspectives. The Journal of Archaeology for Asia and the Pacific, 53 (2), 195–225.2014 •
The Journal of Asian Studies
Statecraft and Classical Learning: The Rituals of Zhou in East Asian History. Edited by Benjamin A. Elman and Martin Kern. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2010. vi, 446 pp. $99.00 (cloth); $49.00 (paper)2011 •
The Journal of Asian Studies
The Ledgers of Merit and Demerit: Social Change and Moral Order in Late Imperial China. By Cynthia J. Brokaw. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1991. 287 pp. $42.501993 •
Slavery and Other Forms of Strong Asymmetrical Dependencies, De Gruyter
Indefinite Terms? Social Groups in Early Ancient China (ca. 1300–771 BC) and “Strong Asymmetrical Dependency”2022 •
Journal of Archaeological Research
Chinese Bronze Age Political Economies: A Complex Polity Provisioning Approach2021 •