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

Brindley, Erica Fox

doi:10.1355/sj32-1l

Cited by 10 publications

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“…For a more comprehensive overview of southern practices and lifestyles, the interested reader may wish to consult, e.g. de Crespigny (1990), Brindley (2015) and Yao (2016). 23.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These people were not necessarily considered 'Chinese' or 'Han' by government representatives and their way of living at times considerably diverged from lifestyles in the core areas of the realm (cf. Fiskesjö 1999;2012, 57-59;Brindley 2015). Did the quotidian practices of these 'Southerners' 21 afford more tangible interactions with kingfishers?…”

Section: Bathing Like a 'Barbarian'mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Chasing the Halcyon Light – Human-Kingfisher Relations in Eastern Han-Dynasty China (CE 25–220) and Their Material, Sociocultural and Ecological Articulations

Kost

2019

Environmental Archaeology

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This article takes a fresh look at human-kingfisher relations in Eastern Han-dynasty China (CE 25-220). It argues that the confined appearance of kingfisher figurines in graves excavated in the southwest of the modern-day People's Republic of China reflects the structural differences in human-kingfisher interactions between the centre(s) of the Han empire and its peripheries. By re-visiting the archaeology of the figurines and placing them into the wider cultural and ecological context, it is shown that distinct sociocultural transformations such as urbanisation processes and infrastructural projects profoundly changed the exposure and interactional dynamics between humans and kingfishers in the northern parts of the realm. This situation contrasted sharply with human-kingfisher interfaces in the southwest, where relatively 'untamed' environments harbouring a great number and diversity of kingfishers provided more favourable conditions for encountering them. I propose that this framework, in turn, fostered conceptualizations of kingfishers in which the birds came to encapsulate an experience fundamentally opposed to the type of human preponderance showcased in the core areas. By discussing a set of local practices and beliefs that might have further promoted this view, I suggest that they served as catalysts for the emergence of the kingfisher figurines at a particular time in a specific place. In this wider context, the article finally considers whether the southward expansion of the Eastern Han, with which the appearance of the figurines coincides, contributed to a re-configuration of north-south dynamics, shaping the general logic of human-kingfisher relations at the time.

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“…For a more comprehensive overview of southern practices and lifestyles, the interested reader may wish to consult, e.g. de Crespigny (1990), Brindley (2015) and Yao (2016). 23.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Bathing Like a 'Barbarian'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Chasing the Halcyon Light – Human-Kingfisher Relations in Eastern Han-Dynasty China (CE 25–220) and Their Material, Sociocultural and Ecological Articulations

Kost

2019

Environmental Archaeology

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“…Men, in particular, were to be covered from head to toe, wearing hats, shoes, and robes ( Hou Hanshu 76.2457; see Fan ). The “mallet” bun hairstyle worn by Dian men is often described in opposition to Han refinements of wearing “leather caps and belt ornaments” and being able to undertake “the postures of bowing,” signifying a kind of non‐normativity when contrasted with the bound and capped long hair associated with dignified men of classical antiquity (translation of Huainanzi in Brindley , 149). Reforming one's body, in light of these commentaries, implied becoming a social being who could relate as contemporary with the imperial present and also connect with a classical “Confucian” time.…”

Section: The Bronze Age Societies Of Southwest Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

Politics of Time on the Southwest Frontier of China's Han Empire

Yao

2017

American Anthropologist

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In this study of the Han imperial conquest of southwest China, I argue that time is a technique of political control in precapitalist empires and a source of power asymmetry that local subjects understood and actively sought to curtail. From the expansion of political economy to the invention of universal histories, imperial policies incorporate heterogeneous geographies and subjects into unified temporal frames, thus obscuring differences in social experience. Drawing from subaltern and colonial anthropologies, I argue that resistance to state time is neither restricted to modern colonialism nor realized only in moments of organized rebellions. Archaeological research from the southwest frontier of Han China highlights how native subjects, referred to as the Dian culture, enlisted the dead to detach ideas of personhood and political agency from imperial temporalities. A focus on the resurgence of former funerary practices not only provides an overlooked point of entry to local interventions in the temporality of social reproduction but also reveals how the making of biosocial contemporaneity entangled both imperial agents and frontier subjects. This study demonstrates archaeology's contribution to a wider disciplinary engagement with the intersubjective or shared time of our subjects. [imperialism, time, China] RESUMEN En este estudio de la conquista imperial Han del suroeste de China, argumento que el tiempo es una técnica de control político en imperios precapitalistas y una fuente de la asimetría del poder que los sujetos locales entendieron y activamente buscaron reducir. Desde la expansión de la economía política a la invención de las historias universales, las políticas imperiales incorporan heterogéneas geografías y sujetos dentro de marcos temporales unificados, oscureciendo así las diferencias en la experiencia social. Basada en antropologías subalternas y coloniales, argumento que la resistencia al tiempo del estado no es restringida al colonialismo moderno ni realizada solamente en momentos de rebeliones organizadas. La investigación arqueológica de la frontera sudoeste de la China de Han destaca cómo los sujetos nativos, referidos como la cultura de Dian, incorporaron los muertos para separar las ideas de condición de persona y agencia política de las temporalidades imperiales. Un enfoque en el resurgimiento de prácticas funerarias antiguas no sólo provee un punto de entrada pasado por alto a las intervenciones locales en la temporalidad de la reproducción social sino también revela cómo la producción de la contemporaneidad biosocial involucró tanto a los agentes imperiales como a los sujetos de la frontera. Este estudio demuestra la contribución de la arqueología a un abordaje disciplinario más amplio con la intersubjetividad o el tiempo compartido de nuestros sujetos. [imperialismo, tiempo, China]

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“…3 For Early China, see studies by Maspero 1927;Schafer 1954;Yü Ying-shih 1967;Wang Ming-ke 1992;Pines 2005;Di Cosmo 2010;Chin 2012;Nylan 2012;Brindley 2015;Goldin 2015;Li 2017;Pines 2018. Holcombe 1997−1998Abramson 2007;Yang Lu 2014;Churchman 2016;Clark 2016;Tackett 2017 and Yang Shao-yun (forthcoming) have addressed those issues in relation to the Tang−Song period.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Southern Man People as a Political and Fiscal Problem in Han Times

Lycas¹

2019

Monumenta Serica

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Starting from what the Hou Hanshu says about the Southern Man in Later Han times, this article aims to measure the prescriptive importance of Fan Ye's text, through a comparison with other types of documents, mostly unearthed documents from the Middle Yangzi area. Beyond the stereotypical image of benevolent officials educating savage barbarians, it suggests that the "Man problem" was not an ethnic issue, but rather a political and fiscal one. Indeed, most Man rebellions occurred not only because of the gradual imperial colonization of the southern part of the realm, but also because the officials holding office in the Middle Yangzi regularly questioned the Man's fiscal status.

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

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

Chasing the Halcyon Light – Human-Kingfisher Relations in Eastern Han-Dynasty China (CE 25–220) and Their Material, Sociocultural and Ecological Articulations

Chasing the Halcyon Light – Human-Kingfisher Relations in Eastern Han-Dynasty China (CE 25–220) and Their Material, Sociocultural and Ecological Articulations

Politics of Time on the Southwest Frontier of China's Han Empire

The Southern Man People as a Political and Fiscal Problem in Han Times

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